How I Discovered The Ancient Secrets For Calming Crying Babies

I certainly had no idea how easy it was to soothe fussy babies when I began my pediatric studies in the early 1970s. During my years at at Albert Einstein College
of Medicine, my professors taught me babies scream because of gas pains, and they believed there were only 2 valid approaches for soothing these unhappy infants.
First, try the old grandmother's advice of holding, rocking and pacifiers. If that failed, the second way was to use medicine. The 3 recommended types of drugs were: sedatives (such as phenobarbital or tincture of opium), anti-spasm medicines (to treat stomach cramps) and anti-gas drops (to help get out burps).

By the late 1970s, however, these 3 therapies were either abandoned or seriously
called into question. Sedating babies was rejected as inappropriate. The use of
anti-spasm medicines was abruptly ceased after several babies receiving them lapsed into coma and died. And, anti- gas drops lost their appeal when they were proved to be no more effective than water.

In 1980, as a fellow in Child Development at the UCLA School of Medicine, my frustration turned into shock and alarm. There, as a member of the Child Abuse Team, I consulted on several severely injured babies whose screams drove their stressed-out parents to commit horrible acts of abuse.

I was outraged that our sophisticated, medical system didn't have one good solution for babies with this terribly disturbing, yet common problem. I read everything I could find about colic. I was determined to unearth whatever clues I could that might explain why so many children were plagued by this mysterious condition.

I soon uncovered 2 facts that began to put everything into focus for me and turn
my alarm into hope:

First, I learned about the profound differences between the brain of a 3-month-old baby and that of a newborn. During the first few months of life, babies make massive developmental leaps. This accounts for the huge gap between how parents in our society expect new babies to look, and act, and their true behavior and nature.

My second pivotal discovery came when I began to read about child rearing in other societies. As I explored the musty shelves of old books and journals at the UCLA Library, I was shocked to learn that the colicky screaming that haunted so many of my patients and their parents was totally absent in the babies of several cultures around the world!

The more I investigated this issue the more it dawned on me that although our culture was advanced in many ways, it was very backwards when it came to understanding the needs of babies! Somehow, somewhere we had taken a wrong turn. I began to realize our ideas about babies' crying had been built upon centuries of myth and misconception.

I teased out shreds of information from the past and wove them with cutting edge
modern research and my own unique observations made during my years of caring
for more than 5000 young babies. From all this, I distilled 4 ancient principles that
are crucially important for anyone who wants to understand babies and be skillful at comforting them and improving their sleep.

These 4 treasures, which have been passed from generation to generation since the
earliest days of mankind, are

•  The Missing "4th Trimester"
•  The "Calming" Reflex
•  The 5 "S's"
•  The Cuddle Cure

ABOUT DR. KARP

Dr. Harvey Karp is a nationally renowned pediatrician and child development specialist. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. Over the past 20 years, he has taught thousands of parents, from working moms to superstars like Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Pierce Brosnan his secrets for making children happy.

Dr. Karp has appeared numerous times on Good Morning America, The Dr. Phil Show, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Lifetime Channel, numerous national radio programs and his work has been featured by the Associated Press and Time, Newsweek, and People Magazine. He is also an authority on children's environmental health and on breastfeeding. Dr. Karp has a private practice in Santa Monica, CA.