Baby Advice

Babies and law school do not mix. Before my baby, I was in the top 5%. Two semesters after baby and I’m out of the top 10%. Looks like my plan of relying on my non-legal work experience will be tested.

Crying Babies

We used two sources to deal with our son when he was crying. They were Happiest Baby on the Block and Dunston Baby Language.

We did not buy Dunston Baby Language because the price was around $50. But, if I knew how much we would rely upon it, and how much easier it made our lives, I would shell out $100 or more for it. We were fortunate to be able to borrow it from friends.

The Dunston DVDs are a little overdone in my opinion (fifteen minutes of baby crying for each “word” in the “language” is a bit much) and Ms Dunston herself is not very comfortable on camera. On the other hand, learning the “words” was such an important part in understanding what our son was crying about, that I wholeheartedly recommend Dunston Baby Language.

What Dunston Baby Language is about is understanding the different sounds that your baby makes. Once you can distinguish the sounds, you can understand what the baby is crying about. There are five “words” in the language for (1) feed me (2) burp me (3) sleepy (4) gassy and (5) uncomfortable. (Update: I was not going to post the words but you can see them on Wikipedia.)

In practice, we could only distinguish the sounds for hunger, burping and sleep. The other two were harder for us to hear. However, what we could interpret are really the important ones anyway.

Keep in mind, though, that babies appear to grow out of this language after five or six months.

Happiest Baby on the Block was useful as well. The method of calming a baby was quite good. If it takes a while to understand the “word” that baby is crying, then you may have a meltdown on your hands. The swaddle and shush technique from Happiest Baby was useful in getting our son from meltdown to the point where we could address his needs. We did not ever use the swaddle when sleeping though I know three other parents who swear by it.

You can order both from Amazon or other online retailers.

Pattern Matching

I am not even a year into parenthood but I think one of the most important skills is pattern matching. Your baby shows certain signs over and over. When baby does ____ it means ____.

Once you start recognizing those, you can determine what is going on much more easily. For example, our baby had an ear infection a few months ago. He did not show the “usual” sign that we’d read about (pulling on his ear) so we didn’t think it was an ear infection.

Just two days ago he started showing some of those signs again. We disagreed on whether there were enough signs to be sure that it was an infection. However, most of them were there. Diagnosis today: ear infection.

This time was much milder than last (probably because we caught it earlier) but if we hadn’t matched the patterns, we might have gone a few more days until he was really miserable.

Really, Dunston Baby Language is pattern matching as well. If baby cries a certain sound, it means _____(hungry, sleepy, gassy, &c).

Toys and Books

At this point, our son doesn’t really like to do anything with books other than try to eat them. As for toys, I try to stick with a few simpler toys since all he does is try to eat them. It is amusing though that we spend so much on books and toys and he is just as happy to grab a magazine and tear it apart.