Your Fussy Baby How to Soothe Your Newborn

chapter 1 Common Fussiness and Crying Some of the things we know about ordinary, brief, or common fussing and crying shed light on extreme fussiness/colic. This information is often comforting to parents who are distressed by their child's fussing or crying. (If you have skipped the Introduction, you may want to go back and read it now. The Introduction explains how to use the book and describes what I mean by "fussiness.") As a pediatrician, parents often ask me why their babies fuss or cryand often during such inconvenient hours! While it is true that babies often "melt down" during the evening and sleeping hours, these behaviors also occur during the day. During the day, though, their fussing is less bothersome, making less of an impression. Step number one in understanding your baby's fussiness is to try to become sensitive to all of your child's fussy times and even to gradations between the best and worst fussing or crying. It might be worthwhile to keep a detailed diary so that you can separate your child's actual behavior from your perceptions, which can be affected by your own tiredness and frustration. And even the fussiest babies have good times, too, which may also be helpful to record. I admit it can be hard to be objective about fussing and crying. Crying is an irritating sound. It seems to suggest misery and pain. It is virtually impossible to ignore. There is something about it that, as one mother put it, "poisons the atmosphere." You cannot sleep, enjoy a meal, or concentrate on anything else when you can hear a baby crying. Crying might be a survival mechanism that developed in the process of human evolution. It certainly seems to be nature's way of making sure a baby gets the attention she needs. What Does Crying Mean? Tennyson wrote in "In Memoriam": But what am I? An infant crying in the night; An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a cry. Of course, crying is one of the only ways a newborn infant can communicate. But the meaning of a baby's crying is open to interpretation. We think that a crying baby is hurting, frightened, or angry; this crying is taken as a form of criticism, loneliness, or tension. There is something in each of us that identifies with a baby's crying. Who has not felt alone in a strange world, cold, confused, and unable to communicate? We project onto the sobbing child all the despair of the human condition. But it is important to recognize that we really do not know what a baby's crying means. Though babies do cry when they have been hurt or frightened, it is incorrect to assume that a crying infant is either hurt or scared. We cannot even be certain a crying baby is unhappy. Some researchers have observed that stress hormones do not increase during some spells of crying as they do during, for example, circumcision or the drawing of blood from an infant. On the basis of this they concluded that during extreme fussiness, babies were not experiencing pain. Perhaps there is some truth to the folk wisdom which claims that babies cry "to exercise their lungs" or because it's one of the few things they know how to do. Birds fly, babies cry. Whatever the case (and we will return to the important problem of why babies cry), remember that a screaming infant is not "doing a number" on you. Infants do not cry to manipulate, influence, punish, control, or intentionally annoy you. Infants of one to four months do not realize that their crying can get results. They do not even know that they are a separate person from you. They are just crying. And they may not even realize that! What Should Parents Do About Crying? A well-known British pediatriWeissbluth, Marc is the author of 'Your Fussy Baby How to Soothe Your Newborn', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345463005 and ISBN 0345463005.