Have you ever had a moment when you tried every one of those five S’s (five times each, even!) and not a damn one of them worked? Don’t get me wrong, I think the shushing and all is a good place to start.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes not.
The truth is, there are going to be times with most babies that they are just going to cry and nothing in any book is going to tell you how to make them stop. At those times it’s so easy to feel like a failure, or like there’s something wrong with your kid. I think all of us—through trial and error, a desperation-driven moment of clarity, or treasured knowledge passed down by an experienced friend—try things to soothe our babies, or ourselves, that are not in the books. And sometimes those things actually work!
Here are some things I tried.
1. To get Sasha to sleep: I blew her eyelids and stroked the curvy transition from her nose to her forehead. (Worked!)
2. To get her to stay asleep: I tucked the bottom of her pacifier into the top of her swaddle. (Mostly didn’t work—it would inevitably pop out.)
3. To get her to breastfeed: I sat her straight up to my side, facing me, as if sitting in an invisible chair. (Worked!)
4. For myself? Uhm, pooping standing up turned out to be one of my most inspired discoveries. That and carrying around a pillow to sit on everywhere I went. Oh, and those ice packs that are like a bag of peas? Works wonders when you run out of those icy pads they give you at the hospital.
Many of you have told me little tidbits like this. There’s the guy who drove his infant around and around the airport all night long (I think this worked, aside from the fact that Dad still wasn’t getting sleep.) There’s the mom who told me about how she stuffed her nursing bra with macerated cabbage leaves to deal with an overabundant milk supply (this sort of worked, except that she was constantly having to macerate cabbage leaves and only the giant ones could cover her, so she was always running out of cabbage—not to mention having bits of cabbage fall out of her shirt while she was out of the house).
You have anecdotes like this. I know you do. Things you tried. Things that worked. Things that didn’t work. I’m collecting these things. For a little LST experiment. I have an idea about how to use these stories, and maybe if I get enough I can give that idea a try. But it really hinges on you guys participating, telling me your stuff. This project thrives because so many of you participate in it—and now I’m asking for even more participation. Please, please take a moment to tell me the things you’ve tried in the comments. And tell me whether or not they worked. Who knows? Maybe your thing will help some desperate new mom reading this tonight.
Thanks! I can’t wait to see what you have to say.
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We Can’t Stop Watching
For the first five months of my daughter’s life, the only way to calm her was by holding her while bouncing on one of those ab-workout balls. I would sit for hours watching TV or listening to a book on CD bouncing up and down and up and down.
I swear by this one. In fact, I work as a maternity nurse and I tell all the parents to try this if they have a baby that fusses a lot. Sometimes I will bring one in if a labor patient isn’t using it.
My daughter is 8 months old, and this is still her preferred way of falling asleep with daddy.
I played a lot of James Taylor. It probably soothed my nerves more than hers, but I needed it. I’m sure me whispering along with the lyrics was a nice sound for her too.
I would lay Coco on the bed, lean over her, and swish my hair softly over her face. She loved it.
To get my daughter to stop crying, I would play peek-a-boo until she got distracted enough that she would stop crying. Worked about 50% of the time.
No joke–we ran the blow-dryer next to my son for the first 3 months 24/7! It was the only thing that calmed him down. Our electricity bill was evidence!
When my son was only a few months old, there were only 2 things that regularly calmed him down. The first was folding him in half (feet to head) to match how he was positioned in the womb (he was a breech baby).
The 2nd was bouncing him up and down to funk music. At 1 1/2, he still prefers funk and does what looks like a goofy toddler version of The Dougie whenever he hears it.
One I’m not proud of: We put her co-sleeper “nest” on top of the clothes dryer to get her to sleep when she was a newborn. The laundry room is probably the dirtiest room in the house … it’s full of lint and it’s where the catbox lives. We were THAT desperate for sleep.
We put our son’s carseat on the dryer while it was running. This was the only way he would sleep during the day without having to be held. But we were afraid to leave him down in the basement on the dryer alone (what if it rocked off the dryer?) and we got sick of sitting down there with him the whole time we napped. So we needed to find a way to simulate the dryer motion and noise. His pack-and-play had a “vibrate” function on it, and although he would not stay sleep in the pack-and-play, we removed the part from it that caused it to vibrate. When we stuck it under the carseat, the carseat vibrated. We added a white noise machine and, viola!, our son could nap in his room without someone having to hold him! (The only problem was that the vibrating part would only stay on for 20 minutes at a time so I had to sneak in periodically & restart it. Can you tell I was desperate?)
