Main Points:
Most people who have taken care of a fussy infant wonder at some point: “Wouldn’t it be great if babies came with a secret button to turn off their crying?”
Now don’t laugh, it’s not such a wild idea. Since babies wail as loud as car alarms, shouldn’t there also be a way to turn their “alarm” off?
Well, the good news is, there is! I call this Off switch the calming reflex, and, as you will soon learn, it works almost as quickly as the car-alarm reset button on your key chain. But first, let’s review what reflexes are and how they work.
Reflexes are your body’s way of reacting automatically, such as blinking before something hits you in the eye or shooting out your arms when you’re knocked off balance. Like a good buddy, reflexes reassure the brain: “Don’t even think about it. I’ll handle everything.”
All reflexes have the following characteristics:
Could you imagine having to teach your baby how to suck or poop? Thankfully you don’t have to, because these and more than seventy other automatic reflexes are packed away in your newborn’s compact brain.
Most of these reflexes help your baby during the first months after birth. The rest are either fetal reflexes (useful only during his life inside you), leftover reflexes (valuable to our ancestors millions of years ago, but now just passed from generation to generation, like our intestinal appendix), or mystery reflexes (whose purposes are unknown).
Here’s a list of some common reflexes you’ll probably see your baby performing:
1. Keeping-safe reflexes: These protective reflexes help prevent accidental injury. (Most are so important they continue to work in adults.)
Crying—Crying, the “mother” of all baby safety reflexes, can be triggered by any sudden distress and is extraordinarily effective at getting your attention.
Sneezing—Your newborn’s sneeze usually isn’t a sign of a cold; rather, it’s a response to irritating dust and mucous his body is trying to rid from the nose.
2. Getting-a-meal reflexes: Even though no food ever passed your fetus’s lips, from the moment of birth he was ready to receive and enjoy your milk.
Rooting—When you touch your baby’s cheek or lips, his face will turn toward the touch and his mouth will open and then shut. This reflex helps your baby locate and grasp your nipple, even in the dark. But don’t worry if you stroke your baby’s cheek and he doesn’t respond. This is a smart reflex: It’s not there until he’s hungry. That’s why the rooting reflex is a great way for you to tell if your baby is crying because he wants to eat. If you touch his mouth and he doesn’t root, he probably is not crying for food.
Sucking—Your baby practiced this complex reflex even before birth. Many parents have ultrasound photos of their little cuties sucking their thumbs, weeks before delivery.
3. Fetal and leftover reflexes: These reflexes either help our fetuses before they are born or were useful only to our distant animal ancestors.
Step—Holding your baby upright, let the sole of one foot press onto a flat surface. In a few seconds, that leg will straighten and the other will bend. This reflex helps babies move around a little during the last months of pregnancy, thus helping to prevent pressure sores and getting the fetus into position for delivery.
Grasping—If you press your finger into the base of your baby’s toes or fingers, he will grab on tightly, even when he’s sleeping. This reflex is critically important for newborn apes! It helps them cling to their mother’s fur while she’s moving through the jungle. (Be careful. It works on dads with hairy chests too!)
The Moro reflex—This extremely important leftover reflex protected our ancient relatives carrying their babies through the trees. It’s the “I’m falling” reflex activated the second your baby gets startled (by a jolt, loud noise, or a dream).
The Moro reflex makes your baby’s arms shoot out and around, as if he’s trying to grab hold of you. This venerable response probably kept countless baby monkeys from falling out of their mother’s arms. (Adults who fall asleep in a chair and whose heads suddenly drop back may also experience this reflex.)
As your baby matures his newborn reflexes will gradually get packed away and forgotten, like tattered old teddy bears. However, at the beginning of life, these invaluable responses are some of the best baby gifts a mother could ever hope for.
There is one more built-in, newborn response that parents in my practice think is the most wonderful reflex of all: the calming reflex.
I believe once our ancestors began living in villages and cities, they forgot that, since the Stone Age, babies were almost constantly jiggled and wiggled as their moms walked up and down the mountains. Sadly, many babies deprived of these comforting movements began to startle and cry at every disturbance. I’m afraid that in order to explain that crying, modern parents began to mistakenly think that babies were so fragile they could only tolerate quiet sounds and gentle motion.
This new attitude undermined their confidence in triggering the calming reflex, because as you are about to learn it can be activated only by vigorous actions—especially in very fussy babies. Gradually, this ancient calming tool was forgotten.
