Baby Sense Principles for Happy Days and Peaceful Nights

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.  The transition to the harsh world can to be made smoother by you.

Mimicking the world of the womb

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, which can result 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.

 7 tips to promote a smooth and calm transition

• Sensory environment – Develop ‘sensory eyes’ to read what may be causing your baby
to be overstimulated, 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 – Give your baby the space to
develop his/her own self calming tools, such as sucking her 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. By mimicking the womb environment, it
soothes babies very effectively.
• Sounds for calming – 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 overstimulated baby needs
is a lot of quick changes. 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.

Hear more from Meg Faure at the 2014 Johnson’s Baby Sense Seminars. She’ll be talking at the morning baby seminars on how to stimulate your baby and toddler for optimal brain development. In the afternoon birth & newborn seminars she’ll be sharing her secrets to a calm newborn with tips on preventing colic and managing a fussy baby.

Dates and venues:

Durban 16 August Three Cities Riverside Hotel

Port Elizabeth 23 August The Marine Hotel

Johannesburg 6 September Woodmead Country Club

Cape Town 13 September The Vineyard Hotel

Cost per seminar is R240 and R80 for the Johnson’s baby massage workshop. If you book for both the morning Baby Seminar, the afternoon Birth & Newborn Seminar and the Johnson’s Baby Massage Workshop a discounted rate of R480 will be applicable.  Tickets include goodie bags of essential baby products, invaluable information in the seminar manuals and the chance of winning amazing prizes including a Stokke Scoot travel system. 

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Megan Faure

Megan Faure BSc, OT, OTR is an Occupational Therapist who has worked in pediatrics in the USA and South Africa for more than a decade.Megan regularly lectures to both professionals and parents on various baby and childcare issues, in particular how to help infants with extreme fussiness, poor sleep habits and feeding problems. Megan is the founder and chairperson of the Infant Sensory Integration Training group, which provides courses for therapists to equip them to understand and treat infant behavior.

Latest posts by Megan Faure (see all)

• Stimulating your baby and getting the balance right - July 4, 2014
• Baby Sense Principles for Happy Days and Peaceful Nights - June 17, 2014