The other particularly helpful baby book Best Friend gave you was supposed to be an antidote to Gina Ford’s regimentation being the key to happiness. Harvey “I’m a doctor donchaknow” Karp’s Baby Bliss.
Unlike Ms Ford’s stick to the schedule first and think later approach, Dr Karp has a Theory about the first three months of a baby’s life. And this Theory leads him to make certain recommendations about the Best Way to calm that crying newborn.
Now, you are generally suspicious of people with Theories. Especially Theories which lead to statements about the Best Way to do things. That sort of thinking has been behind claims that it is impossible to learn a foreign language unless one is simultaneously listening to a piece of music by Bach.* That one can only learn a foreign language if it is presented as a command, which one then follows.** That a teacher should rarely, if at all, speak, but instead should point to a large colourful chart representing different phonemes.***
Dr Karp’s Theory is that human babies are born three months too soon. Because their big brains need big heads but big heads wouldn’t make it through the pelvises of human mothers and so evolution has selected for, essentially, a species of preemies. For babies to be contented and comforted in those first three months then, they need to be made to feel as though they are still happily swimming about in the womb.
Apart from the truth universally, you gather, acknowledged that babies do suddenly switch on at around 12 weeks, he brings to the table the evidence of the helplessness that human babies display at birth compared to other animals.
You had to go away and have a cup of tea when you read that. Because otherwise you would have found yourself pointing out that even you, the 8 month pregnant ignoramus that you were, knew that babies rarely walked, or even flew, within minutes or even weeks of attaining their three month birthday. Hunting and killing are also, you rather assumed, a way off too.
The idea that recreating womblike conditions might help calm a newborn had a certain amount of common sense appeal, though.
And at three o’clock in the morning, when it is your third day at home and your husband is snoring away in the living room and the Star is fussing and fuming and refusing to go back to sleep, you will try anything, and that is when you turned to the practical help section of the book.
The Baby Bliss Method, then, consists of following the 5 Ss:
1. Swaddling, much to your six months pregnant surprise. “My MiL,” you said, gloomily “is probably going to insist on doing dreadful 19thCentury things to the baby. Like swaddling.” “Oh,” said Best Friend, “actually, swaddling is really in again now.”
And to be fair, MiL has been discovered to be a fount of extremely helpful and not at all archaic wisdom throughout the last 12 months. Or she has bitten her tongue right off while watching you manhandle the infant. Sometimes, probably, both. Which shows what you know.
Anyway, you swaddled the Star right up until he was six months in increasingly large cotton sheet type cloths. Theoretically, six months was a bit long, especially as he was well capable of unswaddling himself in the middle of the night at that point. Still, since when you tried not swaddling him, or swaddling him under the arms (which rather defeats the object of the exercise, you would have thought), he would wake up again half an hour later, you decided to go with the flow.
2. Side (or Stomach). Obviously putting babies to sleep in this position is a big no no, but carrying them around face down while trying to get them to stop grizzling is another matter.
3. Ssssshhhhhhh. The trick here is to be unafraid in public places of looking a bit of an idiot. Because in following this one you did find yourself sitting on the bus with your lips right against the Star’s ear hissing loudly and constantly at him until he stopped whimpering.
Worked like a dream every single time though.
You also had a radio detuned to produce white noise, which played, much to B’s dismay, through the night. Tailor made white noise machines do exist, apparently, as do CDs which produce vacuum cleaner sounds, whale music and back to the womb special effects. Still, you were happy with the radio, although the frequency you had it on did tend to occasionally pick up the transmissions made by the helicopter pilots to the helipad round the corner, which is an interesting way to be woken up at 6am.
Actually, you ran this one for about six months too. The thing is, while the Star no longer needed the reassurance, you do live in a big city and you rather suspected that the white noise drowned out the other noises of late night partying, ambulance sirens, fireworks, drunks stumbling home at 12pm, the downstairs neighbour and his hound of the Baskerville, fire engine sirens, the boys playing cricket in the street in the late afternoon and the others racing the mopeds later on, police sirens and the occasional scream as another teen got stabbed.
4. Swinging. Or jiggling. Why babies cannot be soothed from a comfortable sitting position has always been beyond you.
5. Sucking. Actually, you’d forgotten this one, because you never did like the idea of using a dummy. The Star was a very sucky little baby though. When he wasn’t spending hours and hours and hours nuzzling your breasts, he was making his own arrangements and actually giving himself bruises by latching on to his arms for comfort. Freaked the hell out of you when purple marks appeared until you caught him giving lovebites you your husband (the non milk filled parental unit).
Perhaps, with hindsight, a dummy would have been better.
To be fair, the Star was never a particularly difficult or colicky baby, and perhaps all of these little tricks were just the boost your confidence needed to feel in control, and everybody knows how well dumb animals respond to people who project an aura of authority.
But you don’t know where you’d have been without the book. You suspect it would have been a gibbering heap sucking its thumb in the corner.
* Suggestopedia. Bach, or at least some Bach, has the same rhythm as your heartbeat, you see.
** Total Physical Response. Which is OK for imperatives like ‘Stand up’ or ‘Sit down’ but does present some challenges, you’d imagine, when it is time to fool around with the third conditional.
*** The Silent Way. Of course, this was how you were introduced to cuisenaire rods. You adore cuisenaire rods.
