Category Archives: 0-3 months

Let’s recap: 0 – 3 months is all about getting through alive…

0-3 months

Sorry everyone. I was in Philadelphia, at this conference on research on adolescence (I'm of the mind that one can start obsessing about your pre-pre-pre teen's adolescence during the preschool years, aren't YOU?!). I had to just call uncle last week and this one also — I can't keep up with my "day job" requirements right now and write at the level with which I feel comfortable in this blog. So, instead of just filling this space with thoughtless musings from my 4 am ruminations, I thought I'd take this week to re-post some stuff I wrote around a year ago (I see that my archives have dropped my April and May entries… grrrr…). And I'll actually improve on some of the post, if I can, with better links or clearer writing (there was a learning curve for me with this blog, obviously, so in some cases I kinda cringe at what I've written and I'm happy to take this opportunity to make it better). Most of you (well, let's face it, NO ONE) were not reading at that time and may have missed some information that might now be relevant to you. I'll start with the earliest ages and pick one or two entries from each stage. Please feel free to comment and share your experiences. We had very few comments when I first started, so this is another chance for those of you who need it, to brainstorm through some of the toughest ages and stages. The posts will be most relevant to sleep training, but as you get by now, I think these sensitive windows of development are pertinent to so many other developmental issues. So, without further ado, let's begin at the beginning…

     The period of birth to 3 months is often considered the time when
babies learn to regulate their basic bodily reactions, their states,
and their physiology. These little beings have spent a long time in the
womb, developing all the bodily mechanisms necessary to live on this
planet, to eat, to breathe, to expend energy in motion, to coordinate
muscles and senses so that motion accomplishes something, and to sleep
when replenishment is needed. They have also developed the mechanisms
for acquiring knowledge and skill—mechanisms that will allow them to
pay attention to what is most important, especially the faces, voices,
and actions of other humans.
    Most important, this is an age when
the baby’s states—alert attention, quiet wakefulness, and sleep—become
practiced and differentiated from each other, creating a predictable
cycle of daily rhythms. And these rhythms gradually become synchronized
with the day-and-night cycle of our planet, so that, starting around 6
weeks, babies sleep more at night and less in the day. And, as they
develop, these rhythms will also become synchronized with your rhythms
and the household routines that underlie them. During the end of this
stage, you will also notice a rapid increase in face-to-face gazing,
more smiling and other expressions of pleasure, and a general decrease
in fussiness at the end of this stage. Babies learn, by about 2 to 3
months, that they are part of a complex but exciting world of cycles
both inside and outside their bodies.
    From my perspective, sleep
training prior to 3 months is not a good idea. There is too much going
on. The synchronization of brain and bodily systems, the establishment
of cycles for eating and sleeping, the coordination of these cycles
with the outside world, all need time to develop and stabilize. The
sheer number of biological and psychological systems getting wired up,
and the rapid rate at which they are becoming connected with each
other, staggers the imagination.  A lot of biological events, including
cascades of changes in neural pathways and organ systems, unfold with
uncanny precision, almost as if there were a master schedule posted
somewhere and your baby is diligently following it. Scientists still do
not know exactly how this cascade of changes progresses so effectively.
But what we do know, as child psychologists, is that it’s better not to
mess with it! To attempt sleep training before your baby does the
majority of her sleeping at night would be to miss a massive biological
leg-up. Why not let natural biological processes do their work, before
you begin adjusting the fine points?
    Sleep training during
this early period may simply be ineffective. It may be difficult or
impossible to establish desirable sleep habits before sleeping at night
becomes routine. But it could also confuse your baby’s evolving
capacity to synchronize her interest, excitement levels, perception,
and communication. Imagine that your baby is just learning to smile at
you and to expect a smile in return. This reciprocal smiling sets off
an episode of communication that is designed to increase arousal,
because arousal is part of pleasure. And now imagine that this smiling
takes place just as you are turning out the lights and leaving the
room, a necessary step in most sleep-training methods. Now your
aroused, excited baby, instead of receiving the ongoing communication
she expects, is faced with the prospect of lying still and going to
sleep. This might simply not work. Fine. But it’s quite possible that,
after a few such scenarios, your baby will become confused as to what
to expect when mutual smiling or gazing take place. Maybe the smiling
means “game over”. Maybe I should disengage rather than engage when Mom
and I make eye contact. This sort of social confusion could result from
mixed signals, as the baby sees it. So, my take is better to wait until
the interpersonal routines of smiling and gazing become solid habits.
As they solidify, security and trust will solidify as well, making the
ordeal of sleep training less of a challenge to your baby’s sense of
himself, his sense of you, and his sense of your relationship.

