7 Secrets of Happy Babies

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was obsessed with articles on difficult babies. It would be just my luck to get a screamer, I thought, so I vowed to be prepared. When Matilda was born, she did the usual amount of fussing and crying, but she quickly became quite congenial; at 5 months, she was sleeping through the night.

Two years later, about to give birth again, I worried even more. I couldn't be lucky twice, and it would be worse to have a cranky baby plus a toddler. Well, Anthony made his sister look like a handful. Baby number three, Charlie, was fussy for a month, then turned into a clone of his siblings.

Certainly genetics has some role here, yet I can't help but think maybe I've been doing something right. And experts would agree: "While temperament is important, parents can learn to recognize their baby's needs before they get upset," says pediatrician Norbert Herschkowitz, M.D., coauthor with his wife, Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz, of A Good Start in Life.

So even if your baby is more prone to crankiness than cooing, the better you get to know each other, the easier it will be to make him feel secure  -- and content. Here's how to help make your child's first 12 months a more pleasant experience for everyone:

1. Keep your cool. Studies show that when parents grow frustrated with their baby's behavior, the infant picks up on that tension and reacts. Then it becomes a cycle that can be really hard to break.

Keeping your wits about you  -- though not always as easy as it sounds  -- also helps you recognize what your child needs. Mornings in my house became highly stressful last year when I had to get Matilda, 7, and Anthony, 5, out the door and on the school bus. The more I began to sweat, the more 7-month-old Charlie would whine and demand to be held. I couldn't figure out what it was  -- he'd just had a bottle  -- until one day I put him in the high chair and gave him a few bites of his brother's pancakes. Eating with his siblings delighted him. Now it's our regular routine.

There's definitely a learning curve when it comes to raising kids, but it's easier to keep perspective if you know what you want. "I always tell parents, 'If you're unhappy about a specific situation with your child, you can change it,'" says Amy Flynn, director of the Bank Street Family Center in New York City and mom of a 2-year-old. You can also sidestep certain things before they become issues, says Flynn. "I knew I wanted my daughter to sleep in her own crib and not in my bed, so I avoided that situation from the beginning."