Goo goo ga ga: As I was saying …
Lisa Aponte says she learned to understand her baby's babble overnight.
After she and her husband watched the Dunstan Baby Language instructional DVD one night at their home in Streamwood, she put it into practice the next morning.
Her 3-month-old daughter Hanna, with blinking blue eyes and a shy smile, woke from a nap uttering a sound Aponte swore she recognized from the video -- "neh, neh." It's the sound that the Dunstan system says signifies hunger.
Aponte quickly offered her baby a bottle, and sure enough, Hannah slurped it down eagerly.
When Aponte took the bottle away, she heard her baby make the sound, "eh, eh" -- defined as the sound for needing to burp.
So Aponte lifted her child to her shoulder, and Hanna let forth a hearty but angelic little belch.
"She does make these sounds," Aponte said. "You've got to really listen for them."
To the untrained ear, it was hard to make out the sounds Aponte heard. At one point it sounded like the baby was clearing her throat. At another, when Hanna was uttering various sounds, her mother explained, "Now she's just making noises."
The 28-year-old Aponte, a salesperson at a drapery shop in Mount Prospect, had always attended to her daughter's cries, but never differentiated them.
She still uses other cues to help figure out what her daughter needs. Eye-rubbing and yawning signify tiredness, for example.
Now, with more specific clues to follow, Aponte thinks it will also help her husband care for their daughter.
"She doesn't have her crying fits very often but when she does, sometimes you just don't know what to do," she said. "Maybe this will make her happy sooner."
Tips for using the Dunstan system:
1. Listen in the pre-cry stage, before the baby screams.
2. If you hear more than one word, act on the most common one.
3. Change the baby's position to hear more clearly.
4. Don't worry if your baby doesn't say all the words.
5. Listen for the distinctive part of each word.
6. If you don't hear a word at first, try again later.