Your beautiful new baby is healthy and home. Everything feels perfect. Until the crying starts. You hold him. You caress him. You check for a wet diaper; is it time for dinner? Everything seems on track, but the crying does not cease.

All babies cry, you tell yourself as you cradle your little one in your arms. Maybe you take a walk. You try rocking him. But the baby's cries continue. Is it gas? Something more serious? Am I a terrible mother? A clueless father?

The longer you pace the floor with your newborn, the louder the wails become. Desperate minutes turn into hours. Soon that sweet baby you've eagerly awaited all these months begins to pluck your very last nerve. You put her down, thinking you won't be manipulated. You will not succumb.

And the baby screams bloody murder.

There are experts, books and Web sites galore to learn everything there is to know about pregnancy, natural childbirth and breast-feeding, but does anyone really know what to do with a colicky baby? Does anyone even understand that sustained, inconsolable crying known as colic?

For years, doctors have debated the causes of colic, with the prevailing theory being that it is gastrointestinal in nature. Pediatricians often recommend that the breast-feeding mother cut back on "gassy" vegetables and spicy foods in response. Others in the medical field attribute colic to overstimulation of the baby's immature nervous system, recommending "white noise" to calm the baby.

"It's such an instinct to want to calm your baby, but it's not instinctive to know how," says Harvey Karp, a Santa Monica, Calif., pediatrician and author of The Happiest Baby on the Block, released recently by Bantam Books, which details five techniques for calming colicky babies that Karp has taught his patients for many years.

"Babies don't have a broad vocabulary. They cry the same way if they need to burp, have a wet diaper or are hungry. But when you hear the crying, it makes your skin jump. You feel there is something really terrible going on with the baby."

If anyone knows crying babies, it's Karp, a pediatrician for 25 years and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. In 1981, Karp received an Ehrmann Fellowship to study crying and colic. The more time he spent studying other cultures, the more he wondered why mothers in other countries did not complain about overly fussy babies. What did they know? What were they doing differently?

"One of the things that was very common around the world was the swaddling, the wrapping of the baby," Karp says. "Babies don't need freedom. They need protection and security. Inside the uterus, they can't move their arms, so it makes sense to wrap them."

The way Karp sees it, there is too much crying going on in the United States, and he believes his book and companion video are the kernels of a parenting movement that can stop it. Every year, 4 million babies are born in the United States; 1 million of them spend at least two or three hours a day crying, Karp says.

Karp's explanation for colic is simple, if a little startling: Babies are born three months too soon.

"Nobody would dream of that, but it gets you thinking from the baby's perspective. Babies are not ready for the world when they are born. For the first three months, they're really like fetuses. They're more like they were inside of the womb, but they're born because they have big brains and they need to come out."

The transition to the outside world can be very abrupt, and for some babies the adjustment is tougher than for others. For nine months, babies snuggled in a warm, tight, wet womb where there was constant movement and noise. According to Karp's research, the sound of a mother's blood flowing through her body is louder than two or three times the noise a vacuum cleaner makes.

"So what's it like when the baby is born?" Karp asks. "It's too quiet, too still and too boring. Parents worry about overstimulation, but a bigger problem is understimulation. Babies want hypnotic, repetitive and rhythmic noise and movement that is jiggly."

Babies, like adults, have reflexes. Most important, Karp says, they have a calming reflex -- "nature's shut-off switch" -- that parents can learn to trigger in "the fourth trimester," as Karp calls the baby's first three months of life. Karp's prescription for a quiet baby rests in what he calls "the 5 S's" -- swaddling, side / stomach position, shhhing, swinging and sucking -- techniques and traditions he learned from his studies of ancient and modern cultures.

To calm a fussy baby, Karp says, wrap him tightly in a square blanket, pinning the baby's arms against his sides so he can't break loose. This simply sets the stage for the calming efforts to come, so don't be alarmed if your baby initially cries harder at being swaddled. Next, position him in your arms on his side or stomach; make a shhhh sound loudly in his ear to imitate the sounds he heard in the uterus; swing the baby; and, finally, give him something to suck on.

Although some infants will respond quickly to two or three of the steps, the most colicky newborns will require all five, Karp says. For those infants, each stage is a layer that builds on previous ones.

Baby Emerson Thein, born on April 10, cried at least eight hours a day for the first five weeks of her life. How bad did it get? Dhari and Daniel Thein took a decibel reading of their baby's wails: it was a whopping 95, louder than a chain saw. Dhari called everyone she knew, but no one could help. Then a nurse suggested Karp.

"When Dr. Karp came here, she'd been screaming for two hours," says Dhari Thein, 34. "I thought this man had met his match. ... In about a minute, she was quiet and peaceful. I was amazed and surprised and I wanted to learn it. I thought he slipped something to my baby."

A week later, Emerson was sleeping 14 hours a day.

"She's much happier and more playful and so are we," says her mother.

Karp, who has no children of his own, claims he hasn't yet met a howling infant he could not console.

"If you think about these techniques, it's kind of what you want to do for the baby naturally," he says. "It's just learning to do them right and in the right order. It takes practice. It's a skill. And when you get it right, you're unstoppable."

Maria Elena Fernandez is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

A good swaddle stops the screams

Pediatrician Harvey Karp has a method for quieting a colicky baby that he calls "the 5 S's."

Swaddling. Wrap the baby snugly in a square blanket, pinning the arms by his sides.

Side / stomach position. Position him in your arms on his side or stomach.

Shhhing. Make a shhhh sound loudly in his ear to imitate sounds heard in the uterus.

Swinging. Swing the baby.

Sucking. Give him something to suck on.

Resource

For more information about Dr. Karp's book and video, visit his Web site: www.thehappiestbaby.com.