The Song That Miraculously Stops a Baby From Crying
The Song That Miraculously Stops a Baby From Crying
It’s not a rattle shake that makes the infant in a trending new YouTube video happy; it’s country singer Luke Bryan crooning “shake it for me” in his hit “Country Girl.”
When the footage — which has gone viral with more than 50,000 views since it was posted Aug. 21 — begins, the unnamed baby boy is wailing uncomfortably. Yet within seconds of a woman (presumably his mother) cuing up Bryan’s 2011 song, the tot miraculously stops crying and calms down for a peaceful rest. “His favorite song,” she can be heard whispering off-camera. “Works every time.”
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The baby “heard the song ‘Country Girl’ by Luke Bryan so much while his mother was pregnant that now when he cries he stops when the song is played,” reads a note on YouTube uploaded with the video.
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And though it may seem crazy that an uptempo tune urging listeners to “Shake it for the young bucks sittin’ in the honky-tonks, for the rednecks rockin’ till the break of dawn…” actually lulls a child to sleep, parenting expert and family physician Deborah Gilboa, MD, tells Yahoo Parenting it makes a lot of sense.
“Doing the things that you did while pregnant can be soothing for a child after birth,” says Gilboa, who notes that parents have a better chance of success if they swaddle the baby at the same time to simulate a womblike environment. “We know that some of the sounds the babies heard in utero, and motions they felt, will put them to sleep.”
For mothers who exercised on the elliptical regularly while pregnant, for example, chances are their newborn will “crash for you,” she says, if you wear the child while gently stepping on the elliptical. “Anything you can do for a baby that age to change the direction of his focus will sometimes improve his mood tremendously,” she adds. “That’s why distractions like the sound of a vacuum, shushing in the ear, and rocking are effective. If it’s a song in this case that works like magic, fantastic.”
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