Unique Tips to Calm and Soothe a Crying Baby

So your baby cries a lot? Welcome to the club. Although I don't believe that our daughter has colic, she can (and DOES) cry quite a bit sometimes. She is now about 6 weeks old, so we've gotten used to the crying during the day. (In case my wife is reading this, let me just confess that I am at work all day so she is the one who has to deal with the crying during the day...I love you dear!)

But nighttime is my turn to feed and change her, and I need to get at least SOME sleep. So in order to survive, I've had to learn some tricks to soothe and calm our baby back to sleep. This is for all you sleep deprived dads out there:

Hold your baby in your arms and gently bounce up and down while holding her. My daughter almost always calms down when I do this. I say "almost always" because I've noticed that this will not calm her down (nor will anything else) if she is hungry. However, I do this after she's been fed and changed but just won't fall back asleep. So I pick her up, bounce her for a few minutes and she calms down. At that point, I put her back in her crib and it's off to sleepy land.

Turn on the hair dryer. Don't ask me why this works, but it does! And it works almost instantly...I tell you it's like magic. Now I don't mean turn your blow dryer on your baby. Just turn it on so the baby can hear it. I've heard you can use a vacuum cleaner too, but I just don't want to haul that thing out to her crib. I've also tried static on the radio but it doesn't seem to be as effective.

Put your baby in the car seat. This one obviously won't work for every baby, because I've heard some of my friends say their babies hate the car seat. But for some reason, our daughter calms down and sleeps better in the car seat than her crib. This works even better if I swing the car seat while she's in it. (if you do this, be sure to strap your baby in the seat).

While patting your baby on the back, make an WAHHHHH sound close to her ear. Similar to the blow dryer tip, I'm not sure why this works. But my wife is really good at using this technique to calm our baby.

These tips may not be the typical suggestions you read in books or other internet articles, but they worked for us. If they don't work for you, don't lose hope...there are a lot of other calming techniques you can try. Just ask around and do a little bit of research.