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On shushing, sound machines, and patterns for babies

Submitted by greg on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 13:25

In one of our classes at the Mountain Midwifery they introduced us to the "Happiest Baby on the Block" concept from Dr. Harvey Karp (video below):

Basically it takes a lot of things that people do naturally and puts them together into a combination of techniques for soothing your baby that work really well.

The 5 S's are:

  • Swaddling
  • Side/stomach
  • Shushing Sounds
  • Swinging
  • Suckling

Of course, this technique can't remove every problem like wet diaper, hunger, cold, or some other discomfort/pain.

The theory on the "ssshhhhh" noise is that it mimics the noises that baby heard in the womb and therefore are comforting. Everybody's grandmother knows that to work so the theory is somewhat secondary though Dr. Karp does take the shhh sound to a new extreme in terms of volume.

It seems to work for us...

Sleep Sheep Baby Noise Machine: Yuppy overflow or practical?

We received a cloud b sleep sheep noise maker and I was totally incredulous at first. It seemed like a complete waste of money and an example of the junk that yuppy parents buy for their kids so the kid feels just like mommy/daddy.

In hindsight, of course, I realize it is brilliant! I've now seen that shushing can be beneficial from using the "5 S" technique but of course it wears out our lungs a bit. The sleep sheep fixes that by providing a nice white noise, on a timer, that helps baby get to bed.

Creating Sleep Time Patterns

We believe in our own lives that patterns help us get things done, but what about baby patterns? We are trying to build a pattern before bed time, but have to invent some things since there aren't a whole lot of tasks that she really has to do specifically at those times. So, we are using that as our time to give her gripe water and acidophilus, to change her outfit, to read a book, and then of course to swaddle and turn on the sleep sheep.

That's what we've got so far. We're hopeful that in the near future we will head towards scheduling her time a bit more so that in addition to knowing her needs we also plan them into our days and plan the rest of our lives around them.