So,
if you're in the throes of this stage with your baby, you  might be
saying:  But I'm DYING over here!  What can I do to maximize EVERYONE'S
sleep?
   

Our answer (seriously, click the link… I found it SO cathartic when I was in this stage with my boys):

"Whatever gets you through the night,
is alright… Do it wrong or do it right, it’s alright.” Use a swing, a
bouncy chair, tuck your baby in the crook of your neck, lay him across
your chest, rock him in a chair, a glider or a hammock, bounce him in a
sling or a baby carrier, throw him in a car seat on top of the dryer
(my husband insists on my warning you to be careful that the seat can
fall off the edge), in the back seat of a car, or in the stroller. Have
you tried the quarter-time bounce (oh man… I need to videotape this
"bounce" and share it with you all… It seriously worked with EVERY
infant I've laid my hands on)? Anything you do, you can undo with
proper sleep training at a later stage of development.  This is not the
time to stress out about “creating bad habits.” What you’re creating is
a tight bond with a rapidly developing little organism that needs your
warmth, flexibility and consistency. During this early newborn stage,
whatever gets you (and your baby) through the night is just fine.

Anyone out there just making it through the night? Anyone want to share their darkest night during this stage?

Effective discipline strategies for toddlers Part I

0-3 months, 12-17 months, 18-22 months, Discipline

Alright, alright, let's get down to some concrete suggestions for some discipline practices that work for the younger ages. I've pulled these methods from various sources including some fabulous books (that I will list in a separate post with lots of link-love), parenting programs (both intervention and prevention programs), and wise parents around me. To be clear: I have not come up with any of these methods on my own. And when I say these methods "work," keep in mind that what I really mean is: that they work for some kids, some families, some of the time at some ages and not others. I will also clearly state that all the strategies that I advocate are non-aggressive and generally non-physical. Especially with the under 3 or so group, I'm throwing out this caveat because many parents advocate spanking (at least as a last resort) in the toddler/pre-verbal stage. When I get the strength and the time, I will finish the post I've been working on that addresses spanking, but that's for another time (in the meantime, you can go join this thoughtful discussion on the topic).

I wanted to cover some of the most successful methods for the under 2 years old group first. This is the age at which children are very limited in their verbal abilities, so they often get very frustrated because they can't communicate to us what they really want. I'd say the vast majority of behavioural issues emerge at this young age because children feel misunderstood, ignored, or just plain frustrated that they can't get you to UNDERSTAND what they want. Their RECEPTIVE language, however (especially after 12 – 18 months) is quite good. So they may UNDERSTAND you, but they just can't COMMUNICATE with you. Can you IMAGINE how infuriaDisciplineting and frustrating that could be?

Another caveat before we get to the list: I think of discipline episodes as two-sided. The first is the emotional component: All parent-child conflicts are emotional and offer opportunities for parents to learn about their children's inner lives and to also teach their children some important lessons. We want to teach our children to understand and regulate their emotions while also being able to communicate what they feel to others in effective ways. Conflicts of will that often involve applying some discipline strategy provide the most common context through which we can do this type of emotional learning and teaching with our children. The second component to discipline episodes is the behavioural one: we want to teach our children to behave appropriately, safely, with kindness and so on. Following many, many wise authors (again, links to books are coming in a future post), I think we need to acknowledge and accept children's emotions and allow them to feel them without fear of reprisal while still teaching them appropriate ways of ACTING on those emotions. I'm going to focus on the behaviours in this post and talk more about emotions and how to label and work with them in another post.

Here are some of the top strategies that could work for you and your young children. Keep in mind that some of these methods could work brilliantly at older ages too, while others may be less appropriate. Also, you'll note that these methods are ways to AVOID a power struggle. My aim (in theory, unfortunately not always in practice) is NOT to "show my kids who's boss" but to gain their compliance and teach them new skills through other means.

1. I maintain that one of the most effective strategies for avoiding coercive cycles or nasty discipline episodes is to ANTICIPATE the most commonly-occuring conflicts and find ways of AVOIDING them. 

