First Time Parent

The Happiest Baby on the Block The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer

The Happiest Baby on the Block The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer

Karp, a pediatrician in Santa Monica, Calif., and assistant professor at the School of Medicine, UCLA, offers a new method to calm and soothe crying infants. While nursing or being held satisfies some babies, others seemingly cry for hours for no reason. These babies suffer from what Karp calls the Fourth Trimester. When you bring your soft, dimpled newborn home from the hospital, you may think your nursery is a peaceful sanctuary…. To him, it’s a disorienting world part Las Vegas casino, part dark closet! Karp recommends a series of five steps designed to imitate the uterus. These steps include swaddling, side/stomach position, shhh sounds, swinging and sucking. The book includes detailed advice on the proper way to swaddle a child, the difference between a gentle rocking versus shaking and more. According to the author, virtually all babies will respond to these strategies although some trial and error may be needed to find the most effective calming method. A number of the steps letting kids nurse more frequently or encouraging babies to use pacifiers, for instance contradict other childcare experts. However, parents who are at their wits’ ends because of a baby’s incessant crying will find this book invaluable. In fact, expectant parents may want to read it before they bring their newborns home from the hospital.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Great book for new parents
Our baby is now a year old I purchased this book during my preganancy and having no experience with babies at all it was very helpful to understand our newborn.But each baby is unique and be aware that not every tip works with all babies. The video shows you how to rock, pacify, swaddle and use a swing with the baby for soothing techniques.We went out and bought an expensive baby swing one of the key tools from this video to help sooth a baby, Our baby hated to swing unless we were directly interacting with her.Our baby also hated her arms swaddled and kicked out of swaddles unless it was the kind with velcro. And if you are breastfeeding it is recomeded to avoid using pacifiers or bottles for a few weeks to avoid nipple confusion, I do not reacll this recomendation by breast feeding experts being mentioned in the video. Even though many of the tips did not work with our baby, I would still highly recomend this book for new parents.

5 Stars Put this in your parenting toolbox
My neighbor recommended this book to me while I was pregnant and I bought it that night. I had it memorized by the time I delivered and was putting the five S’s to work as soon as my daughter was put in my arms. It has worked ever since. She calms right down with her cuddle combo. We still swaddle her at night (she is 10 weeks) even though she my fight it. She settles down as soon as we wrap the last flap and tuck it behind her. She also loves the swinging. She has started to sleep 7+ hours at night at 6 weeks. I really do have a happy baby because this book gave me the confidence to handle her everyday. I may not know why she is upset but I know how to settle her down and have from day one. Buy this before you have your baby so you don’t miss a wink of sleep.

5 Stars The Happiest Mama in Town
Just a couple of hours ago our 7 week old wailed while I was in the middle of negotiating with a salesman (not the time for a screamathon). I sprinkled the Ss on my unsuspecting child and, just like that, I continued talking while the baby just stared on wide-eyed and serene.

My confidence is through the roof! Once I get my fiance to do the technique with some umph, we’ll be ready to open up our own daycare. I kid… I kid!

2 Stars Kindle E-book edition desperately needs to be edited for spelling
I accidentally purchased the Kindle version of this book when I first got my Kindle (I was sampling this book, and the option to return to the Amazon Kindle Store actually instead bought it, and then I missed the “did you really mean to buy this” prompt.) That mistake aside, I decided to read it anyway as my first Kindle book.

The book itself is fairly good overall. My main criticism is that the text is somewhat pedantic and repetitive, and the author’s “proofs” presented for the 4th trimester theory don’t stand up at all if you are a fan of reading well executed and documented scientific investigation methods, which these are pretending to be. However, I did get some good advice out of it about calming my newborn (he’s 2.5 weeks old today).

Comments on the specific problems of the Kindle edition:

1. There were numerous misspellings throughout the book (excepting, of course, the pages that were used for the sample). A basic spell checker would have found the majority of these problems as they seemed to be scanned text capture issues (like “Dr.” very frequently came out as “Or.”) There were also a number of other word substitutions beyond misspellings, such as “sleep” would show up as “deep”. In some chapters, there would be as many as 1 mistake per paragraph. This was highly annoying, especially to a new mother trying to relax and read a little while holding her fussy baby at 3 am.

2. The charts weren’t readable at all, and should have been probably re-entered as text charts rather than illustrations, or otherwise cut in half and put on two pages.

I’m only giving it a 2-star rating entirely because of the poor editing job done for the Kindle e-book version, otherwise would have only taken one star off for the book itself for the lack of supporting scientific evidence given in a credible manner.

5 Stars great book!
good mix of “grandma’s advice” and anthropological studies… loved it

my baby isn’t even HERE yet, but I’ve already used the techniques to help my friends little ones calm down! they think I’m magic

cannot wait to use the info in the book to calm my own little one

best money I ever spent!

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