The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Toddler on the Block 2-Book Bundle pdfdrive com

making that shshshshshing sound of comfort that parents
know only too well.
Eliza Warren, How I Managed My Children
from Infancy to Marriage, 1865
As I was making my rounds at a local hospital, I saw
Carol trying to calm a crying newborn in the nursery.
Carol, a wonderful and experienced nurse, had wrapped

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the baby snugly, placed her on her side, and was softly
whispering in her ear, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She even
offered her a pacifier, but nothing helped. I asked Carol if
I could try soothing the baby. She describes what
happened next:
“Sophia had been inconsolable for her first two days of
life. After Dr. Karp offered to help he bent over Sophia’s
bassinet, with his face near her ear, and emitted a harsh,
continuous ‘shooshing’ sound for about ten seconds. That
was it! Sophia stopped crying within the first few seconds
of this magical sound and remained silent for the next two
hours.”
Of course, one loud shhhh won’t keep an infant calm forever, but it
was exactly what Sophia needed to get her attention long enough for
Carol’s other calming methods to work.
Why Does Shhhhing Make Your Baby So Happy?
Did you ever notice how the sound of the wind or the rumble of the
ocean makes you feel relaxed and at peace? Shhhhing is so deeply a part
of who we are that it’s even profoundly calming for adults.
For new babies, loud shhhhing is the “sound of silence,” the anti-cry.
Shushing may seem a strange way to help a crying baby; however, so is
turning on a vacuum cleaner. Yet that’s what many baby books suggest!
What’s so special about that sound?
The answer is, this loud white noise imitates your baby’s experience
inside the womb and switches on her calming reflex.
When I asked Nancy and Gary to guess what their baby, Natalie, heard
inside the womb, Nancy said it was probably something like, “Hey, Gary,
get over here!” Nancy was partly right. Fetuses do hear the muttering of
voices and other “outside” noise. However, most of their daily

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entertainment is a continuous, rhythmic symphony of shhhh. Wave upon
wave of blood surging through the arteries of your womb makes this
harsh, whooshing sound, which is as loud and rough as a gale wind
blowing through the trees.
How do we know this is what they hear? In the early 1970s, doctors
placed tiny microphones into the wombs of women in labor and found
the power of the sound was an incredible eighty to ninety decibels (even
louder than a vacuum cleaner)! (You may have heard this womb noise
when your doctor or midwife checked your fetus with an abdominal
microphone.) To get a good idea of what this sounds like to your baby,
try dunking your head under the bathwater while the faucet is turned on
—full blast.
Don’t worry that your newborn baby might get overwhelmed by such
a forceful noise. Although the sound inside the uterus is louder than a
vacuum cleaner, your baby doesn’t hear it that loud. That’s because her
middle ears are waterlogged with fluid, her ear canals absorb sound and
are plugged with waxy vernix, and she has thick, inefficient eardrums.
These sound-damping factors last until a few months after birth.
Gradually your baby’s hearing will improve as her eardrum changes
from being like a piece of thick paper to a tightly stretched piece of
cellophane that vibrates with any distant noise. However, for a while,

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her reduced hearing reduces the intensity of your shhhhing, or vacuum
cleaner, to a comforting din.
Imagine your baby’s shock at birth when she emerges from that rich
uterine world of loud quadraphonic whooshing into the quiet world of
whispering and tiptoeing that parents create for their newborns. Sure, we
may enjoy resting in a still room, but for your baby the silence can be
deafening. And her muffled hearing will make your house seem even
more stark and empty. New babies experience a type of sensory
deprivation, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that they cry from excessive
quiet. It’s as if they’re saying, “Please, someone make a little noise!”