As you will recall, reflexes require specific triggers. The triggers for your baby’s calming reflex are the sensations he felt in the uterus. It is my belief that this precious reflex came about not as a way of soothing upset infants but rather as a way of soothing upset fetuses!
This vital response saved countless numbers of mothers and unborn babies by keeping fetuses entranced so that they wouldn’t thrash around and kink their umbilical cords or get wedged into a position that made delivery impossible. How brilliant of Mother Nature to design this critical, lifesaving response to be automatically activated by the sensations fetuses are naturally surrounded by.
Not only are the rhythms of the uterus profoundly calming to babies, they’re also comforting to adults. Think of how you’re affected by hearing the ocean, rocking in a hammock, and cuddling in a warm bed. However, while we merely enjoy these sensations, our babies need them—and fussy babies need them desperately.
So if you’ve tried feeding, burping, and diaper changing and your baby is still yelling himself hoarse, it’s time to try soothing him this “old” new way.
The Top Ten Ways You Can Imitate the Uterus
1. Holding
2. Dancing
3. Rocking
4. Wrapping
5. White noise or singing
6. Car rides
7. Walks outside
8. Feeding
9. Pacifiers
10. Swings
This list includes just a few of the dozens of ways clever parents have invented to calm their infants. But what you know now is something that no mom or dad throughout history realized, that these tricks relax newborns by switching on the ancient reflex that kept them in a protective, lifesaving trance when they were fetuses.
The most popular baby calming methods can be grouped into five basic categories: Swaddling, Side/Stomach position, Shhhhing sounds, Swinging, and Sucking. I call these the 5 “S’s”; they are the qualities of the uterus that help activate the calming reflex. However, like all reflexes, even these great techniques only switch on the calming reflex if they’re done correctly.
There should be a law requiring that the 5 S’s be stamped onto every infant ID band in the hospital. For our frantic baby, they worked in seconds!
Nancy, mother of two-month-old Natalie
In the early 1900s, baby experts taught new parents to do the following when their infant cried: 1) feed them, 2) burp them, 3) change the diaper, and 4) check for an open safety pin. Authorities proclaimed that when these didn’t work, babies had colic and there was nothing else a parent could do. Today, most doctors give similar recommendations.
But for parents of a frantic newborn, the nothing-you-can-do-but-wait advice is intolerable. Few impulses are as powerful as a mother’s desire to calm her crying baby. This instinct is as ancient as parenting itself. Yet, the frustrating reality is while parents instinctively want to calm their babies, knowing how to do it is anything but instinctive. It’s a skill. Luckily, it’s a skill that is fairly easy to learn.
Peter, a high-powered attorney, is the father of Emily and Ted. When his kids were born, Pete and his wife, Judy, had very little baby experience. So, after the birth of each child, I sat down and reviewed the concepts of the fourth trimester and the 5 “S’s.” Several years later, Peter wrote:
It has been more than ten years since I was taught the 5 “S’s” as a way to quiet my crying babies. Even today, I like to share them with clients who bring their infants into my office. It’s great fun to see the amazed looks when a large, lumbering male like me happily collects their distraught baby and calms the delicate creature in seconds—with a vigorous swaddle, side, swing, shush, and suck. These simple techniques give any parent a true sense of accomplishment!
The 5 “S’s” are the only tools you’ll need to soothe your fussy infant.
1. Swaddling: A Feeling of Pure “Wrap”ture
Tight swaddling is the cornerstone of calming, the essential first step in soothing your fussy baby and keeping him soothed. That’s why traditional cultures from Turkey to Tulsa (the Native Americans, that is) use swaddling to keep their babies happy.
Wrapping makes your baby feel magically returned to the womb and satisfies his longing for the continuous touching and tight fit of your uterus. This “S” doesn’t actually trigger the calming reflex but it keeps your baby from flailing and helps him pay attention to the other “S’s,” which do activate the reflex.
Many irritable babies resist wrapping. However, it’s a mistake to think this resistance means that your baby needs his hands free. Nothing could be further from the truth! Fussy young babies lack the coordination to control their arm flailing, so if their arms are unwrapped they may make themselves even more upset.
Here’s how one grandmother learned the ancient tradition of swaddling and passed it along:
My youngest sister was born when I was nearly ten years old. I remember my mother teaching me how to swaddle her snugly in a warm blanket. That year, mothering and bundling began for me, and they have continued, without interruption, into my sixtieth year!
When my grandchildren began to arrive, I faithfully taught my kids to wrap their babies very tightly in receiving blankets. My passion for swaddling often led to some good-humored discussion: “Watch out for Bubby and her bundling!” Yet somehow it always seemed to help.
