00:00A baby's cry has been voted one of the worst sounds on earth.
00:09Making it stop is the holy grail of parenting.
00:14Here we have a crying baby.
00:17Enter Dr. Robert Hamilton.
00:1923 million people have seen him perform a miracle.
00:23I fold his right arm like this and then his left arm in front
00:28and then very gently hold his little bottom
00:31and gently rock him up and down, just like that.
00:34Is this magic? That baby just stopped crying.
00:37Who is this doctor? Or should I say magician?
00:41We're in Santa Monica to ask the magician pediatrician
00:45how he became the baby whisperer.
00:48When I examine the child in the hospital or here in my office,
00:51I frequently make them cry.
00:53Over the years, I've been able to really perfect
00:57this method of holding them and it works well.
01:01We rock him up and down very gently.
01:03Sometimes we stir him to the left and we stir him to the right.
01:08But how does this magic work?
01:10Dr. Hamilton believes that this technique works
01:12because it mimics the baby's experience in the womb.
01:15By folding the baby's arms across its chest,
01:18it creates a sense of containment.
01:20So that's a sense of familiarity for them.
01:23The gentle rocking motion mimics the sensation of floating
01:26inside the amniotic sac.
01:28So what I do is I take one hand like that,
01:30other hand like that, and very gently hold her
01:33at about a 45 degree angle.
01:35The 45 degree angle has nothing to do with comforting the baby
01:38and everything to do with interesting the baby.
01:41It's almost as though the baby is going,
01:43Oh, hello world. This is new. I like it.
01:49Suddenly they're at this angle that they're not used to experiencing.
01:52Usually they're on their backs, they see the ceiling,
01:54they see some faces coming over.
01:56This combination of the familiar and the new
01:58provides a lot of different stimuli
02:00that overwhelm the baby's instinct to cry.
02:02I've had four babies,
02:04and I wish I had known about the hold.
02:07Oh, the times.
02:09Hopefully this is helpful to you.
02:11Thank you for your attention.
02:13My best to your family.
