Shortening a Baby's Crying Duration

What seems to work best is simple human contact. Peter Wolff long ago demonstrated that picking up a baby works better than anything else to stop any baby from crying. In another study, infant researchers BeU and Ainsworth showed in the 1970s, with a sample of twenty-six infants, that consistent and prompt response by the infant's mother is associated with a decrease in the duration of infant crying. Urs Hunziker and Ronald Barr recently took this idea even further when they experimented with...

 Step-by-Step Relaxation

Your wife can be shown the principles of relaxation and she can be taught the consciousness of her muscles' state of tension in prenatal classes under the supervision of experienced teachers. Being a human animal, however, she needs to practice these principles at home daily in order to perfect them. This you can help her do. A suggested time is just before retiring for the night, as a prelude to sleep. This serves a double purpose: It establishes her self-confidence in her physical relaxatio...