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Title: The Happiest Baby on the Block
Author: Harvey Karp
Genre: Parenting guide
Thingummies: 4?
Synopsis: With the thesis that colic is essentially a result of humans being born too early (so our heads can get out without killing our mothers), Karp has what he considers a fool-proof method of recreating the comfort of the womb and calming even the fussiest of babies.
Thoughts: Well, the final evaluation is going to have to wait for a few months until I have someone to try the technique out on. But the book came very highly recommended, both from mothers I personally know and from various experts whose opinions I respect, so we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. His theories, as he lays them out, certainly do make sense, and jive up well with information I have from other sources. (Although there's plenty of theories in every generation that subsequently seem ridiculous, so I've got a certain amount of cynicism.)
The advice he gives--calm a baby by imitating the environment the kid started in, by combining swaddling, loud shushing sounds, jiggling, side/stomach positioning, and sucking--is pretty straightforward. It doesn't require expensive equipment, can apparently be mastered with just a little practice, and does not ask parents for the ridiculous efforts some of the other trendy parenting methods demand.
Annoyingly, this is one of the most repetitive books I've read in some time. I'm not sure if he doesn't trust parents to get ideas the first time around (or the fifth), or whether he knew he had enough info to write a nice magazine article, and then padded like crazy to fill out a (still fairly slim) book.
However, if it actually works as promised, I suspect I'd cheerily be willing to pay 200x the cover price and read a law student's worth of textbooks to get the effect to work and get some darn sleep. So I'm going to withhold any more judgements until I can actually put this one into practice.
(Why am I reading this so early? Because I figure I better get my reading done now. I don't think the kid's going to sit still waiting for me to read a couple chapters before I figure out how to calm him down, once he's out in the cold, bright world.)
Author: Harvey Karp
Genre: Parenting guide
Thingummies: 4?
Synopsis: With the thesis that colic is essentially a result of humans being born too early (so our heads can get out without killing our mothers), Karp has what he considers a fool-proof method of recreating the comfort of the womb and calming even the fussiest of babies.
Thoughts: Well, the final evaluation is going to have to wait for a few months until I have someone to try the technique out on. But the book came very highly recommended, both from mothers I personally know and from various experts whose opinions I respect, so we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. His theories, as he lays them out, certainly do make sense, and jive up well with information I have from other sources. (Although there's plenty of theories in every generation that subsequently seem ridiculous, so I've got a certain amount of cynicism.)
The advice he gives--calm a baby by imitating the environment the kid started in, by combining swaddling, loud shushing sounds, jiggling, side/stomach positioning, and sucking--is pretty straightforward. It doesn't require expensive equipment, can apparently be mastered with just a little practice, and does not ask parents for the ridiculous efforts some of the other trendy parenting methods demand.
Annoyingly, this is one of the most repetitive books I've read in some time. I'm not sure if he doesn't trust parents to get ideas the first time around (or the fifth), or whether he knew he had enough info to write a nice magazine article, and then padded like crazy to fill out a (still fairly slim) book.
However, if it actually works as promised, I suspect I'd cheerily be willing to pay 200x the cover price and read a law student's worth of textbooks to get the effect to work and get some darn sleep. So I'm going to withhold any more judgements until I can actually put this one into practice.
(Why am I reading this so early? Because I figure I better get my reading done now. I don't think the kid's going to sit still waiting for me to read a couple chapters before I figure out how to calm him down, once he's out in the cold, bright world.)
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Date: 2012-10-06 12:49 pm (UTC)From: