Exhausted Mom by Halfmoon Jewelry, Flickr, under a Creative Commons license

I have an eleven month old little girl named Emerson who, in spite of the nurses at the hospital saying “you’ve got a sleeper”, turned out to not be much of a sleeper.  There are worse stories, but mine is a good example of mixing mom’s intuition, dad’s motivation, and a great deal of research to figure out the best path to sanity.

Our Story

Month 1

Emerson started as a fairly typical baby. She slept for two hours at a time around the clock, waking only to latch on for her fill. I co-slept with her in our bed and my husband slept in an extra room so that he could get enough sleep to deal with life (don’t worry, we slipped nookie in here and there). She almost never cried the entire first month of her life. I thought the situation was quite blissful, particularly because I took the age old advice of “sleep when your baby sleeps” to heart. Clearly something in the mommy brain prepares us for waking up to feed a baby every two hours…but only up to a point.

Read more of this story »

When I first brought my daughter home from the hospital; I thought there’s nothing to it. I had my own baby-sitting business when I was twelve. I raised my younger siblings; I have been around children almost all my life. How hard could it be? I mean babies sleep most of the time anyways; well, those thoughts quickly changed when my daughter would not go to sleep for hours on end. She would go through her fussy period every evening where nothing I did would console her. Instead, it would upset her more. I was on wits on end. Then I came across this book, The Happiest Baby on the Block and it gave me hope when I felt I was about to lose it.

The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp came about when he was a fellow at UCLA as part of the Child Abuse Team. Dr. Karp consulted on several severely injured babies whose screams drove their stressed-out parents to commit horrible acts of abuse. In hopes of eradicating this unthinkable tragedy and help desperate parents everywhere; he began his research on infant sleep and colicky babies. Dr. Karp discovered that the infant development between a newborn and a three month old was astronomical and that in primitive cultures around the world; colic was virtually non-existent. Based upon his research he came up with the four theories to help sleep-deprived parents everywhere and help your baby become happiest baby on the block. The four ideas are

1. The missing 4th trimester
2. The “Calming Reflex”
3. The 5 S’s
4. The Cuddle Cure

Read more of this story »