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

Put cotton in your ears and gin in your stomach!
19
th
-century colic advice
Through the centuries, experts continually thought up colic treatments
to fix whatever they believed to be causing their baby’s unhappiness.
These false assumptions led them to champion many different types of
therapies that have proven to be total dead ends: alcohol, sugar water,
sedation, anti-cramp medicine, and burp drops. There are, however,

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besides the 5 “S’s” a few other ways of helping crying babies that are
true paths.
Three True Path Colic Cures: A Grandmother’s Bag of
Tricks
When you want a break from the 5 “S’s,” here are three time-honored
tricks for colicky babies that work well: massage, walks outside, and a
little extra warming.
Massage: The Miracle of Touch
Massage is love which is one unique breath, breathing in
two.
Frederick Leboyer, Loving Hands
Massage is a very ancient treatment for colic. Its extraordinarily
soothing effects are based upon our oldest and most profound sense—
touch.
Touch and the Fourth Trimester
There’s an old saying, “A child is fed with milk and praise,” and I
would say a baby is fed with milk and caresses. Your baby’s loving
caresses began inside your womb, where she enjoyed a feast of velvety
cuddling twenty-four hours a day. Once born, your baby still loves to be
touched and stroked. Your skin-to-skin embrace of her is the touch
equivalent of calming, hypnotic movement or sound.
Cuddling Builds Brains

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A recent study from McGill University asked, “Does extra cuddling
make animals smarter?” The researchers looked at two groups of
little rat pups. The first group had very “loving” mothers who licked
and stroked their babies a lot. The second group received much less
affection from their moms.
When the rats became old enough to be taught mazes and puzzles,
scientists noticed that the cuddled animals were extrasmart. They
had developed an abundance of connections in a part of the brain
crucially important in rats (and people) for learning.
The moral of the story is clear: Cuddling your baby feels good,
and it may even boost her IQ!
Touch is not only a wonderful reminder of a baby’s time as a fetus;
like milk, it’s an essential “nutrient” for her growth. In fact, in some
ways it’s even more beneficial than milk. While stuffing your baby with
extra milk won’t make her any healthier, the more tickles and hugs she
gets, the stronger and happier she’ll become.
In 1986, a brilliant baby-watcher named Tiffany Field confirmed the
benefits of touching in a study on the effects of massage on premature
babies. She had nurses massage a group of preemies for fifteen minutes,
three times a day, for ten days. The results were astounding. Massaged
babies gained forty-seven percent more weight than expected and were
able to go home almost a full week earlier than babies who didn’t get
massaged. In an equally stunning follow-up study, when the massaged
babies were examined one year later, their IQ’s were higher than the
babies’ who were handled routinely. Dr. Field also discovered that when
healthy full-term babies were massaged for fifteen minutes a day, they
cried less, were more alert and socially engaged, gained weight faster,
and had lower levels of stress hormones.