THE HAPPIEST BABY ON THE BLOCK by Harvey Karp ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Capping off 2023 and parenthood with a highly recommended and highly necessary baby book.

Our two-week-old has been bordering on colicky for days now, and while she’s starting to finally come back down to earth, reading this helped me feel like I understood what was actually bothering her and how I could possibly calm her down. You don’t want to feel helpless as a new parent, something almost all of us are destined to feel anyway. With this book, I didn’t have as much of that panic when her wailing would start ringing off the walls.

Now, I don’t believe that all my knowledge as a parent should come from books and columns and doctors and “experts”. You gotta live some life to really know your child and what works. But without reading this, I probably wouldn’t have understood that babies this fresh are basically fetuses outside the womb. They just need comfort. They want to be held and swaddled and rocked. The world has so much overstimulation that they can either shut down and sleep, or raise an alarm in the only way they know how. It’s our job to calm them into some type of serenity for however many weeks it takes for them to acclimate, and in that time, somehow not lose our minds ourselves. Not so easy while sleep-deprived.

I’ve used the tactics of the book, and they work. Our daughter almost always quiets just with shushing alone. If I could recommend anything to other readers, especially those in need of advice ASAP, just skip to the main parts. Or even faster, Google them. There’s so much repetition that I’m not even sure the book needs to exist beyond the core five techniques and explanation of why newborns cry. I have to do four stars regardless in just a book review capacity. But in terms of parenting and babies, the advice inside has been priceless.