Eleanor read The Happiest Baby on the Block before her impatient little daughter, Caroline, decided to be born 3 weeks early. She well understood the book’s main ideas: That snug swaddling, rocking, shushing and sucking help babies calm and sleep. And, that new moms need to give new babies plenty of 4th-trimester care mimicking the soothing sound and motion babies love inside…before they are born. 

She wasn’t even thrown for a loop when her usually calm infant suddenly got a whole lot fussier. Caroline’s colicky symptoms ramped up around her original due date, just as Dr. Karp’s baby guide had advised was common for preemies.

Eleanor and her husband Francisco worked hard to do their very best womb impersonations, “We wrapped her a lot, and we would take turns walking around the dining room table to calm her down. The best was…I had this shirt with a front pocket like a kangaroo. I would stuff her inside, nurse her and bounce on a bouncy ball…all at same time! I’d be doing this at 2am, about to fall over!” 

To Eleanor, the problem was crystal clear: “She wanted to be back in my body!” 

Thanks to Eleanor’s incredible dedication, Caroline slept well—but almost exclusively in her mom’s arms. That meant Eleanor slept only in the 45-minute bits and snips that she fit in between sessions of feeding and pacing. Everyone told Eleanor to rest during the day, but she just wasn’t a napper. With every passing day she became more and more sleep deprived.

When Caroline was about 2 months, Eleanor heard about the brand new baby sleeper, SNOO.  Bone tired and already a believer in Dr. Karp’s baby tips, she immediately ordered one. And, the change was dramatic. Within just days, her little girl’s sleep improved substantially…and so did hers! They immediately started sleeping in 3 hours stretches and quickly advanced to 5 hours at a time.

“SNOO does a great job mimicking what the baby is used to in your belly—between the noise, the movement, the swaddle,” raved Eleanor.

And she was incredibly thankful for the peace of mind she got from SNOO’s main safety innovation—the special swaddle that prevents rolling: “Even when I was just getting 45 minutes of sleep, I would wake up to make sure she was still breathing.” 

Not worrying about her baby’s safety let Eleanor get a good night’s sleep. The new mom said that - in the final analysis - the confidence that her baby would not roll to a risky position in the middle of the night was what helped her most of all!

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Disclaimer: The information on our site is NOT medical advice for any specific person or condition. It is only meant as general information. If you have any medical questions and concerns about your child or yourself, please contact your health provider. Breastmilk is the best source of nutrition for babies. It is important that, in preparation for and during breastfeeding, mothers eat a healthy, balanced diet. Combined breast- and bottle-feeding in the first weeks of life may reduce the supply of a mother's breastmilk and reversing the decision not to breastfeed is difficult. If you do decide to use infant formula, you should follow instructions carefully.