Tuesday, November 11, 2008

How To Soothe A Crying Infant In 5 Easy Steps

Doctor Harvey Karp, pediatrician and author of The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer (damn, what an obnoxiously long book title!), claims to have discovered how to activate a calming reflex in infants. My first instinct, as usual, is to think that it's simply too good to be true, but the video is pretty interesting:



Now, the shushing really really doesn't sound like anything I would consider to be "soothing" for a baby, but Doc Karp remarks that the sound of a woman's blood flowing through her veins sounds about as loud as a vacuum cleaner to the growing fetus. I'm not sure if that's true (a cursory Google search didn't turn up anything), but there are a lot of mothers in one of my pregnancy forums who swear by this method - basically, every one who of them who has tried it says that once they figured out the right formula for their kid (some kids were more responsive to one particular step than others), it worked like a charm.

Has anyone out there ever tried this or heard of it? Would any of you with infants be willing to give it a shot and share the results with us? Y' know...for science?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You would think that the LOUD ass shhhhhhhhing in the ear would be bad for an infant, but I guess it is all they hear for 9 months. I will let you know in a few months how it works when I am at my wits end at 3am and in desperate need of sleep. Very interesting though!! My one questions is does this guy have his own kids or does he just use other people's kids?

August said...

Good question! According to the Internet, he's got an adult daughter. Since he says that this method is only reliable for infants up the 3 months (those he consider to be in the "fourth trimester") he's probably done the bulk of his experimenting on other people's kids.

I wonder (before he wrote a book and earned his semi-fame) how he managed to convince all those parents that he wasn't just a quack when he started making loud vacuum noises in their newborns' ears!

Carol said...

Harvey Karp was our babies' pediatrician and I believe that HE'S the magic!! Well, not really, but he did somehow manage to TALK our 2.5-year-old into handing her pacifier over to him... and that was THAT! (And yes, she was completely hooked!)

Girl in the Dirt said...

This is so interesting! It does make sense to me that the things he's doing would trigger (trigger being the key word) some psychological response based on physiological stimuli. Either that, or the kids are just so confused by all the new stimuli that they forget why they were crying?

This video reminded me of something very strange about myself. Whenever someone is vacuuming or blow drying their hair, or when the heat or AC comes on in a house, I become much more relaxed and even enjoy it. I sleep better and feel more comfortable when I hear these sounds. Perhaps I have found the reason why! :)

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