How to Calm a Crying Baby

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was sure she was going to be a good baby. After all, both my husband and I were angelic as infants. And that’s the first mistake I made as a parent—having expectations of what I thought my daughter would be like. As you can guess, she was colic and didn’t stop screaming for four months straight. I’m only realizing how bad it really was now. A few friends and relatives have had newborns recently and I watch in awe at how they just sit there contently for hours without making so much as a peep. I guess this is what “normal” babies are like.

I’m really hoping baby boy does not have colic, but just in case, I’ve prepared this list to refer back to when it’s time. By the way, all of these tips are from the book "Happiest Baby on the Block", which I received when my daughter was already 2 months old. Had I gotten it before she was born, I would have saved myself a lot of nights crying and rocking my daughter and I to sleep. The whole concept of getting a baby to stop crying revolves around 5 S’s.They are:

1) Swaddling – When my daughter was first born she screamed and screamed. My husband and I were desperate to know what we could do to get her to stop. One of the nurses came in and told us that sometimes if you constrict the baby a little bit they calm down. Then she took my daughter’s flailing arms and pushed them down gently, holding them to her sides. And she immediately stopped crying. It was like the nurse was Jesus and she was performing a miracle for us. We became believers in swaddling instantly.

I guess they want to feel like they are in the womb again and swaddling tries to re-create that for them. But it will feel totally unnatural to wrap up your baby in something resembling a straight jacket, and your baby will probably cry a little at first. But, eventually they will calm down and sleep longer at one time than they ever have before. Just stick with it! Oh, and the Miracle Blanket is the only swaddling blanket that worked for us. Here is another mom’s post about swaddling with some actual research to back up why it’s so great.

2) Side-Lying - I can’t remember why this works, but for some reason putting your baby in a side-lying position helps. For my daughter, I think her colic stemmed from reflux so holding her facing away from us, with her left side down (best position to keep stomach contents from coming back up) seemed to help.

3) Shushing – The sounds that the baby hears in the womb are equivalent to that of a vacuum running in the room. My daughter needed the shushing to go to sleep and it needed to be obnoxiously loud to work. Many people would be aghast at how loud we would blare static radio noise in her room and go in and turn it down. She would wake up immediately, freak out and not calm down until it was blasting again.

4) Swinging – When my daughter was really freaking out we also had to incorporate the swing. And not just a nice, gentle, rocking motion. More like we were throwing her on the Gravitron at the fair kind of motion. Obviously, we didn’t do anything to hurt her, but we really had to get her going back and forth to get her to stop crying. We would do this and count to ourselves. Usually by the time we got to 60, she had stopped crying. Check out this blog post that has a video of the first four steps in action.

5) Sucking – Something about sucking is soothing to a baby. My daughter didn’t take to her pacifier right away. I think she was almost 3 months old before she started. We really had to jam it in her face (or rather, my mom did) and hold it there for a long time before she took to it, but once we did it was magic. At the time I thought my mom was crazy for forcing my daughter to do something she didn’t take to right away, but it turned out to be one of the best things ever for us.

If you are struggling with a colicky infant I hope this helps. There is a special bond and allegiance between parents of babies with colic and I feel like it is my duty as a mother to pass on these tips to you. If you are wondering if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, read about this mom’s colic survivor story. I highly recommend that you either read the book or watch the DVD Happiest Baby on the Block, because it does a much better job explaining exactly how to do the techniques and why this stuff works. Just remember, most babies outgrow this terrible stage by three or four months!