New Baby? Crying in the First Weeks

There is no such thing as a baby crying to "exercise its lungs" or because of it temper or naughtiness. These are the convenient issues raised for dodging the reason as to why your baby is crying, but they don't do anything to comfort your child to stop him or her from crying.

There are very few mothers out there who can calmly sit back and listen to their baby "exercising its lungs". You may even end up in tears yourself having tried everything you can think of to comfort your baby yet she still remains distressed. You end up wondering desperately if your baby is ill, or hungry, or even dying... You may feel so inadequate that you cannot sooth your own baby that you unavoidably become angry and resentful. This is a natural reaction and there is no need to feel like you are a failure or a bad mother because of it.

Keep in mind that some babies are more naturally distressed than others, and they would more than likely carry on crying even if your baby was in other hands. If you become tense you can and more than likely will transmit the feeling to your baby, making matters worse. You may have heard that over time you get used to your babies cries and will be able to recognize exactly what it is looking for, but in actual fact, spectrogram studies have shown that while there is a difference in pattern in cries made by babies with down syndrome or serious illnesses or brain damage, the sound pattern of normal babies however does not vary at all. Therefore, although your bay may cry loudly when in pain and niggle when hungry, they sound wave pattern remains the same.

The fact is, parents have to decipher what their baby is trying to tell them from obscure information. What happens over time with experience is that the possible reasons for the baby crying are gone through quickly by the mother and she is more likely to make a correct, educated guess as to what is wrong and were to comfort the baby as needed. While all babies are different, it helps to know the immediate background, as well as the experience before the crying started. Therefore, the more intimately involved you are with your child, the better you are able to read his or her distress signals.