When my daughter was a newborn and nothing else I was doing would calm her down, I’d take her into our half-bath and turn on the ventilation fan. The “shushing” noise would soothe her. It surprisingly worked most of the time, but I would sit there on the toilet with her feeling trapped and claustrophobic.
Two things that worked: Holding her near a running faucet and fake sneezing. The faucet would calm her; the achooing would make her laugh — a great distraction.
We tried this too! It worked periodically. We had to hold her belly to belly and quickly sway back and forth or bounce her quickly up and down. She had colic for the first four months. She cried every night from 7 to midnight.
When feeds were difficult I’d sometimes find holding and running the hairdryer on full blast settled my boy enough to drink. I know everyone ‘buggy rocks’ to get kids to sleep but my husband used to have to rock it so hard, from side to side at a frightening velocity… it was like he was doing industrial level testing. We’d argue about it, but it would always work. And his head never fell off!
Running. Fast. Around the house.
I sewed pacifier straps into every one of my son’s sleep sacks. He is now 18 months old, and I fear the day we have to wean him off that sucker.
After hearing that the whir of the dishwasher had soothed a friend’s baby, we tried it ourselves. Didn’t work for us but we went through all the kitchen appliances til we found something that worked. Turns out, our daughter was powerless against the white noise of the fan above the oven. She could go from full-on screamfest to completely asleep in less than a minute.
We also found out, quite by accident, that she was soothed by the thumping baseline in the opening song of “The Sopranos”. Go figure.
Someone told my husband to dance around and pat the baby’s bottom. My husband misunderstood, he danced around while hitting his own bottom. Every time he did this, our daughter stopped crying. We called it the “butt dance”.
Another thing we did that worked was foreful rocking. I don’t know if that is what Dr. Karp meant when he said sway, but man did we sway! She would fall asleep better when being SWAYED than any other time.
Best visual ever!
Walking outside was the only thing that would work. In the ergo, facing in. And she knew if you were only walking around inside the house. You had to go outside the house and out for at least a mile… On the other hand, I didn’t have to worry too much about pregnancy weight hanging around, we walked 5+ miles/day rain or shine.
Same here! This child could be crying forever, and the moment your foot crossed the threshold she would stop. We called it “the walk to the poison ivy” because there was a patch of poison ivy around the block around the time she would usuall fall asleep. Thank goodness she was born in the summer! Those times where I really needed to put her down once she fell asleep, I would come inside, lie on my bed until I made a warm spot, and then very sloooowly inch her off of my chest onto the warm spot. Of course sleeping on her stomach, which terrified me, but what are you going to do?
My kiddo refused to take a pacifier but would suck on my finger, (a trick we learned from my lactation consultant by accident) so my husband and I became human pacifiers for about 3 months to get her to calm down and to fall asleep at night. We’d lay her in her crib and have our arm through the slats at the most awkward angle for a good 20 to 40 minutes sometimes longer ’til she fell asleep. Then we’d have to manage to extract our finger without waking her up.
Look forward to your project Hilary. I just dug up something I wrote when my son was 4 months old about just this sort of thing:
“It takes anywhere from ten minutes to an hour and a half for him to go to sleep, so once he’s asleep we’ll do almost anything to keep him that way. If he falls asleep in the car, I’ll just keep driving. Such a waste of petrol I know but a kind of sleep insanity takes me over. The other week I drove almost 100km and then home just to keep him asleep (and have some time to myself to listen to the radio and enjoy the scenery). If he falls asleep and I’m walking with him in the pram or on me in the carrier I need to keep walking at a constant pace or he’ll wake up and not go back to sleep. The second we get in our door he wakes up. If you go into a shop he’ll wake up. Yesterday I was bending down to get some muesli off the bottom shelf in the supermarket and that woke him up. I’m sure he’d understand though – it’s really good muesli.”