The babies in our family, although beautiful, talented, and brilliant, share a fussy, high-maintenance profile, if only for the first two or three months. But swaddling has always been a big help. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it change their faces from a scowl to serenity.
Barbara, “Bubby” of Olivia, Thomas, Michael, Molly, and Sawyer
2. Side/Stomach: Your Baby’s Feel-Good Position
Swaddling stops your baby’s uncontrolled arm and leg acrobatics that can lead into frenzied crying. In a similar fashion, the side/stomach position stops an equally upsetting but invisible type of stimulation—the panicky feeling of falling!
Being dropped was such a serious threat to our ancient relatives that their babies developed a special alarm—the Moro reflex—that went off the moment they felt they were falling out of their mother’s arms.
Most babies are content to be on their backs if they’re in a good mood. However, when your baby is crying, putting him on his back may make him feel like he’s in a free fall. That in turn can set off his Moro, which starts him thrashing and screaming.
The side or stomach positions soothe your screaming newborn by instantly shutting off the Moro. That’s why these are the perfect feel-good positions for fussy babies. When it comes to putting your small one to sleep, however, the back is the safest position for all babies. Unless your doctor instructs you otherwise, no baby should ever be put to sleep on his stomach. (More on this in Chapter 9.)
3. Shhhhing: Your Baby’s Favorite Soothing Sound
Believe it or not, a loud, harsh shushing sound is music to your baby’s ears. Shhhhing comforts him by mimicking the whooshing noise of blood flowing through your arteries. This rough humming surrounded your baby every moment during his nine months inside you. That’s why it is an essential part of the fourth trimester.
Many new parents mistakenly believe their babies prefer the gentle tinkling sounds of a brook or the distant hush of the wind. It seems counterintuitive that our tender infants would like such a loud noise; certainly we wouldn’t. Yet babies love it! That’s why many books recommend the use of roaring appliances to settle screaming infants.
I have never met a cranky baby who got overstimulated by the racket from these devices. On the contrary, the louder babies cry, the louder the shhhhing has to be in order to calm them.
In a rush to get out of the house, Marjan put off feeding her hungry baby for a few minutes while she went into the bathroom and finished getting ready to leave. Two-week-old Bebe didn’t care for this plan, and she wailed impatiently for food. However, after a few minutes Bebe suddenly quieted. Marjan panicked, was her tiny baby okay? When Marjan opened the bathroom door, she was relieved to see that her daughter was fine. Then she realized that Bebe had stilled the very instant she turned on the hair dryer.
Marjan shared this exciting discovery with her parents, but they were not supportive. They warned her it was dangerous to use the hair dryer to calm an infant: “It’s so loud it will make her go crazy!”
Despite their concerns, Marjan used her new “trick” with 100% success whenever her baby was crying (but only when her family was not around).
4. Swinging: Rock-a-Bye Baby
Lying on a soft, motionless bed may appeal to you, but to your baby—fresh out of the womb—it’s disorienting and unnatural. Newborns are like sailors who come to dry land after nine months at sea; the sudden stillness can drive them bananas. That’s why rhythmic, monotonous, jiggly movement—what I call swinging—is one of the most common methods parents have always used to calm their babies. Swinging usually must be vigorous at first to get your baby to stop screaming, and then it can be reduced to a gentler motion to keep him calm.
In ancient times and in today’s traditional cultures, babies are constantly jiggled and bounced. Many third-world parents use cradles or hammocks to keep their babies content, and they “wear” their infants in slings to give the soothing feeling of motion with every step and breath. Even in our culture, many tired parents use bouncy seats, car rides, and walks around the block to try to help their unhappy babies find some peace.
Mark, Emma, and their two kids were visiting Los Angeles from London. While I was examining four-year-old Rose, little Mary, their two-month-old baby, startled out of a deep sleep and immediately began to wail. Without missing a beat, Mark scooped her up so she sat securely in his arms. He began swinging her from side to side as if she were a circus performer and he the trapeze. Within twenty seconds, her eyes glazed over, her body melted into his chest, and we were able to finish our conversation as if Mary had never cried at all.
5. Sucking: The Icing on the Cake
Once your cranky baby starts to settle down from the swaddle, side position, shushing, and swinging, he’s ready for the fifth glorious “S”: sucking. Sucking is the icing on the cake of calming. It takes a baby who is beginning to quiet and lulls him into a deep and profound state of tranquillity.
