Infant crying can be frustrating and frighteningly for parents.
When you are unable to calm your baby, you forget that all
babies cries, crying is the way babies communicate. An average
infant cries an average 2-3 hours per day. As we all (hopefully)
know, there are no such things as an average infant and parents
have enough to cope with to use a stopwatch on their baby and
calculate crying averages.
Therefore, what are the reasons for infant crying? Let us first
look at the “healthy” reasons:
1. Hunger. Hunger is the most common reason for crying. Is it
more than one hour since your baby ate? Is it more than 2 hours
since you breastfed your baby? Hunger might be the reason for
crying. An infant eats quite frequently, especially the first
weeks after birth.
2. Wet diaper. Wet diapers are uncomfortable. Change the diaper
and see if it helps.
3. Need of body contact. Maybe your infant wants you to hold it.
Especially the first weeks after birth body contact are very
important for the child. Besides, by picking the baby up when it
is crying, you give an important signal: “I care about you”.
4. Gas pain. Gas pain is common after eating. Try to get your
baby to burp. A good advice is to let the baby burp several
times during eating in addition to a final burp after eating.
5. Too hot or cold. Infants cry if they feel too hot or too
cold. Check if your infant is too hot or too cold and remove or
add more clothes.
6. Boredom. Your infant cries if it is bored. Try to play with
it, change its toys, put on some music, start singing or
whatever you think will stimulate your child.
7. Stress. Your infant is stressed if you are stressed. An easy
solution would be: do not stress but since we live in the real
world: Try to stimulate the child.
8. Fussy environment. The best example of fuzzy environment is
family gatherings where everybody wants to talk to the infant
and everybody is talking at the same time. Hey, I want to scream
at most family gatherings. Big changes in daily routines might
also give the same symptoms. Solution: carry your infant ion
your arms. I know: theory, theory… It is easy to get frustrated
when your arms gets tired and you are unable to perform any
other tasks than carry the baby.
The eight reasons listed above will very often result in eight
different sound of crying. You will make your life much easier
if you take the time to learn the differences. Other ways to
calm down your baby are: give your baby a massage, give your
baby a bath, rock your baby, play some calming music, let your
baby listen to white noise… You can read more about this on our
website.
In my next article, I will discuss the “unhealthy reason” for
infant crying, until then: hang on out there...
Sincerely, F.P. Larson
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