2. Children under 2 can often be easily distracted. So, if a 9-month old is spitting his food all over the floor, read him a book/sing him a song/rattle a funny toy and see if his attention is diverted. If your 18-month old insists on pulling the cat's tail, start playing tug-of-war with him with your scarf instead. And so on…

3. Teach your pre-verbal child sign language. (This is kind of in the middle of the emotion/behaviour split). The link I provided (and there are tons more; go ask Dr. Google) allows you to put in all sorts of words and watch as an overly-smiley lovely young woman shows you the sign for said word. Personally, I don't really think you need to spend the money on a DVD or book, not at first anyway. Ten simple words will do at first (even less: milk, sleep, all done, MORE, banana, etc.). Babies as young as 6 – 9 months will eventually GET that the word is the same as the gesture, but most babies won't actually start USING the signs until about 1 years old or more. For those of you uninitiated, you'll be tempted to scoff. Beware the baby sign-language scoff lest you miss something that will SO WORK for you. Giving your 1-year old the ability to communicate to you that "NO MOMMY!  You have it all wrong… I want MILK, not water/a hug/my soother!" or "NO! Don't take that away, I want MORE!" can be priceless. For SO MANY children who do not have the ability to talk yet, a few simple signs can be the key to avoiding innumerable tantrums and, just as precious, the key to connecting with your child in a way that you never realized was possible at such an early age. Baby sign-language: Not just for the granola-hippie-hemp-eating mommies anymore (mmmm… granola!).

4.ATTEND like mad to positive behaviours you want to encourage and try to ignore or at least respond in a flat emotional tone to behaviours you want to discourage. (Again, this stuff comes straight out of the behavioural techniques of Skinner and those whacky pigeons he taught to press bars for food.) This is SO IMPORTANT to remember: Your attention is like crack to your baby/toddler. The number one thing your child craves is your attention, preferably your smiling, adoring attention. You can use that beam of attention to tune your child's behaviour — when she is doing stuff you want her to do, or just being an adorable, sweet child, praise the hell out of her, smile gloriously, do a little dance, throw a mini party. When she is doing something you would like her to stop doing (that is nevertheless not harming her or anyone / anything else), withdraw your attention: in response to the slamming doors, throwing food, screeching at pitches only young dogs and mothers can hear, walk into another room or pick up a book to read or start lavishing loving attention on her sibling instead. As SOON as she stops the yucky behaviour and does something more to your liking, start the happy dance, pick her up and mush her sweet little cheeks into yours, smile and clap and generally go over the top. I know… sounds ridiculous. But it is UNCANNY how well this can work if you can keep your cool and keep your eye on the goal: you want to simply stop or redirect the behaviour, NOT let her know that you won some battle of wills.

5. Focus your requests on what you DO want your child to do, not what you DON'T want him to do. Babies and toddlers have miserable shor
t-term memories so they'll remember the LAST thing you've said in most cases. If you tell Johnny: "Don't bang the glass table. Banging the glass table will break it," he will likely hear, "wah, wha, wah, bang the glass table, break it." Instead, focus on an alternative behaviour you would prefer him to do: "Don't bang the glass table. You CAN bang this drum. Come on, bang this drum with me!" Also, they may not KNOW an alternative behaviour that would be alright for you and still feel fun for them; kids need us to TELL them and SHOW them what we're ok with.

6. Related to #5, when our child DOES misbehave (for example, hits another child or grabs a toy from another child's hand), teach him the more APPROPRIATE behaviour once the situation has been diffused and PROVIDE HIM THE OPPORTUNITY TO PRACTICE that more appropriate behaviour. Oftentimes we reprimand our children for doing something wrong (for example, we give them a time-out), but then that's the end of that. Most often, we don't give them the chance to practice the more appropriate behaviours we hope they'll use next time (using their "strong" words, sharing, asking instead of grabbing for a toy). This "do-over" is ESSENTIAL for giving children the skills to deal with situations differently the next time they arise. I've heard this idea from several sources, but I'm a big fan of Sharon Silver at ProActive Parenting, who emphasizes how powerful these learning experiences can be for children.

OK, having written another novella, I'll stop now and give you a chance…  What have I missed? What works or worked best for your toddler?

The Cat in the Hat in the Amniotic Sac: What Can Sucking Tell Us About Hearing?

