Keep left and SVO

English is an  SVO (subject-verb-object)  language. The easiest thing is to keep the subject verb and object (or complement or, simply, all that comes after the verb) together as much as possible. Often, however, you need to add extra information, usually of an adverbial nature and often to do with time, place and mode. 

She soothed the baby. Fine, no problem. Subject-verb-object. 

She gently soothed the fat baby. Again, no problem, except you have thrown in an adverb (gently) between the subject and the verb and expanded the object with an adjective (fat). That’s ok, my brain can take it.

She gently soothed the fat  baby all night long.  My comprehension skills remain unfazed. 

She gently and sweetly soothed the fat  baby with lullabies all night long.  All right, I still follow.

She gently and sweetly soothed the baby all night long with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice. It’s getting complicated, but I can still manage.

Now what if I want to say something else about this fat, demanding baby? 

She gently and sweetly soothed the fat baby who was suffering from colic all night long with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice.

Well, now we have a problem. All night long may refer to the colic being suffered by the baby or it may refer to the mother’s soothing. Even if we add commas, it’s still unclear – or just reads funny:

She gently and sweetly soothed the fat  baby, who was suffering from colic,  all night long with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice.

When things start getting complicated like this, take adverbs or expressions of time, place and mode and move them to the left – to before the subject – then add a comma. This will give you:

All night long, she gently and sweetly soothed the fat  baby who was suffering from colic with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice. 

Can we do better? Sure. We can even start sounding poetic:

All night long, gently and sweetly,  she soothed the fat  baby who was suffering from colic with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice.

But wait, that still sounds funny because now we have an unlucky baby apparently suffering from colic with lullabies, which is a strange sort of ailment.

More commas might help:

All night long, gently and sweetly, she soothed the fat baby, who was suffering from colic, with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice.

Hmm. We might want to rearrange it even more:

All night long, with lullabies that she sang in a raucous, broken and despairing voice, she gently and sweetly soothed the fat baby who was suffering from colic.  

In this final version, we have effectively returned to a SVO construction. That is to say, we have maintained  the subject-verb-object (She [gently and sweetly] soothed the [fat] baby) that is at the heart of the sentence  with as few interruptions as possible.