Obviously, it’s hard for your baby to scream with a pacifier in his mouth, but that’s not why sucking is so soothing. Sucking has its effect deep within your baby’s nervous system. It triggers his calming reflex and releases natural chemicals within his brain, which leads in minutes to a rich and satisfying level of relaxation.
Some parents offer their infants bottles and pacifiers to suck on, but the all-time number-one sucking toy in the world is a mother’s nipple. As was previously mentioned, mothers in some cultures help keep their babies calm by offering them the breast up to one hundred times a day.
Hannah thought her first son, Felix, was almost addicted to the pacifier. “He insisted on using it for years. So when my second child was born, I vowed to try not to use it. But once again it became an invaluable calming tool. Harmon was so miserable without it, and so content with it, that I couldn’t bring myself to deny him that simple pleasure.”
In summary, the first two “S’s”—swaddling and side/stomach—start the calming process by muffling your baby’s flailing movements, shutting off the Moro reflex and getting him to pay attention to what you’re doing as you begin to activate the calming reflex. The third and fourth “S’s”—shhhhing and swinging—break into the crying cycle by powerfully triggering the calming reflex and soothing your baby’s nervous system. The fifth “S”—sucking—keeps the calming reflex turned on and allows your baby to guide himself to a profound level of relaxation.
The 5 “S’s” are fantastic tools, but as with any tools, your skill in using them will increase with practice. Since the calming reflex works only when triggered in precisely the right way, you’ll find that mastering these ancient techniques is one of the first important tasks of parenthood.
Interestingly, not only do parents get better with practice, so do babies. Many parents notice that after a few weeks of swaddling their babies straighten their arms and begin to calm the instant they’re placed on the blanket. It’s as if they’re saying, “Hey, I remember this! I really like it!”
You might read about the 5 “S’s” and think, “So what’s new? Those soothing techniques have been known for centuries.” And you would be partly right. The methods themselves are not new; however, what is new are two essential concepts for making the old techniques really effective—vigor and combining. In Chapter 13, you will learn how to perfectly combine the 5 “S’s” in the “Cuddle” Cure, but now I would like to share with you one of the least understood and most important elements of calming a screaming baby … the need for vigor.
Many of our ideas about what babies need are based on a misunderstanding about their fragility. Of course, babies are quite fragile in many ways. They choke very easily and have weak immune systems. For this reason, being told to do anything vigorously may seem as counterintuitive to you as being told that adding a slimy, raw egg to a cake will make it delicious … yet, it’s every bit as true!
That’s because, in many other ways, your newborn is a tough little “cave” baby. He can snooze at the noisiest parties and scream at the top of his lungs much longer than you or I could. Parents are often amazed at how forcefully nurses handle babies when they bathe and burp them. Even breast-feeding may feel pushy when you first learn how. Yet experienced moms know they must be assertive when latching their baby on the breast or else they’ll end up with sore nipples and a frustrated baby.
One mom in my practice, a psychologist, realized how impossible it was to gently guide her baby from screaming to serenity:
“Because of my professional training, I’m very good at remaining calm and reasonable even in the face of frantic and angry outbursts. I expected that this mild demeanor would also help me guide my one-month-old, Helene, out of her primitive screaming fits. What a joke! This little brawler needed me to take control like police subduing a rowdy mob.”
Parents often mistakenly believe that their job is to lead their unhappy baby into calmness by responding to his wails with soft whispers and gentle rocking. While that’s a very reasonable, civilized approach, it rarely calms an infant in the middle of a meltdown.
Jessica tried to calm her frantic six-week-old by wrapping him up, turning on a tape recording of the vacuum, and putting him in the swing. But it backfired. Like a little Houdini, Jonathan freed himself from the swaddle in minutes and wailed longer and louder than ever. I suggested that Jessica try tightening the wrapping and turning on the real vacuum, not a tape. Jonathan’s screaming bouts shortened from hours to minutes!
Most first-time parents don’t feel instantly comfortable with their fussy baby’s need for vigor. Let’s face it, as a parent you’re given so much contradictory advice. One minute, you’re warned to handle your baby gently and the next you’re told to deposit your shrieking child into a buzzing bouncy seat beside a roaring vacuum cleaner. Yet experienced baby “wranglers” know the more frantically a baby is crying the tighter his swaddling, the louder the shushing, and the more jiggly the swinging must be, or else they simply won’t work.
The fastest way to succeed in stopping your baby’s cycle of crying is to meet his level of intensity. Only after your screaming baby pauses for a few moments can you gradually slow your motion, soften your shushing, and guide him down from his frenzy to a soft landing.
