Baby Cries | A Few Specific Suggestions on how to respond

Parenting

baby cries

Baby Cries and responding properly to it is an essential art that every parent should learn. There are a variety of ways you may want to respond to your baby’s cry. Babies are different in their response to different interventions by parents. Through practice, you will learn about your baby’s response to different kinds of treatments at home.

Go to baby and pick her up. And you can do so without fear of spoiling at this early age. You may already know that she is hungry and offer her the breast or bottle. If she has just recently had a feeding, you may offer her a pacifier and post-pone the feeding for a while. Some babies will benefit from walking or gentle rocking and go back to sleep. Others will calm down if they are wrapped or swaddled in a blanket.

Some parents take the baby for a walk in the stroller or a ride in the car. If the baby seems in pain, then you can try placing her on your knees and use a gentle jouncing. If you are very careful to use warm and not hot water, you can place the baby on a warm water bottle with a diaper or towel protection. You may use music or sing t a fussy baby.

Though no research has yet revealed the cause of fretfulness or colic, speculation has focused lately on the contrast between traditional societies in developing countries in which there is nearly constant bodily contact between mother and infant and very little crying, and our industrial society in which the infant is insulated from mother in a crib and, as far as possible, from sounds, in a separate room. This suggests that parents should not be worrying about spoiling in the first three months but should try carrying the fretful or colicky baby in a canvas or cloth carrier or swinging her in a mechanical swing or be treating her to music, not just when fussing but during much of the day.

It’s best if you don’t exhaust yourself. Your baby may be fatigued also. Just remember that babies usually grow out of this crying period after the first three months. And you shouldn’t blame yourself, or feel guilty, if your baby has any of these crying characteristics. You should be better able to understand you baby’s cries after some careful listening and more experience.

Is the Baby Sick?

Usually a baby can become very irritable just before coming down with a cold or an infection of some kind. You can take the baby’s temperature, and if there is a fever, then report this to your doctor. The baby may have a runny nose, a cough, loose bowel movements, vomiting, or other symptoms. This crying is different since it has these other symptoms to go along with it. You should watch your baby closely for any changes in the stools, or changes in temperature, or changes in eating habits. You should report all of these symptoms to your doctor, who will advice you as to how to take care of your baby.

Sucking

Babies love to suck. They suck not only for feeding, but for the pure joy of sucking, you may observe this vigorous response immediately after birth when a baby is breast-fed while its mother is still on the delivery table.

The best way to satisfy your baby’s sucking needs is to provide a long enough feeding time to satisfy not only hunger, but also the need to suck. Breast-feeding usually takes care of this problem if the baby is allowed to nurse until he is satisfied. Usually twenty minutes is enough time to satisfy both hunger as well as sucking needs. If you bottle-feed, make sure the holes in the nipples are not so large that the baby finishes the milk in say ten minutes, but hasn’t had a chance to satisfy his sucking needs.

Sucking helps babies relieve physical as well as emotional tension and can calm a fretful baby. Sucking the thumb sometimes helps a baby satisfy this need and should not be denied. You might have seen your baby suck her thumb at the time of an ultrasound examination during pregnancy! Some parents find a pacifier is satisfying and will discourage thumb sucking. And the pacifier can more easily be given up at age three to four months than thumb sucking. There are some fussy babies who seem more alert and tranquil when sucking a pacifier during the first year of life.

If you are nursing and choose to offer your baby a pacifier, wait a week or two until the baby has learned to nurse effectively. When some nursing babies are given a pacifier in the first few days after birth, they may find it difficult to learn to suck at the breast.

Reaching Out

If your baby reaches out for you, then she probably wants you to pick her up—and this doesn’t mean that you are spoiling her. She needs to have contact with you during these early months by picking her up, holding her, gently rocking her, talking to her, or walking her.

If she holds her arms out to you, with or without crying, she needs to be responded to—and all parents will want to respond to the outreaching arms of their baby. Sometimes this reaching out may come in the middle of changing a soiled diaper, and this could delay your response somewhat. But this is only temporary and won’t cause her to become upset if the baby knows that you will eventually respond to her.

