Infant Crying

Babies cry; that’s just what they do. It is their form of communication because they cannot speak yet. Any parent knows soon after their baby is born that they do not just cry, but their cries can be distinctive. A cry for hunger versus an upset tummy or pain are all different. It takes time to figure it out, but a baby’s cry is a language all on its own. For the parents, it isn’t just a form of communication, but it can be anxiety inducing because we as parents do not know exactly what the problem is all we want to do is fix it. It is in our nature to want to soothe and comfort our babies.

They also cry when they are stressed. Many mothers report their infants crying the instant they are put down. If a baby is left alone for too long, their survival instincts kick in and start crying to get their caregivers attention.

Reactions to crying varies. The biological norm is to pick Baby up to soothe. For Americans though, they have been trained much differently. In the early part of the twentieth century the two biggest influences over childcare and rearing are Luther Emmett Holt who wrote The Care and Feeding of Children: A Catechism for the use of Mothers and Children’s Nurses and John Watson, author of Psychological Care of Infant and Child. Their opinions greatly influenced how parents interacted with their children, recommending they never be touched unless it was a kiss on the forehead once in awhile and breastfeed for as short a time as possible so as not to touch their children. The goal was to train them to be independent. Americans are a very independent lot and must be able to function without the traditional support system the rest of the world is used to.

Stress crying for an infant, can be the same as for an adult. Perhaps the baby has been in an overstimulating situation. They need to release all the stress and scariness from a place that stimulates too many parts of a baby at the same time. Sometimes it just feels good to cry and let it all out. We do not have to jump on them immediately to stop them from crying. This is different than the Cry-It-Out method used for sleep training. In a paper written by Aletha Solter, Ph.D. an infant should never be left a lone to cry. They need to know their caregiver is nearby and will take care of them when needed.

There are a lot of conflicting opinions on how to handle a crying baby. It is unfortunate that two men managed to so greatly influence parents for over a century in a way that is contradictory to our nature as humans. Parents wanting to learn how to massage their babies is a great step in changing that mentality.