There was a lot of walking in the carrier and bouncing up and down in circuits around the house. I thought we were going to wear a hole in the floorboards of the bedroom. …. And for any desperate mums out there reading these – at 3 years old he now sleeps great. This too shall pass.
My twins are 12 weeks old (and born 6 weeks early). During the day, they’ll both be desperately tired but will often only sleep if I’m holding them. They don’t like being held at the same time, so there’s usually a period of time each day when I think, “Okay… whose turn is it to cry?” The baby I’m holding will fall asleep, and since the other one is screaming, I try to put the sleeping girl down. Sleeping girl wakes up screaming and crying girl falls asleep in my arms. We go on and on like this. I know that the sleeping baby is going to wake up if I move her, but I just can’t bear to let the other one keep screaming. I guess I always think… maybe this time it will work! It doesn’t. Night doesn’t always go well either. Last night I was up every hour between 11pm-5am (my two year-old wakes up at 5am), and most of those hours I was up multiple times.
I remember when my nephew was born (before I had kids) the only way my sister could get him to go to sleep was to put him in his carseat, pick it up by the handle, and swing it back and forth in a huge arch. He liked to swing really high. I remember feeling like she hadn’t really thought it through very carefully… babies grow fast and those seats get heavy quickly. She did develop really strong arms.
For both of my kids, the best way to calm them when crying or help lull them to sleep was hands-down that bum pat method. And I’m not talking a gentle pat – I’m talking full-on spanking-level patting with my son (he is cloth diapered, so I think it takes more force to make him feel the same soothing pat that my daughter felt with a little swat on her disposable-diapered bum) – but definitely a real jostle. Nothing that would hurt or sting, but enough that it would give them a bounce. They both LOVED it right from the start. I found the miracle cure on my 5th day of parenting my daughter when patting her back made her spit up all over me, but had been the closest thing to soothing her cries. I tried the bum and it worked. It works now with every single baby I’ve tried it on. They love that little jostle. I think it must feel like the thudding of mom’s heart beat in the womb.
Things that didn’t work: the every S except swaying. Swaying works, too.
Two little things I tried that worked:
- When my baby boy (now 9 mo) was crying and I was at the end of my rope, I would lie down on the bed, lay him on my chest, and sing the mantra I loved so much from my pre-natal yoga class (“I am the light of the soul, I am beautiful, I am bountiful, I am bliss, I am, I am”) in an endless loop. It made me feel better (often I cried a little bit) and it calmed him right down.
- When he started to have nails that needed clipping, I found it very hard to find the right moment to do it: if he was awake, I worried he might move his hands and I would snip the skin of his fingers (which happened once, to my horror), and if he was asleep, the last thing I wanted to do was risk waking him up. So I took to taking the nail clippers with me whenever we went out: he would fall asleep in the stroller, and I would sit down on a bench and clip his nails right in the stroller. If he had woken up (which he never did in the end), it wouldn’t have mattered because I would just be walking some more afterward.
And one that my sister tried with her own son: when he was very young, he hated having his clothes taken off for diapering or changing, and he screamed and screamed. My sister serendipitously discovered that the trick was to have her husband direct the blow-drier (on a gentle setting!) at his bare little legs. The combination of white noise, heat, and wind, presumably, worked wonders.
When my oldest son was a toddler, every time he had a cold it would lead to a nasty cough especially during the night. We tried all of the normal things (humidifier, propping him upright), but nothing worked. Someone suggested giving him straight honey on a spoon, since toddlers under 4 can’t take cough syrup or have cough drops yet. It worked! Straight honey is a great solution for young children in the 2 to 4 year old range.
Black Eyed Peas dance party!
We got (and still get) kids to fall asleep by stroking their noses from between their eyebrows to the tip of their nose. My husband calls it “hypnotizing the chicken”. I think the downward motion helps their eyes close. One thing that did not work for getting my newborn to sleep – those stupid womb noise animals. That was a waste of $20. But I was so desperate I would have tried ANYTHING. These days with school age kids, when they can’t sleep, I tell them they don’t have to go to sleep, they just have to lay down and be quiet. They’re usually out about 5 minutes later.
