Dan and I have learned to use what is called 'Dunstan Baby Language' as a way to understand what Kayla is trying to communicate to us.
(You may have seen the badge about it below on the right sidebar.)
A lot of people have been asking me if it is any good, so I'd thought I'd do a wee post about it!
A friend of ours, Kristy recommended it to us, she used it for her baby twin girls and swears by it! So we thought we'd give it a go too and have also found it to actually be quite amazing! It has proven to be very accurate and certainly makes things a lot easier for us by being able to understand Kayla's sounds and needs.
Dunstan baby Language teaches us that every newborn communicates from birth to 3 months old with 5 distinctive sounds that signal different needs.
Those sounds are:
'Neh' : Meaning Hungry - Kayla does this sound the most as feeding is her biggest need at this stage. She also uses this sound when she just wants to suck on her dummy. The sound Neh is made by a sucking reflex which is common in all newborns, so it's quite clear that they are hungry when they make this sound.
'Eh' : Meaning Gas - This is the second most often sound that Kayla makes usually after she has been fed. Sometimes she will stop during a feed and make this sound, so we will then pop her over the shoulder and pat her back until she burps. Once she has burped if she is still hungry she will use the 'Neh' sound to let us know that she has not finished feeding. Very handy indeed!!
'Eairh' : Meaning Lower wind - This is a longer sound, the sound that even I make when I have a belly ache! lol! Kayla is quite a windy baby so she suffers quite a bit with lower wind. Although we burp her during and after every feed, she still manages to get some wind trapped in her belly. (Thank God for the 'Eh' sound though, because if we never learned it - her lower wind could be much worse!) So this sound lets us know that she is in pain and needs help to do a big fluffy! *hehe* To help this, we place her on her belly, massage her back and rock her back and forth until she is relieved. We also use a natural medicine called 'wind drops' which can help too if it gets really bad.
'Owh' : Meaning Tired - Kayla has only just started using this sound quite a bit when she is really over tired but fights to stay awake. (Like when she just wants to sleep in somebodies arms!) It's much like a whingey yawn. Cuddles and being rocked to sleep fixes this, but we are still working on being able to put her back down! (As I mentioned in the last post.)
and lastly...
'Heh' : Meaning Discomfort - This sound is used the least with Kayla, in fact I've only heard it once or twice and that was when she was rolling herself into awkward positions and needed help getting comfortable again. They say that babies will make this sound when they need their nappies changed, but I haven't found that with Kayla (All babies are different I guess!) besides... she hates getting her nappy changed so she probably doesn't want us to know when she has a dirty bum! :-P lol.
Most of the sounds seem very similar and easily mistaken and hard to tell apart. I thought it was going to be hard to make out these sounds at first but it's amazing how fast you can differentiate the sounds of your own baby!
So overall I think it has been very handy for us especially as new parents, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone else that is expecting a newborn in the near future. (And there are quite a few of our friends with belly beans at the moment! ;-))
Next we will be using Baby Sign Language for Kayla from when she has hit 3 months old. JMay and Mikey used this for Bonnie and say that it has been very successful, so we will definitely be giving that a go too.
Oh! I just realized I haven't got any new photos to post with this!! (Been so busy I haven't had the time!)
Hang on... I'll go take a quick snapshot of her right now...
Here ya go...
Thanks for stopping by! xx
