Neh! Owh, owh!

Some friends of ours let us borrow their copy of the Dunstan Baby Lanugage when Evey was born. We'd never heard of it, but watching the intro was so cool.

There's a lady in Australia, Priscilla Dunstan, who has a photographic memory for sound. At five years old, she could play Motzart perfectly on her violin after listening to the concerto once. When she had a son of her own, she began to notice that he would make the same sounds in certain circumstances. Apparently, babies have a whole language all their own.

We thought it was a neat concept when we watched it. Evey was already a few weeks old and it took us a while to learn to recognize her cries. But it really did work! Once we learned her sounds it made caring for her so much easier.

The first three words Priscilla teaches parents are Neh, Owh and Eh.

Neh means "feed me!" It's basically a sucking sound, verbalized. Here is Evey's hungry cry:

Owh is a yawn and Eh is a cute little grunt that means she's got gas. It took us about a week to be able to recognize the cries, but listening for the specific sounds and watching the shape of her mouth was so helpful and we were able to help her more quickly (especially with Eh!).

After we felt confident in the first lesson, we watched the second lesson and learned two new words: Heh and Eairh.

Heh sounds very similar to Eh and to this day - I can't tell the difference, but now I know if I think she's saying Eh but won't burp - she's got to be uncomfortable. I know then that she's hot or cold, or just needs a diaper change!

If Eh means she's got gas, then Eairh is Eh on steroids. It means that the gas she did have has moved into her lower abdomen, and that it's hurting a whole lot more. We haven't heard Eairh too many times, but you can recognize it by the tight tummy and the breathy cry. Since Evey's such a gassy baby, we've gotten really good at getting the air bubbles out before it escalates to Eairh!

That's not to say that there aren't times when we totally miss the point where she's using her words and that we still don't have times when we can't soothe her, but it does help us a lot more than if we were flying without it!

We love knowing what she's saying and if she's screaming "Neh" I can say it back to her and it keeps her calm while I pull out the magic bottles. She understands the sound and knows that I understand it too and that I'm doing what I can to get rid of the problem.

I highly, highly recommend the Dunstan Baby Language to any parent who has a baby who doesn't speak english yet. Babies don't just cry for no reason and Priscilla Dunstan teaches you how understand their language.