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Vigor: The Essential Tip for Calming
Your Frantic Little Cave Baby
Many of our ideas about what babies need are based on a
misunderstanding about their fragility. Of course, babies are quite fragile
in many ways. They choke very easily and have weak immune systems.
For this reason, being told to do anything vigorously may seem as
counterintuitive to you as being told that adding a slimy, raw egg to a
cake will make it delicious … yet, it’s every bit as true!
That’s because, in many other ways, your newborn is a tough little
“cave” baby. He can snooze at the noisiest parties and scream at the top
of his lungs much longer than you or I could. Parents are often amazed
at how forcefully nurses handle babies when they bathe and burp them.
Even breast-feeding may feel pushy when you first learn how. Yet
experienced moms know they must be assertive when latching their baby
on the breast or else they’ll end up with sore nipples and a frustrated
baby.
One mom in my practice, a psychologist, realized how impossible it

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was to gently guide her baby from screaming to serenity:
“Because of my professional training, I’m very good at
remaining calm and reasonable even in the face of frantic
and angry outbursts. I expected that this mild demeanor
would also help me guide my one-month-old, Helene, out
of her primitive screaming fits. What a joke! This little
brawler needed me to take control like police subduing a
rowdy mob.”
Parents often mistakenly believe that their job is to lead their unhappy
baby into calmness by responding to his wails with soft whispers and
gentle rocking. While that’s a very reasonable, civilized approach, it
rarely calms an infant in the middle of a meltdown.