Bucks County mom invents gadget calming colicky babies
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A baby with colic is usually inconsolable and parents are often desperate, but a Bucks County mom discovered unusual noises did the trick for her babies. The featured noises are things like a jackhammer and a lawnmower.
The Myers sisters are happily playing in their Warrington backyard, but their lives started with a lot of crying.
Both girls had severe colic manifesting in inconsolable crying for no reason.
"You feel purely hopeless when you're the one person in the world that you feel should be able to comfort your baby," Samantha Myers, the mother, said.
She says nothing worked, except when she was vacuuming.
"She would instantly calm down when I would clean," Myers said. "I thought, 'wow. If the vacuum could work, what if I could find sounds that work even better?'"
The sound of a chainsaw worked best, she found.
"When I found these sounds, it was the very first time I was able to enjoy motherhood," she said.
it worked on other colicky babies as she tested.
"I thought nobody is going to believe me and people are going to think I'm crazy," Myers said, "but when you are that desperate and you've tried everything to get your baby to calm down you'll do just about anything."
Wanting to share her solution with other desperate parents, Myers developed a sound machine called ByeByeCry. It is that she's selling for $69.
Dr. Kathy Chen at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia says colic is very common. Its cause is unknown and the treatments are elusive, but unconventional sounds can work for newborns
"They don't perceive normal calming sounds as soothing," Chen said. "They need something a little more kind of jarring."
Myers is hoping other parents can avoid the agony of colic with her simple solution
"I knew I had to share this with other families," Myers said.
Chen says the sounds might not work for all colicky babies, but it won't hurt them.