The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five. Martha Sears

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       chapter 3

       your baby’s cry – what it means, how to listen

      At some time during the early months of living with a fussy baby, a well-meaning adviser almost certainly will suggest that you, “let your baby cry it out – he’s got to learn sometime”. This is misguided advice. It shows not only a misunderstanding of the communication value of the infant’s cry, but also a devaluing of the mother’s sensitivity.

      Mothers are not designed to let their babies cry, nor are babies’ cries designed to go unanswered.

      “If only my baby could talk instead of cry I would know what she wants”, said Jane, a new mother of a fussy baby. “Your baby can talk”, we advised. “The key is for you to learn how to listen.” Consider how much more aware you have to be when you are in a foreign country struggling to understand someone. You have to pay attention to body language and be more discerning, so that you can use all available clues to figure out what this person is saying. Once you pay attention to the clues, communicating still requires effort, but you quickly get the gist.

      A baby’s cry ensures the survival of the infant and promotes the development of the parent. It’s a two-way communication system designed to get infants whatever they need to thrive, and to teach parents how to interpret their baby’s language.

      But what am I?An infant crying in the night:An infant crying for the light:And with no language but a cry. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

      When you learn the special language of your baby’s cry, you will be able to respond sensitively. Here are some listening tips that will help you discover what your baby is trying to say when he cries.

an infant’s cry – the perfect signal

      Scientists have long appreciated that the sound of an infant’s cry has all four features of a perfect signal. First, a perfect signal is automatic. A newborn cries by reflex. The infant senses a need, which triggers a sudden inspiration of air followed by a forceful expelling of that air through vocal cords, which vibrate to produce the sound we call a cry. In the early months, the tiny infant does not think, “What kind of cry will get me fed?” He just automatically cries. Second, the cry is easily generated. Once his lungs are full of air, the infant can initiate crying with very little effort. Third, the cry is appropriately disturbing: ear-piercing enough to get the caregiver’s attention and make him or her try to stop the cry but not so disturbing as to make the listener want to avoid the sound altogether. Fourth, the cry can be modified as both the sender and the listener learn ways to make the signal more precise.

      responding to baby’s cries is biologically correct

       A mother is biologically programmed to give a nurturant response to her newborn’s cries and not to restrain herself. Fascinating biological changes take place in a mother’s body in response to her infant’s cry. Upon hearing her baby cry, the blood flow to a mother’s breasts increases, accompanied by a biological urge to “pick up and feed”. The act of breast-feeding itself causes a surge in prolactin, a hormone that we feel forms the biological basis of the term “mother’s intuition”. Oxytocin, the hormone that causes a mother’s milk to let down, brings feelings of relaxation and pleasure, a pleasant release from the tension built up by the baby’s cry. These feelings help you love your baby. Mothers, listen to the biological cues of your body when your baby cries rather than to advisers who would tell you to turn a deaf ear. These biological happenings explain why it’s easy for those advisers to say such a thing. They are not biologically connected to your baby. Nothing happens to their hormones when your baby cries.

      Each baby’s signal is unique. A baby’s cry is a baby’s language, and each baby cries differently. Voice researchers call these unique sounds “cry prints”, which are as unique for babies as their fingerprints are.

      Once you appreciate the special signal value of your baby’s cry, the important thing is what you do about it. You have two basic options: ignore or respond. Ignoring your baby’s cry is usually a lose-lose situation. A more compliant baby gives up and stops signalling, becomes withdrawn, eventually realizes that crying is not worthwhile, and concludes that he himself is not worthwhile either. The baby loses the motivation to communicate with his parents, and the parents miss out on opportunities to get to know their baby. Everyone loses. A baby with a more persistent personality does not give up so easily. Instead, he cries more loudly and keeps escalating his signal, making it more and more disturbing. You could ignore this persistent signal in several ways. You could wait until the baby stops crying and then pick him up, so that he won’t think it was his crying that got your attention. This is actually a type of power struggle; you teach the baby that you’re in control, but you also teach him that he has no power to communicate. This shuts down parent-child communication, and in the long run everybody loses.

      You could desensitize yourself completely so that you won’t be “bothered” at all by the cry; this way you can teach baby he gets responded to only when it’s “time”. Also, according to this scenario, baby gets used to being in a constant state of want. Not feeling right becomes the norm to be re-created throughout his life. This is another lose-lose situation; baby doesn’t get what he needs, and parents remain stuck in a mind-set that doesn’t allow them to enjoy the baby’s unique personality. Or you could pick baby up to calm him but then put him right back down because “it’s not time to feed him yet”. He has to СКАЧАТЬ