My wife came home recently with a DVD under her arm. She said it can tell you what your baby’s cries mean and can help you understand what the baby needs to be happy and stop crying.
My first thought is that this is some hippy touchy feely crap that is either going to be nonsense and incredibly boring or just complete garbage. I figured if there was any truth to any of it, we’d have heard about it by now since people have been writing books and teaching baby classes forever.
Well, I was to be proven wrong.
The DVD sat on top of the TV for a week or two. My wife would mention that we should watch it from time to time, but I would always find something – anything else to do to avoid having to suffer through it.
Finally, wifey adamantly declares one day that we are watching it and that’s it. I reluctantly pop it into the DVD player and we watch.
The DVD starts by telling the story of the woman who made it. Basically, she discovered as a kid that she has a photographic memory for sounds. When she had a baby, she started to see patterns in the different cries her baby let out. She was then able to further identify the cries by noting what made the baby happy for each particular cry.
She found that all babies have at least five distinct cries for things such as hunger, tired, burp me, tummy gas, and discomfort (too hot, too cold).
The DVD goes through each of the sounds, then shows ten or fifteen different babies making those sounds while crying as an example of what it sounds like.
What’s hysterical and was my holy cow moment, is that I was feeding the baby while we were watching the DVD. The scene for “Burp Me” was playing right around the time that little Alexandria was finishing her bottle. I picked her up to burp her and just then the example scene comes on with a dozen babies making the “Burp Me” sound. Well, Alex starts making the exact same sound. First the baby on the TV, then Alex, then repeat. I started laughing thinking that maybe she was immitating the TV babies, but then I thought better since she’s only three months old. It’s a bit too early for her to be that sharp.
Well, sure enough, within abot 10 seconds, Alex let’s out a hearty burp and stops. We paused the TV and went to change Alex and get her ready for bed. We brought her back to the couch and continued watching the DVD, we watched the rest of it including the sounds for the baby saying she’s tired.
Once again, Alex suprises us. Shortly after watching the DVD, Alex starts making the tired noises while being fussy. This was pretty suprising to us, since we thought the baby was too young at three months to give signs she was tired. Our experience with her to this point was just to wait until she was obviously drowsy to put her down. If she was fussy in the evening, we would run around trying to feed her or change her or rock her, etc.
Well, Alex is crying and making the sound that the DVD says means she’s tired, so we decide to give it a try. We put Alex down in the crib. She is still fussy, but we’re willing to give it a try. We put her pacifier in her mouth and kiss her goodnight and leave the room. Within one minute, she was completely asleep. My wife and I were shocked. Suffice it to say that for the most part, the DVD is right. Instead of running around aimlessly trying everything in the world to make the baby happy and stop crying, now we at least have some good clues to start with.
For thirty bucks, it was definitly a good buy and something I’d suggest all parents of young infants try.
You can get it on Amazon (they often have good prices). Click the link below to see the dvd listing.
Dunstan Baby Language — Learn the universal language of newborn babies
Have you used the Dunstan Baby Language DVD or another program like it? Let me know how it worked for you by leaving a comment below!
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