The best colic-calmers say that soothing an infant is like dancing with him—but they always let the baby lead! These talented people pay close attention to the vigor of their infant’s crying and mirror it with the vigor of their 5 “S’s.” If crying is frantic, the rocking and shushing are as spirited as a jitterbug. As cries turn into sobs, the response shifts to the fluid pace of a waltz. And once the baby slips into serenity, their actions slide into the gentle to-and-fro of a slow dance. Of course, any return to screaming is immediately met with renewed vigor and a bouncy tempo.
You’ll be able to soothe your baby quickly once you become skillful at using the 5 “S’s.” However, the first few times you use these methods you may notice something peculiar: Your baby may ignore you or even cry louder.
This is normal, so please don’t worry. His brain may be having a little trouble getting your new message:
Augie was dozing angelically when I arrived at his hospital room to examine him. However, the moment I unwrapped him and the cool air touched his skin, he began to howl. I quieted him with some intense rocking and shushing, but as soon as I stopped and began probing his soft, marshmallow belly, he began to cry again. Were my hands too cold? Did I hurt him? No, he just hadn’t fully recovered from his prior upset, and my touch rekindled his protests.
Augie bellowed and flailed, then suddenly he became stone silent. I looked down to see him staring out into space as if he were trying to ignore me. The calm was only momentary, however. In seconds, his frantic cry cycled through him once more.
I snared his hands and held them to his chest. Then I leaned over his struggling body, rocked him, and simultaneously made a harsh shhhh sound in his ear. Within seconds, Augie was again completely at ease.
Five seconds later, however, his cry surfaced one last time, like an exhausted boxer trying to get up off the mat. After just a few more seconds of vigorous shushing and rocking, Augie finally gave in and his little body relaxed for good.
As you can see, even if your “S’s” are perfect, you may have to patiently wait a few minutes for your crying baby to fully respond. Three particular traits of an infant’s nervous system can fool you into thinking the 5 “S’s” aren’t working:
1. Baby brains have a hard time shifting gears.
If you think your baby is screaming loudly, you should hear what’s going on inside his head! Chaos so distracts and overloads your newborn’s immature brain that he has a difficult time escaping his frenzy to pay attention to you. It’s like when your good buddy is in a fight. You try to pull him out of it, but he struggles against you to keep slugging away. It’s not until later, when he finally calms down, that he admits, “Thanks, you’re a real friend. I just couldn’t stop myself.”
So expect your baby to resist the 5 “S’s” until he calms down enough to realize that your shushing and jiggling are exactly what he needs from you.
2. Baby brains are very s-l-o-w.
When your baby is four months old, his eyes will quickly track you as you move around the room, but for now his brain is a little too undeveloped to do that. During these early months of life, it takes a couple of seconds for messages from his eyes (“I just saw mom move!”) to travel to the part of his brain that gives out the commands (“Okay, so follow her!”).
This dragged-out response time is even more pronounced in colicky babies. All the tumult going on inside their heads overwhelms their brains, making their processing time even slower.
3. Baby brains get into cycles of crying.
When your crying newborn does start responding to the 5 “S’s,” he may only settle for a minute before he bursts into crying all over again. That’s because your baby’s distress from crying is still cycling through his nervous system like a strong aftershock following his just ended “baby earthquake.”
Your baby may need you to continue the 5 “S’s” for five to ten minutes—or more—after he calms down. That’s how long it may take for his upset to finish cycling through him and for the calming reflex to finally guide him into sleep.
These cycles can be confusing. They make it seem as if your baby has experienced a jolt of pain, but that’s rarely the case. Instead, what’s occurring is like what happens when you catch a fish. The fish struggles, gives up for a few moments, then suddenly fights again. With persistence you’ll find that the 5 “S’s” help your baby’s cycles of crying gradually diminish and melt into a blissful peace.
Calming baby Frances reminded Suzanne of her job as a teacher. “It’s like quieting a classroom of yelling five-year-olds. At first you raise your voice a little to get their attention. Then, as they begin to settle, kids who are still revved up from before have occasional outbursts. Gradually, the excitement cycles down and all the kids become still and focused.”
The next six chapters will teach you exactly how to switch your baby’s crying reflex off and his calming reflex on. Once you have mastered these skills, crying will no longer be a cause of frustration. In fact, as odd as it sounds, you may even start appreciating your baby’s wails as a great opportunity for you to help him feel loved—and to help you feel like a terrific parent.