The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer by Harvey Karp Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
Book Review: other helpful suggestions
Summary: 5 Stars
So, before I begin my review of this product, here's our background... our son who is currently 6 weeks has had to be sent to the hospital with gas pains so severe that the emergency room doctors were concerned that he might be trying to pass a kidney stone. Turns out he was allergic to soy, we had tried breast, standard formula and lactose intolerance formula. He had a negative reaction to all (including breast believe it or not, I went through tests also to determine what was in my milk even though I was on a mild diet.... cause was deemed later on to be for a substance need, our baby needed rice formula). So..... we tried just the rice formula with the children's mylicon with the VentAire bottles.... somewhat of an improvement, but our child was still needing to go to the doctor weekly for checkups without much success, our pediatrician would even call us daily to see how he was doing. Constipation was questioned, but was never an issue. Our breakthrough occurred when we took our son to a specialist appointment and the lady asking us if our son had excess gas since she noticed that Mylicon was listed as one of his meds. I stated quickly yes and told her of our ordeal. I was told that she was the grandmother of 5 children and a mother of 3 and had tried EVERYTHING to cure their extreme colic. The remedy they found, Hyland's colic tablets, Dr. Brown's bottles, and rice formula. After the doctor appointment I went to the store to give these products a try....... and it was like an angel had spoken to us. Our child could breathe again and was longer tense in the body, as he was making progress against constantly trying to push. I know that I'm being candid but I am hoping that this will help other parents and children that have been or will be in our situation. We are on day 4 of the product switch and WOW, he's a brand new baby! If these products can help a child who's been hospitalized, hopefully these can help yours as well. Pedialyte also works as well to help calm the tummy. I've been using tylenol every 5 hours (excluding when he sleeps) for the first week and have been continuing to use the Mylicon to help with the surface gas. Burping has never been an issue, but his burps and toots have become louder and more productive, sometimes just shifting him in our arms can help him to expel gas! I'll be making this post in numerous areas in hopes to help people.
Hyland's colic tablets, Dr. Brown bottles, Enfamil AR Lipil, infant's tylenol, gas drops is literally our formula to success.
Book Review: A lifesaver for fussy babies!
Summary: 5 Stars
A friend told me about this book and swore by it. I was a little skeptical at first but figured I would give it a try. As a first time mother of a fussy baby with nothing but stomach problems, please believe me when I tell you Dr. Karp's methods work!! The first night I swaddled my daughter, she slept 3 hour intervals at 7 weeks old. It may not sound great but she wasn't sleeping at all!! Then I added the white noise machine and within days she was up to 5 hour intervals. It is really amazing the turnaround she has done. She is smiling much more often and coos at me like crazy. Please try this book if you are at your wits end with a fussy and/or colicky baby. It will help! I know it saved my life and made me the happiest mother on the block!!Book Review: The most helpful book!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is wonderful, gives you a new more modern approach to understanding and calming your new baby! Great for new parents!!Book Review: Happiest Baby on the Block:The New Way to Calm and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
Summary: 5 Stars
An informational treasure for new parents, grandparents or anyone caring for a newborn. Research shows babies do not need to cry themselves to sleep. This book gives step-by-step instructions to calm the little one.Book Review: The worst book on the shelves
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me save you some money and disclose the amazing secret of Dr. Karp's technique right here and now: swaddle your baby, put your baby on its side/stomach (but never let the baby sleep on its side/stomach), shush the baby, swing the baby, stick the pacifier into your baby's mouth, all in this strict order -- and presto! You are done. Does one really need 267 pages in order to recite this? Dr. Karp feels he does, or at least his wallet tells him so.
What a horror. First of all, there is enough information in this book to fill a 5-page brochure at the most, 10 if you would like to be generous. The rest if fluff, empty fill, incessant repetition, inane pictures, unnecessary and insulting stories about "primitive" people and Dr. Karp's own patients (see more below on that).
Second -- the language. That Harvey Karp has a God Complex is evident from page 1; the reason for that is still a mystery to me. Well, I do admit that to write a fairly long book about nothing, and to make a lot of money by publishing and successfully marketing this book (and now, heavens help me, I see there is a DVD out) -- that does take a particular kind of cunning and intelligence. To solicit at least a couple of good reviews from accredited pediatricians also must have taken some work. But does it really justify the language of fantastic condescension that Harvey Karp uses throughout his book? One imagines the world full of lobotomized idiots unable to read a complex sentence, but popping out babies as if there is no tomorrow; and yet, I bet that even a semi-literate teenage mom of five would still find this book incredibly patronizing. Repetition -- ostensibly to help the new parents remember the simple truths, but clearly used to a) make the reader feel stupid, and b) fill more pages of the book -- are sure to drive anyone halfway intelligent absolutely insane.
Finally, let us return to the "primitive" people. You think Dr. Karp consecends to you? Wait till you read stories about backward cultures, and, still worse, about Harvey Karp's own patients who hail from such far-away places as Russia! Let's take a look at page 109, and read a heart-warming story about Karp's patient who emigrated from Russia to Los Angeles. A confused foreign moron that she is, she is having trouble understanding the wonderful doctor, struggling to make sense of his words of wisdom. But then, when the doctor shows her how to swaddle her baby, she erupts in a wonderful monologue, whereupon we learn that in her village, mothers swaddle their kids and put belts around them -- yet another piece of ancient primitive folk wisdom that we in America forgot! The most insulting thing is that the young woman's accent is actually replicated in the book, and the offending words are underscored -- lest you decide that it is Dr. Karp who cannot spell "village." Interestingly enough, Karp chooses very carefully whose accent or manner of speaking he dares to replicate: for some reason, not a single Ebonics phrase is transcribed in the book -- perhaps because Karp doesn't accept African-American patients, or perhaps because he is smart enough not to insult them. But Russians are a fair game (there are others). If his patient, named Elena (of course -- isn't every Russian?), even exists, she ought to be rather angry; but I doubt she is real. Russian villagers rarely find themselves consulting UCLA pediatricians -- not to mention that the accent rendered by Karp is utterly wrong. Russian alphabet doesn't have the letter "w" -- therefore, the lucky Karp-treated villager would be replacing "when" with "ven", and not "village" with "willage."
I am not sure whether Dr. Karp still has a title of assistant professor at UCLA because he is a practicing pediatrician, and cannot therefore go up for tenure, or because he hasn't come up for tenure yet. I hope the latter is the case: this book alone is an ample reason why the said tenure should be denied.
If you must, go to the library and photocopy pages 94-99; you will learn nothing new (any pediatrician is likely to give you the same advice), but you will have a handy reference on Karp's methods. These 5 pages are still full of fluff, but they will cost you close to nothing.