On a plane once, I saw a new grandma gracefully and rapidly soothe a sobbing baby. The infant in her arms started crying in the midst of the flight.
After a few piercing shrieks, Grandma grabbed up her insane friend and started the ritual that adults all across the world have been doing since the beginning of time!
She rocked the girl’s torso from side to side,’tapping repeatedly on her bottom and making a steady ‘sh-sh-sh’ noise in the girl’s ear while pressing the girl’s stomach against her shoulder.
Her teeny, tiny ball fell asleep in under a minute.It’s alluring to believe that someone who can calm infants have a ‘talent.’
However, soothing infants doesn’t require any unique skills; instead, it requires knowledge of a basic yet utterly paradoxical fact about infants: they are all born 3 months early.
I’ll explain. At birth, people are very immature. On their first day of life, young horses can walk and even run.
In contrast, even burping need our assistance with our newborns. Consider the first three months of a pregnancy as a simulated fourth trimester and an extension of the fetus’ existence.
We must thus emulate the womb, which is an enclosed space filled with trembling motions and louder than a vacuum cleaner, when taking care of kids.
The majority of inexperienced grandparents naturally rock and cuddle their wailing infant grandchildren.
This works because the calming reflex, a built-in ‘switch’ for crying, can be activated by these feelings!