0-3 months, Baby Brains, hearing, research methods, senses

Cat in the hat What's with the feline in the millinery?  As with yesterday's post, try not to shoot the blogger if you've already heard this one. It's an old study (early 80's – never mind that I can remember the time…just barely I'll have you know), but the media has gone wild with it ever since it first came out. I just could NOT think of a week of posting on methods in infant research without mentioning it. What about that title? Gotta love it!

This study used sucking to shed light on prenatal hearing.In earlier work, the researches had determined that very young infants would adjust their sucking rate to be rewarded with hearing their mothers voice (I bet this doesn't happen in the teenage years…but I digress…). Mothers read The Cat in the Hat Story or another one of two other stories to their unborn fetuses, 2x per day for the last 6 weeks or so of pregnancy. Soon after birth, the researchers measured infant sucking when they heard the story they heard prenatally vs. one of the other stories. What happened? The newborns worked hard (sucked faster or slower) to hear the story they heard in the womb – moreso than to hear the other story. By playing with this method a bit more, later work showed that it was the rhythm of the story and not the words that the babies were responding to. BTW, the babies also worked harder to hear mom do the reading over some other female voice reading the same story. This study was a real landmark in establishing at least a couple of things: 1). the state of development of hearing in the womb and 2). how the prenatal environment helps tweek perception. 

If you're now thinking "Wow, amazing how far these researchers will go", consider this: in another (now old) study a pregnant woman was asked to swallow a tiny microphone so that researchers could gain a better sense of just exactly what the baby can hear in there. Can you imagine it? "It's in the name of science ma'am. Please just please swallow the technology." 

So I'm on a roll now. Here's another interesting way that researchers have used sucking. The main question was whether information taken in through one sense (e.g. sight) is stored in such a way that it can be accessed through other senses (e.g. touch). The technical term is cross-modal or inter-modal perception. In one study, 1-month old babies were allowed to suck on either a smooth or a bumpy pacifier – but they were NOT allowed to see it. The babies were then shown two simultaneous pics, one of the smooth pacifier and one of the bumpy one. And guess what? They looked longer at the one they had sucked on but NEVER SAW, as though they recognized it. So what they had taken in through sucking or touch was stored in a more general way, a way that was accessible through another sense, sight.  

Finally, I wanted to briefly mention the use of "geodesic nets" – think "hairnets with sensors" that provide real-time information on the patterns of brain activity as the brain processes something e.g. a picture, a sound, an event etc. The baby wears a get-up like the one shown here. Newsweek Baby brain
It's not painful at all and many babies are surprisingly co-operative about the whole experience. For more on geodesic nets and language studies, put in user friendly terms, try here.

Phew. It's been a whirlwind tour through infant research this week. Now seems like a good time to ask how this stuff is all working out for you. Too technical? Nerdy? Boring? Less on studies, more on parenting connections?  It would be great to hear some feedback. I hope that even if the details were too much or we covered too much ground that you might have gained a new respect for that bundle of sweet-smelling, soft, cuddly goodness. That's one amazing brain growing in there!

–Tracy

Can You Hear That? Listening Study Yields Amazing Insights About Early Human Language

0-3 months, 3-4 months, 4-5.5 months, 5.5 - 8 months, 8-11 months, Baby Brains, Language development, Science, Studies

Images
In response to yesterday's blog on clever techniques researchers use to get at the goings on of the infant brain, someone asked if the "habituation technique" I described with looking is also used with listening. If you missed that post, click here for a quick primer. The answer of course is YES!

I was going to post an example of a listening habituation study but if you read yesterday's post, you can probably figure out how that would go. Here, instead, is an example of a listening study using a different listening technique called "conditioned head turning". I wanted to include it because it is one of the more famous studies with mind-blowing findings (if you didn't already hear about it in the media), that have come from infant listening work. I hope you agree that it's incredibly cool!

Check it out:

The Scoop: All babies are born with the capacity to acquire language and which one (or ones) they end up using depends on which one (or ones) they are exposed to. So it's not so surprising that young babies can hear and tell the difference between speech sounds that us old folks can no longer hear e.g. Japanese infants can hear and discriminate between the "r" and "l" sounds in the English language more easily than Japanese adults. Interestingly, the paring down of your sound repertoire to the sounds in your language (s) of exposure happens around 10 months of age, just around the onset of language production. It's as though the brain is honing in on what it will need to find our way in the social world.

