Article
Seven ‘S’s for calming your baby is an easy-to-use list of soothing strategies that every new parent needs to know. For nine months, your baby is nurtured in the ideal world of the womb. From this calm environment your baby emerges into a busy sensory world. You can make this transition to the harsh world smoother for your little one.
Your baby’s brain acts like a sponge absorbing all the new sensory information of the world outside the womb. In the early days your baby is very susceptible to overstimulation. Becoming over simulated results in fussing and an unsettled baby, who won’t sleep. By keeping your baby’s world calm and mimicking the world of the womb, your baby will be calmer and the transition from womb to world will be a smooth one.
There are seven easy tips to promote a smooth and calm transition into the world for your newborn:
- Sensory environment – Develop ‘sensory eyes’ to read what may be causing your baby to be over stimulated, such as a loud and busy room or the smell of strong perfume. Remove your baby from the stimulus or change to a more calming environment.
- Self calming – Encourage your baby to self calm by giving your baby the space to
develop their own self calming tools, such as sucking their hands or clasping them together. - Swaddling – Tightly wrapping your baby in a stretchy blanket has been proven to calm
young babies significantly and help them sleep well. - Soothing touch – Baby massage is a fantastic tool for calming a baby and has all
day benefits as well as helping your baby to sleep well at night. - Sling or Pouch – Movement is lulling for your baby, mimicking womb environment it
soothes babies very effectively. - Sounds for calming – Sounds such as white noise, e.g. the sounds of waves or radio static
absorbs other sounds and is very calming for your baby. Lullabies and nature music help with calming and sleep. - Stick to one strategy for 5 minutes – The last thing an over stimulated baby needs
is a lot of quick changes and each intervention you use is a stimulus for a short time, until your baby gets used to it. So try any of the above strategies for at least 5 minutes before trying the next.
By following the Baby Sense principles for a calm baby and bearing in mind the sensory world, the early stage of mothering will be a happy one with memories of happiness and new experiences.
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