The carseat trick someone mentioned worked for my son too. We would place him in his infant carseat, not strapped in, and then swing him back and forth, obviously not so forcefully that he would be at risk of falling out. When he fell asleep we would transfer him to his crib or cradle. Sometimes when that wouldn’t work, we would put him in the carseat on the stroller frame and wheel him all over the house until he fell asleep and then do the transfer. We spent so many nights too laying on the floor next to his crib with our arms stuck in between the bars patting his butt. And when I thought he had finally fell back asleep, I would crawl across the floor out of the room!
My first was a major sleep resister. I could get her to sleep by going for a loooong walk with her in the sling (and I do mean walk; if I sat, she woke) – or by holding her and walking up and down stairs.
Well. I say “up and down”. But really, as our first babysitter discovered, it was only the down part she liked. Up? Up woke her up. Not living in a house designed by Escher, nor one featuring an escalator, I had to learn a very weird, jiggly sort of way of climbing stairs that sort of imitated walking *down* stairs. And I had to do this for 10-20 minute stretches, multiple times a day.
My legs have never been so toned.
One night during an attempt to soothe our crying son (maybe about 1 month old or less), my husband started making some faux Native American chanting sounds as he did squats. The minute he started our son quieted down. I told my parents about it and my dad found us a collection of Native American songs at the library and we used it for months as our go-to CD for soothing when nothing else was working. 9 times out of 10 the minute the CD started, our son would snap out of his crying to listen, calm down, and then often fall asleep. It was amazing.
Another thing I tried when my son was fussy was rapping to him. Sometimes regular old singing was just not enough and the rapping sounded funny to him so it got his attention and he would settle down. I don’t actually know any rap songs so it would be a mish mash of “Can’t touch this!” and something about too legit to quit. Good thing he’ll never remember that!
When my son was a few months old he began refusing to nurse during the day…and wanted to nurse every 90 minutes at night. It is called reverse cycling and typically happens to moms who work because the baby misses them and wants to nurse at night. But I am a stay at home mom so it made no sense! He would forcefully turn away and push me away with his little hand. This went on for 2 weeks, and I was a crazy person/zombie. The internet was not helpful at all, couldn’t find any mention of how to actually fix this. LLL basically said it will pass eventually, just keep nursing (and even said some mothers enjoy it!). My friends felt for me but had no advice. I finally got my husband to agree to get up with the baby and offer bottles the whole night. It WORKED. By morning, he missed me terribly and wanted to nurse all day. The problem was fixed within a week and he went back to only waking up every 2.5-3 hours (haha).
When I was pregnant I read somewhere if you sing, the baby will remember the song after they’re born. For 6 months I sang Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and it totally freakily worked (and only that song mind you). Now at 20 month old, I sing him that in the middle of the night when he wakes up (yes. he’s still waking up *sigh*)
Also carrying him in the bjorn or moby got him to calm down.
To keep him asleep: between 1-6 months my husband slept on the couch with our son on his chest. We tried co-sleeping but my son woke up ALL THE TIME wanting to nurse (I think cause he could smell me). So the co-sleeping moved to the couch. This drastically cut down the number of times he woke up. After 6 months my husbands back couldn’t take it and we just plain missed each other so we did cry-it-out. It was awful and it worked.
My newborn had a cold right out of the hospital and couldn’t breathe through her nose, which was very distressing to her – bouncing and keeping her upright was the only thing that helped. At night we put the bouncer in our bed, mindlessly bouncing her until she next needed to eat. I thought I was dying from the lack of sleep.
I also would shoot breast milk up her nose to help her with the cold! I would often miss…
This one was born of sheer desperation; when our daughter was about 3 weeks old, my husband found that if he made a loud, snorting sound like an obnoxious pig close to her head, she would instantly stop crying, at least for a moment. It seemed like a primal reflex: ‘I have to be quiet now because there is a big weird something right there.’ Sometimes, in that moment, she could start to settle down, sometimes not. We would only repeat it a couple of times. If it did not work, we would admit defeat and go on to something else. Who knows what our neighbors thought!
She also went through a phase over her first couple of months where she would scream and cry in her bassinet, or if we weren’t bouncing her to her satisfaction, but when we put her on her changing table, she was instantly happy.
I *love* this!