In fact, the evidence suggests that this "honing in" may apply to social stimuli in general i.e. not just language. Another study showed that young infants can discriminate between different faces of the same race, a phenomenon that holds for different races; Chinese, Caucasian, African etc. But by 9 months of age, they seem to lose that fine tuned ability and are best at discriminating faces of their own race!  Read: social input goes a long way to influencing our social perception. Here's a link to one of the relevant papers in case you're really curious.

Notice that the speech and face processing narrowing is happening around the same time? Why? Probably because it's more efficient to be finely tuned to the social environment you have to deal with, the one you need to find your way in, to have your needs met in etc.

I don't know about you, but after reading this stuff I usually have two reactions: 1). Wow! Fascinating! and 2). Holy crap it's so much responsibility raising a child. What is he being exposed to?  Do we educate bilingually?  Is he getting multiracial/multicultural input?  Is that necessarily good or bad or something I should worry about at all?  Ughhh!  Then I usually realize that time is marching on and stuff is happening anyway, like it or not. There's only so much we can control…

- Tracy

What’s going on in that sweet little head of yours?

0-3 months, 12-17 months, 3-4 months, 4-5.5 months, 5.5 - 8 months, 8-11 months, Baby Brains, Devevelopment in general, Science

Newborn-baby-head-in-human-hands-fingers-cradle-infant-new-hair-center-for-egg-options-human-egg-donation-egg-donors-photo
Ever look at your baby and wander what the heck is going on in that head? Ever read those articles in magazines or newspapers or hear stuff on the radio about scientific studies on human infants (non-medical) and wonder "How the heck do they know that?".  Can't exactly ask the baby. Heck, they hardly stay awake long enough to find out anything anyway, even if they could talk.

This week I thought I'd take you behind the scenes of infant research to give you a peek into how scientists get inside that head. In a nutshell? They take advantage of the things that babies already like to do such as suck, listen to and look at new things. Looking has probably been explored the most. And dude, you'd be amazed and what we've learned from theses studies.

Looking studies typically use something called "visual habituation". The set-up looks something like this:Dadandbabycb

 
Mum or dad wears a pair of headphones, so they can't nudge, budge or influence baby's behaviour in any way (like try to make them look especially brilliant- kidding, kidding…). Baby is given something to look at on the screen (image, video etc.). At first the baby is interested and looks intently ("Hey, what's that?!"). But eventually, baby gets bored and starts to look away – "That again, whatever…" We say that the baby has "habituated". Then the display changes and baby sees something new. If they look with renewed interest – "What the…?!" (we call this "dishabituation")- then we know that the baby detected the difference between the old and new thing. That's it.

Ho hum, you say. But get this, sometimes the change between the old and new thing can be VERY subtle (we're talking teeny-weeny). By tweaking these subtle changes – while keeping everything else in the displays the same – we've learned a whole host of things about what 's going on in that noggin'. And we're talking tiny babies (newborns, 1-month olds) right up to toddlers. 

Check out this example: In one study, 6 month olds who were habituated to displays of say 8 black dots on a white screen, looked longer when the display changed to 16 black dots. As the two displays contained the same brightness, density of dots, total area of the dots  (i.e. the amount of black), the researchers concluded that the infants must have detected the difference in number. We're talking 6 month olds here people, they're not counting (at least not the way we do)! Cool huh? 

Infant looking has been used to study everything plus the kitchen sink: we're talking awareness of spatial position, proportion, solidity of objects, understanding gravity, adults' intentions (did they mean to grab that object or just touch it by accident?), discriminating faces of the same race, sensitivity to facial expressions and even to rudimentary addition and subtraction (with some conclusions more hotly debated than others).  And get this: it takes longer for babies of depressed moms to habituate to a happy face compared to babies of non-depressed moms, presumably because it's more novel to them! 

Kinda makes you see that bundle of sweetness in a whole new light doesn't it? So what do you think? Are you surprised by some of these findings? Did you have other ideas about how researchers pried their way into the infant brain?  Wanna know about anything in particular about the baby brain? Send your q's and stay tuned to hear more about ingenious ways of getting at the inner sanctum later this week.

Let’s start at the very beginning…

0-3 months

So… let's get started into the meat of things, shall we? I think I'll start posting on the different stages of cognitive and emotional development chronologically and then try to post questions (and some brainstorming solutions) as they relate to that stage. I've received several emails and, not surprisingly, they coincide with very particular problems that arise at very particular ages/stages in development. I can't really figure out how to prioritize them, so chronological order seems to be the most straightforward way to proceed.

