Wit you

My email to Mike: I was reading an article called "How to Raise a Happy Baby" (on thebump.com) and this was first on the list.  Crying it out is not good.  I knew it!

Respond to Her Cries

Sounds obvious, right? The trick is to create a pattern so baby knows you’re predictable and reliable. This doesn’t mean you have to jump up every time baby makes a peep -- there are going to be times when she cries and cries and cries, or when she soothes herself -- but it does mean attending to her needs more than the majority of the time.

“Babies go through these tsunamis of emotion,” says Harvey Karp, MD, professor of pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine and author of The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Toddler on the Block. “For babies, it’s contentedness, serenity and security that make them happy. Twenty times a day, something upsets them, and magically, arms pick them up and they’re fed, or someone comes and rocks them.” (So, um, we can relate. It sounds a little like PMS.)

“Babies quickly learn, ‘I like this place and these people. I trust them. People take care of me,’” says Karp. “You’re building a sense of confidence in your baby that things will work out. There’s optimism in predictability for them.” And that can pay off for life.

“It becomes the basis for the other relationships they’ll have -- they'll build on that intimacy from the first nine months of their life,” he says. “It’s not to say a child can’t have a happy life if they didn’t have that. It would just be a whole lot harder."

Mike's email to me:  That's for girl babies.  We have a boy baby.