Coping with a cry baby
| Published: 9th December 2007 19:56 |
Having a new baby is a stressful as well as joyful time for parents. There is so much to be anxious about. And most mums suffer from extreme tiredness during the first few months - if not years - of their child's life.
Sleep is frequently interrupted and a wakeful, crying baby can fray nerves to the point where some marriages come unstuck by the pressures.
But there is help out there on how to deal with crying babies.
The most important thing to ascertain is exactly WHY your little one is sobbing.
If your baby is sucking his fingers or fist, he may simply be hungry. Try feeding him. If his nappy is wet, change him.
Always try to remain calm. Talk to him in a gentle, slow voice and hold him so that his face is about eight inches from yours when you want to talk with him. This is the distance at which his eyes focus best.
If your baby isn't hungry, but he's a little fussy, try putting him up to your shoulder for a comforting cuddle.
Most babies don't like to have their heads controlled, so don't try to force him onto your breast by pushing him on the back of his head, and be sure to stretch the neck of his T-shirts before pulling them over his head.
To avoid exposing your baby to sudden temperature changes, unwrap him slowly. Keep a warm blanket over him when you change his clothes or nappy, especially if the room is chilly.
If your baby startles easily, wrap him firmly in a light blanket so that his arms and legs are restrained. It may help him to feel like he's back in the womb, which was home such a short while ago.
Some babies cry a lot more than others, even though they may be perfectly healthy and their parents very experienced in handling infants. Though you may feel that your baby is crying 24 hours a day, if you carefully record his actual crying times you may discover that his crying isn't really non-stop. Understandably, your feelings of frustration and helplessness may make it seem that your baby cries endlessly.
So how much crying is normal? Opinions vary. Many studies have found that crying episodes start in earnest around three weeks of age, peak at around six weeks, and decrease significantly between three and four months of age. Crying tends to be worst around mealtimes - 7am, noon and between 5pm and 6pm - with the most crying around dinnertime. Some researchers say babies average an hour and a quarter of crying per day; others say two to four hours' crying per day is normal.
In India and Africa, babies are carried by their mothers or other family members all day long and are kept beside them at night, but here many babies are expected to be content in non-human baby holders such as cribs, playpens, car seats and pushchairs. And this lack of physical contact usually leads to more crying.
Some experts believe that you shouldn't respond to your baby's cries straight away. But studies have also shown that the longer a parent takes to answer a baby's cries, the longer it takes to soothe the baby. The critical cut-off point for answering a baby's cries is a minute-and-a-half. If a parent takes longer than a minute-and-a-half to answer, the amount of time required to quiet the baby increases by three, four, or in some cases, 50 times.
Your baby's sleeping patterns change naturally as his body's systems mature. Newborns aren't equipped with day-night body cycles; they alternate between sleeping and waking throughout the day and night, regardless of what is happening around them. It's not until about the fourth month after birth that the typical baby spends most of the day awake and sleeps longer stretches during the night.
By then, the baby's bodily cycles, of high and low temperature, heart rate and urine excretion, for instance, have become more regulated. The start of sleeping through the night coincides with the appearance of day-night rhythms and the excretion in the baby's body of an important hormone, cortisol, that helps to regulate metabolism.
You can't teach your baby to sleep through the night; it isn't a skill that can be learned. But when the time is right, your baby's inborn master clock will set all of his internal operations in harmonious cycles, and his day and night rhythms will become more predictable.
If your baby's cries are inconsolable it may be that he has colic.
This is a condition that occurs in early infancy where a newborn baby will have bouts of prolonged crying, apparent abdominal pain and marked irritability. One of the surest signs of colic is when the baby repeatedly brings his knees up to his tummy.
The onset of colic usually occurs a few weeks after birth and it disappears by three to four months of age. Often the baby cries at predictable times of the day and/or night. The most common times are during the evening and at night. To help your baby there are over-the-counter remedies available at your local pharmacy and you may find that gentle tummy massage helps soothe too.
Teething may also be a cause of persistent crying: if so, rub baby's gums gently with a clean finger covered in a teething gel or give baby a chilled teething ring to chew on.
If all else fails, these tips are known to have helped other desperate parents soothe their baby off to sleep: taking him for a drive in the car, do the hoovering or even switching the washing machine on as the drone of the machines is relaxing.
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