Kicking Legs

If your baby is kicking his legs in glee in the bath, and smiling and cooing, then you can rest assured the baby is enjoying his bath. Your response can be to continue his bath and let him play in water. Some babies kick when they feel excited, such as anticipation of the upcoming feeding. Usually the kicking is also joining by hand waving and head movements.

Some kicking also may occur when the baby is crying or fretful. I’d say the kicking alone is not enough to say what kind of response is necessary. It would depend on what else is going on with the baby. Is she crying and kicking, or smiling and kicking? Does she enjoy kicking? If so, then no response is necessary.

Grunting

Some signals or signs may have no particular meaning, or mean different things at different times, depending on what else is going on with the baby at that particular moment.

For example, most babies make grunting sounds occasionally. These are squeaks or throat-clearing sounds. She may be listening to her own sound and enjoying it. She may be imitating your voice. She may be grunting with pleasure. At another time her grunts may be with stomach pain or a wet diaper. I think in this case you would want to see how your baby is in general—not just go by the grunt alone. She will have an expression on her face which also should give you a clue. And she may grunt in her sleep, as if she were dreaming: or she may happily grunt when she is awake and anticipates being fed. Each time would mean a different response from you, depending on the circumstance. At about two months of age, she will develop a cooking sound which comes from the back of her throat; this is the first real sign of her learning to use language.

High-pitched Squealing

When babies first realize they can make a sound, they may repeat it over and over with glee realizing they have made this wonderful new noise. Some babies will make a high-pitched squealing sound, and listen to see if they can do it again. The high-pitch seems to excite them, and what makes it more exciting is when the parents respond. A happy baby can entertain themselves endlessly by producing these early pre-language sounds. These sounds often do not require a response. Some parents enjoy repeating the sound themselves to keep the baby company in her search for verbalizing in a nonverbal way. Just noticing and talking back, and showing your appreciation is enough in most cases.

The Parents Response

Most parents are thrilled when their babies begin giving signs of being more grown-up. After weeks of mostly sleeping and eating, you baby will begin making sounds and gestures that may indicate the baby’s disposition.

The main thing to remember is that any response that you give is appreciated by the baby. When parents smile, talk, and pick up the baby, then the baby learns to give more of these signs and develops others. The main thing is to give attention in a loving and kind manner, rather than focusing on how to analyze every squirm. The analysis of every signal is less important. The fact that you are there and that you are eager and excited about your baby’s behavior and you show it in your expressions and tone of voice, is more important. If you are too worried about how to figure out every grunt or gesture, your worry will overshadow the enthusiasm to any response will be more valuable than the exact “what exactly did you mean by that?”

Happy to Crying

Babies can go from being happy one minute to crying the next. And they can stop crying and be happy again just as quickly. Their moods can vary from one moment to the next. It’s good to know that your baby’s sadness at one moment can be changed so fast if you observe and see why she is sad. Some babies will be happy the second they feel relief from their hunger. Others can be screaming one moment, and instantly stop as soon as you pick them up. They have a tendency to turn on the sobs when they can’t communicate any other way. But they are easily satisfied as soon as you respond appropriately. If they can switch so easily from one mood to another, then you can take advantage of this, knowing she will forgive you easily for putting her down to change a diaper. As soon as you respond, she will give you instant feedback if your response has been the right one.

Enjoy Your Baby

The main thing to remember is to enjoy your baby. All of the cooing, grunting, pre-verbal sounds and other means of communication are wonderful ways to enjoy your baby. You can easily instill in her a sense of self-enjoyment by showing your own enjoyment at all that she does. A baby will get the sense that she is worth noticing and is loved. She will feel good about herself and gain self-confidence even at this early age, if you give her the response that she needs. Just being there for her is the first and best response. The more you are with her, the more you will learn how to read out her signals and respond accordingly.

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