7 Tips for Having a Happier Baby

When my husband and I first got pregnant, we dreamed of how wonderful and happy our lives would be when our baby was born. Little did we know that our home was soon going to be blessed with a colicky baby. Our son would sometimes scream and cry for fourteen or fifteen hours a day! I often joked (through tears) that although it had never been proven, I was pretty sure colic was contagious because I was sure I had it too.

Some of the ideas in this article were advice from friends and family, some are from magazines or books, such as "The Happiest Baby on the Block" by Harvey Karp. Not everything I heard or read helped, but we found what worked best for our family in order for us to all survive colic. This is a list of those things that worked for us, and hopefully some of it can be useful to you too!

Happy Baby Tip #1: The Womb was a Wonderful World to Live In

In Harvey Karp's "The Happiest Baby on the Block", he explains that parents sometimes make the mistake that when a baby is sleeping, there must be dead silence in the house, but that inside the womb, it is anything but quiet. He says that in the womb, babies hear constant noise. Babies hear the continuous swooshing of amniotic fluid, they hear mommy's steady heartbeat, and mommy's voice every time she speaks.

My sister-in-law was just telling me the other day that she "protected" her son's sleep with silence so much that now the smallest sounds wake him up. She joked that with her next child, she will run the vacuum cleaner under the crib and make all kinds of noise during naptime!

I am sure there is a happy balance between the two extremes. Just live life as normal so that your baby gets used to your home's normal noises.

The second part of the womb experience to re-create is through swaddling, which Harvey Karp also teaches in "The Happiest Baby on the Block". Inside Mommy's belly, a baby has very little room to move around. Babies like to be swaddled, even though most cry while being swaddled, and for months, my son slept best this way.

Happy Baby Tip #2: Physical Skin-to-Skin Contact

I nursed my son for almost eight months, and just about every time, I stripped him down to just his diaper. He loved being right against my warm skin like that, and often found it very comforting in one of his crying fits, and I could just tell that it was more than just getting nourishment because he would sometimes sleep lying against me. And although my husband did not have the added benefit of having food readily available for our son, he still could help with offering skin-to-skin contact with him. My dear husband would often take his own shirt off and strip our son down to his diaper and just hold him like that, and it would sometimes stop the colicky fit.

Happy Baby Tip #3: Face Time

My son loved looking at people's faces, even as a newborn. Newborn babies do not see more than 12-15 inches away, so you need to only be that far away from your baby's face. I would get about a foot away from my son and would make faces at him, tell him stories, sing, smile, and all of this would often get a big smile or even a laugh out of him.

Also remember, like everyone, young and old alike, babies can get overwhelmed and over stimulated by too many visitors and too much constant attention. One of my son's biggest meltdowns was on his very first Christmas. He was only about six weeks old, and we had taken him to four different houses, and of course being the newest family member at each of the homes, everyone wanted to see and hold him. By the end of the day, he had had enough. We finally just had to leave that last Christmas gathering early and not worry about hurting other people's feelings because leaving was what was best for him.

Happy Baby Tip #4: Stick to a Schedule

Babies like predictability. They like to anticipate when they eat, when they play, and when they sleep. This is something I have been quite good at because I, myself, like schedules and predictability. From day one of my son's life, his eating and sleeping has been on a schedule. Schedules are also beneficial for parents because they can plan their days around the baby's schedule. For example, I have learned in our house to do all of our errands, such as run to the grocery or the bank or the post office, between breakfast and lunch. My son naps every afternoon, and if he misses it for some reason, he is much more prone to tears. He handles life better knowing when he is going to eat and sleep, and so do I.

Happy Baby Tip #5: Movement

Constant movement is probably something else that babies learn in the womb. They feel constant motion in the amniotic fluid and they feel motion every time mommy is moving. I know that when I was pregnant with my son, I felt his moving and kicking a lot less when I was moving around because that motion lulled him sleep.

Once the baby is born, sometimes just putting them in motion can calm their crying fits down. The three best things I found were carrying my son around in a front carrier like a Snugli or a Baby Bjorn, take him for a ride in the car, or put him in a baby swing.

The only drawback, I found, to resorting to movement to calm your baby down is that it will likely put him to sleep. And in the case of my son, too much daytime sleep meant no nighttime sleep, and his crying fit would just happen at 2:00 a.m., instead of 2:00 p.m., when I was better equipped to handle it. A fear I had in allowing my son to sleep too much in motion was that he would only learn to sleep while moving and would never sleep alone in his crib (this does happen to some babies), but this turned out to be not that big of a deal to us.

Happy Baby Tip #6: Keep a Level Head

One of the hardest things for me when my son would do nothing but cry for hours on end was remembering that it would not last forever. I often felt great despair that he would never stop crying and our family would never be happy again. And it is just not true! Babies do outgrow colic, and they do grow into normal, healthy, and happy babies. The best way to deal with this feeling is to call Granny (or a close friend) to come and hold the screaming child for a few hours so that you can just get away from it. Go shopping, get some coffee with a friend, breathe some fresh air without the baby, and it will help clear your head in no time, and give you more patience to go right back and deal with it.

Happy Baby Tip #7: Try New Things

Sometimes things you read or hear about other children will not work for your baby. This does not mean something is wrong with you or your child - it means you are both human and everyone is different! You know your child better than anyone, so just think of things you know your baby likes, and try to incorporate those things into your soothing rituals. Even if something seems unconventional and gains you strange looks from others, you need to do what works best for your child and your family.