The Five (Sanity-Saving) S's

Even though I read a ridiculous number of pregnancy, birth, and parenting magazines in the past nine months, there was a list of books I had intended to check out in the last few weeks of my pregnancy. But of course, I didn't HAVE a last few weeks of pregnancy. One of the books I missed out on was The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp. Legions of moms swear by this guy's methods for soothing fussy babies. His whole thing is that babies need a "fourth trimester" of three or four months that recreates the sensations of the womb. His five S's are:

• Sucking
• Swinging
• Shushing
• Side positioning
• Swaddling

The sucking thing is self-explanatory. Evelyn doesn't use a binky often, but if she's rooting around, I like to offer it to her before feeding her so I know whether she's actually hungry or just wants to suck on something.

Swinging seems to be something all babies love. Really, who doesn't like being swung, swayed, rocked, or whatever?

Sushing replicates the white noise of the womb. We have a Sleep Sheep attached to the outside of Evelyn's crib, and turn it on if she's still semi-awake when we put her down. Also, if she gets fussy when we are changing her diaper, we lean down and make a "shhhhhhhhhhhh" in her ear; this calms her down and sometimes even makes her stop crying altogether.

Side positioning is something to do while the baby is awake. Babies should always sleep on their backs! We don't really do this one too much.

Swaddling. This is my favorite. THANK HEAVEN FOR SWADDLING! Matt's cousin told me the one thing I needed was a velcro swaddler, and she was absolutely right! The first night home, Evelyn kept had a hard time going to sleep, and would wake herself up with her little flailing arms and legs. The second night, we used a swaddler and what a difference! We use it every night now. In fact, one of my coworkers gave us a Babies R Us gift certificate and we rushed right out and got a few more. This is going to be my go-to gift for all new moms. Love it!