So… what's going on from birth to about 3 months?

    The period of birth to 3 months is often considered the time when babies learn to regulate their basic bodily reactions, their states, and their physiology. These little beings have spent a long time in the womb, developing all the bodily mechanisms necessary to live on this planet, to eat, to breathe, to expend energy in motion, to coordinate muscles and senses so that motion accomplishes something, and to sleep when replenishment is needed. They have also developed the mechanisms for acquiring knowledge and skill—mechanisms that will allow them to pay attention to what is most important, especially the faces, voices, and actions of other humans.
    Most important, this is an age when the baby’s states—alert attention, quiet wakefulness, and sleep—become practiced and differentiated from each other, creating a predictable cycle of daily rhythms. And these rhythms gradually become synchronized with the day-and-night cycle of our planet, so that, starting around 6 weeks, babies sleep more at night and less in the day. And, as they develop, these rhythms will also become synchronized with your rhythms and the household routines that underlie them. During the end of this stage, you will also notice a rapid increase in face-to-face gazing, more smiling and other expressions of pleasure, and a general decrease in fussiness at the end of this stage. Babies learn, by about 2 to 3 months, that they are part of a complex but exciting world of cycles both inside and outside their bodies.
    From my perspective, sleep training prior to 3 months is not a good idea. There is too much going on. The synchronization of brain and bodily systems, the establishment of cycles for eating and sleeping, the coordination of these cycles with the outside world, all need time to develop and stabilize. The sheer number of biological and psychological systems getting wired up, and the rapid rate at which they are becoming connected with each other, staggers the imagination.  A lot of biological events, including cascades of changes in neural pathways and organ systems, unfold with uncanny precision, almost as if there were a master schedule posted somewhere and your baby is diligently following it. Scientists still do not know exactly how this cascade of changes progresses so effectively. But what we do know, as child psychologists, is that it’s better not to mess with it! To attempt sleep training before your baby does the majority of her sleeping at night would be to miss a massive biological leg-up. Why not let natural biological processes do their work, before you begin adjusting the fine points?
    Sleep training during this early period may simply be ineffective. It may be difficult or impossible to establish desirable sleep habits before sleeping at night becomes routine. But it could also confuse your baby’s evolving capacity to synchronize her interest, excitement levels, perception, and communication. Imagine that your baby is just learning to smile at you and to expect a smile in return. This reciprocal smiling sets off an episode of communication that is designed to increase arousal, because arousal is part of pleasure. And now imagine that this smiling takes place just as you are turning out the lights and leaving the room, a necessary step in most sleep-training methods. Now your aroused, excited baby, instead of receiving the ongoing communication she expects, is faced with the prospect of lying still and going to sleep. This might simply not work. Fine. But it’s quite possible that, after a few such scenarios, your baby will become confused as to what to expect when mutual smiling or gazing take place. Maybe the smiling means “game over”. Maybe I should disengage rather than engage when Mom and I make eye contact. This sort of social confusion could result from mixed signals, as the baby sees it. So, my take is better to wait until the interpersonal routines of smiling and gazing become solid habits. As they solidify, security and trust will solidify as well, making the ordeal of sleep training less of a challenge to your baby’s sense of himself, his sense of you, and his sense of your relationship.

So, if you're in the throes of this stage with your baby, you  might be saying:  But I'm DYING over here!  What can I do to maximize EVERYONE'S sleep?
    Our answer (which had to be edited out of the book for copyright infringement but now I'm free to go for the full chorus) is best summarized by John Lennon: “Whatever gets you through the night, is alright… Do it wrong or do it right, it’s alright.” Use a swing, a bouncy chair, tuck your baby in the crook of your neck, lay him across your chest, rock him in a chair, a glider or a hammock, bounce him in a sling or a baby carrier, throw him in a car seat on top of the dryer (my husband insists on my warning you to be careful that the seat can fall off the edge), in the back seat of a car, or in the stroller. Have you tried the quarter-time bounce (oh man… I need to videotape this "bounce" and share it with you all… It seriously worked with EVERY infant I've laid my hands on)? Anything you do, you can undo with proper sleep training at a later stage of development.  This is not the time to stress out about “creating bad habits.” What you’re creating is a tight bond with a rapidly developing little organism that needs your warmth, flexibility and consistency. During this early newborn stage, whatever gets you (and your baby) through the night is just fine.