  Poor Ellie is sick with some sort of virus. She has a runny nose and a spiky fever. Mostly, she just feels uncomfortable. She hasn't wanted to eat anything but breastmilk yesterday and today, so I just cuddle her and nurse her to try to help. Thank God we have TiVo now so I have some decent TV to watch while I nurse and cuddle her! When this all started, though, on Tuesday night, she didn't even want to nurse.
For the first time ever, she cried inconsolably. She even started screaming! Btw, a quick blow of breath in her face when she'd begin that horrible scream stopped that pretty fast. Not even an offered breast soothed her. I told John I thought what she really needed was limbic stimulation to reduce stress hormones and soothe her just enough so that she could relax and fall asleep. We both moaned about having procrastinated so bad on the rocking chair. We have the rocking chair my mom rocked me in as a baby, but it's still disassembled from its refurbishing and transport to Houston. Then, John and I looked at each other and smiled. We had the perfect limbic stimulator! A few months back we bought a swiveling office chair from Ikea because (it was really cute, and ) I'd read how valuable swiveling (or constant limbic stimulation of that nature) can be to physical development in babies in Elise Eliot's What's Going on in There . Sure enough, a few weeks after we got it, Ellie finally made her first steps. I cuddled Ellie close despite her cries and started turning at an even pace.
John put on Yo-Yo Ma's Bach concerto, one of Ellie's favorites, and within about three, maybe as many as five minutes our inconsolable sick baby was sleeping! It worked perfectly! I still want John to put together that rocking chair though... 
