I got to know of the 5 Ss techniques via mothers of twins who'd found them incredibly helpful. (I never thought of them as "baby training" per se -- more soothing techniques.) Since then I've also found them incredibly useful, although a 6th S -- S2S -- would be useful to add. I don't think they necessarily work in a particular order. Sometimes you start with one and sometimes with another based on baby's response. Case in point... the other day I went into the room of a mother who'd gotten off to a horrible BF start through no fault of her own or that of staff. She had a significant postpartum hemorrhage, which required heading back to the OR twice and an extra-long stay in the L&D recovery area. By the time she was OK and with it enough to have her baby with her (and her helpful husband), it was 18-24 hours post birth and the baby had received some supplementary AIM. (Not going to get into a "whether needed or not" discussion because it was moot by the time I saw her.) 

I saw her on the day she'd begun BF and things were going fairly well. Baby had had a couple of good BFs and the mother happily let me help her get S2S with baby. I stopped in the next AM and mom was getting anxious. Although the baby had BF several times through the previous evening and night, baby had not eaten in more than 5 hours. Fortunately, baby was cueing so mom put her to breast but baby became irritable and unhappy. She tried a few times with similar results, so we just placed baby S2S again, but this time baby remained irritable even after a few minutes vs. "melting" into mom as is usual.

So I took baby to her plastic container (crib) and changed her pants as a "just in case" measure, and now baby got really mad and mom was getting more anxious by the moment. Now I snugly swaddled baby and started shhing (magical, truly) and swaying (OK, I do more of a bounce) and baby IMMEDIATELY calmed and then made good eye contact. I handed baby back to mom still swaddled, still calm and she latched on and started suckling. 

Sometimes one thing works, sometimes another. Suck doesn't always come first, and as stated, the other techniques are unlikely to work in the healthy baby who needs to eat. Sometimes the other techniques help move the baby to suck. 

When we get caught up in what should go first, I think too often we end up ignoring baby's true cues in favor of the ones we think should be there. 

The 5 Ss are concrete techniques that are easy to learn and easy to implement for today's new parent who often hasn't had much experience with babies. For the most part they're higher touch and definitely low tech. And if a mother gets a bit more uninterrupted sleep by using swaddling, assuming her young baby's intake/weight is OK, I'm for it especially (even if she has only one baby) if it keeps her from intro'ing sleep training methods that too often involve ignoring crying as a cue. 

Karen

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