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The Scourge of Screaming Babies

I read in the New York Times Science section a couple of weeks ago a very enlightening article on colicky babies and I learned a lot of new and very practical information. I want to pass it on to you in case you missed it. Everyone knows some young harried mother of a screaming baby. Give her this information and do your good deed for the day.

Thirty years ago when my kids were babies, they had colic. The inference was that it was basically my fault: My breast milk wasn't good enough, they had a lot of gas because I wasn't burping them correctly, I was nervous and they were picking up on it. Yadda yadda, yadda, but enough to give me - a young, insecure mother - a terrible inferiority complex. At the recommendation of my pediatrician, I switched them both over to formula much sooner than I should have. Of course, the colic didn't stop. Now I know why.

COLIC IS NORMAL! Dr. Harvey Karp a pediatrician in Santa Monica has written a book on colic and he sugggests that, although colic, esp. the unsoothable kind where they cry non-stop for hours drives parents bonkers, it is a natural phase of early infant development. Some kids just have it worse than others. But all normal. It is NOT related to anything the parent is doing or not doing.

In Dr. Karp's book, The Happiest Baby on the Block, he shows parents 5 steps that performed together can set off what he calls an infant's innate calming system which recreates for infants the sensations in the womb to help them stay calm. His plan must work. The book has sold more than 350,000 copies and has been translated into 12 languages.

In the womb, the infant is packed tightly, head down with lots of jiggling and a loud whooshing sound which is the blood flowing through the placenta. This "whoosh" is louder than a vacuum sweeper! Keeping this in mind, Dr. Karp developed his 5 steps:

1) Swaddle the baby tightly in a blanket.

2) Hold the swaddled infant in one's arms or on one's lap and roll the baby onto its side or stomach.

3) Deliver a very loud shushing noise into the baby's ear. The shushing must be as loud or louder than the infant's cries.

4) Next comes the jiggling. Dr. Karp recommends supporting the baby's head and neck while delivering tiny energetic movements, like shivering. The movements must be gentle so as not to injure the baby's vulnerable head.

5) The last step is nonnutritive sucking. A baby will calm itself if it can suck on a finger.

After this article appeared in the March 8th Science Times, the letters to the editor of the March 15th Science Times had a couple of interesting comments: One mother wrote in to say that when her son "screamed unconsolably" she would stand up, rock him and keep the Dustbuster turned on near his head. Another mother wrote in to say that when her daughter was frantically colicky, she would vacuum the rugs with her daughter close to her chest in her snuggly. She also noted that her carpets had never been cleaner. Another, more jaded mother wrote in and said her solution to unsoothable crying was "a pair of soft, spongy earplugs inserted deep within the ear canal." Her ears!

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