Crying babies are designed to get under your skin. After all, they can’t take care of themselves. They need you to do it for them. Ellie is a good baby, but she cries quite a bit. Part of it is reflux, for which we give her medicine, but for which we are otherwise helpless. With our first two kids, the crying often really got to me. But it hasn’t been that way with Ellie. For the most part, I’ve handled it pretty well, I think. In fact, I’ve even learned from past experience. I have a trick that works (so far) 100% of the time to get her to stop crying. There are three phases to this little trick.
- Pick up the baby. I whisper to her, tell her that I’m here, and it’s okay. She usually calms down a bit, still crying, but not the high-pitch, chalkboard scratching wail that she’d been doing before.
- Put her in my lap, sit on the exercise ball in my office, and start bouncing. This calms the rest of the way, almost at once. I bounce and bounce, and she calms down, and relaxes.
- Put on Julie Andrews singing, “Stay Awake” from Mary Poppins. Play it on repeat. This will eventually but Ellie to sleep.
So far this has worked every time I’ve tried it. The only problem is, it is exhausting to me, too. I’m sure it is a good core exercise, but boy-oh-boy do I feel it afterward!
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