3. Use baby as the barometer. Don’t lock yourself into a set number of minutes or nights that you will delay your response to your baby’s cry. Let baby’s overall behaviour influence your decision as to whether or not your response time is right for you and your baby. Don’t persist with a bad experiment.
4. Consider your baby’s temperament. Easier-temperament babies are more likely to resettle without your help. The intensity of their cries gradually winds down as they learn to self-soothe. Not so the high-need baby, whose cries continue to escalate.
5. Analyse whether you are reinforcing baby’s cry. The closer you and your baby are, the more you may, without realizing it, be giving your baby a message that “you need to cry”. Mothers mirror emotions to their babies. If you are anxious, baby perceives that there really is something to cry about. I see this often in my paediatric practice. Parents new to our practice bring their infant into the surgery for a check-up. Seeing a stranger, baby begins to fuss and clings to mum. This makes mum anxious and she clings back to baby, giving baby the message that there really is something to be afraid about. Let’s replay this scenario. Suppose this mother puts on her best everything’s-okay face, giving baby the message that she is calm and in control. Then, if baby fusses, she continues her, “it’s okay” body language, while at the same time reassuring baby with a cool “it’s no big deal” attitude. A certain amount of anxiety is appropriate in strange situations, but it’s up to mum to model the calm behaviour she wants her baby to learn. I have noticed that first-time parents sometimes panic at their baby’s cries and jump every time their baby makes a peep. Veteran parents, on the other hand, are better able to distinguish “biggies”, those cries needing prompt attention, from “smallies”, those triggered by something baby can handle with little or no help, or they have learned to meet baby’s needs before baby has to cry. (See related discussions “Don’t Panic!” opposite, and “No Problem”, page 72.)
6. Consider how important your need to let baby self-settle is. One of the most difficult parts of parenting is weighing baby’s needs against your needs, for example, your need for sleep versus baby’s need to be comforted. Signals that your parental balance system needs adjustments include these: You are not enjoying motherhood; you are having second thoughts about the style of parenting you are doing; you are becoming a tired and cranky mother, and the whole family is suffering. One of the principles that we have found helpful in our own family and in counselling other mothers who are burning out is this one:
if you resent it, change it
If you are beginning to resent your style of parenting and your constant baby tending and are feeling at the mercy of your baby’s cries, take this as a signal that you need to make a change somewhere in your cry-response system. This is more easily said than done and may not necessarily mean that crying it out is the solution. In the following section and in the chapters to come we will help you find ways to meet both your needs and those of your baby and provide sensitive practical alternatives.
don’t panic!
Patricia, a new mother of a high-need baby, was a psychologist specializing in child development. Because clients with low self-esteem had consumed her counselling days, she was determined that she would bring up her child to have healthy self-esteem. She understood the value of giving a nurturant response to her baby’s cries. But baby Christopher didn’t just cry, he shrieked. Within the first millisecond of Christopher’s shriek, Patricia would jump up, a tense mother with a worried face, inadvertently increasing his tension and sending him into an all-out fit that could have been avoided.
Martha watched this behaviour unfold one day when Patricia was over for a visit. Patricia had come over for Martha’s advice because she couldn’t get Christopher to go into the sling. Each time she tried, Christopher would shriek, and Patricia would panic and quickly end the lesson by grabbing her baby out of the sling and calming him. Martha showed Patricia several ways of positioning Christopher in the sling, and, sure enough, each position was unpopular with Christopher. Patricia would visibly tense up and look worried until Martha suggested another position. Finally, Martha figured out which position worked best for the two of them, and then, although Christopher was beginning to fret, Martha calmly said, “Now let’s go for a walk around the block.” This had two results. Christopher started to relax as Patricia started moving, and Patricia took her mind off the baby for a few minutes.
Martha and Patricia chatted as they walked, and Christopher became more and more relaxed. Soon Patricia was sensing that Christopher was actually enjoying the sling, and they both relaxed even more, so much so that the baby fell asleep. Patricia learned that she could mirror relaxation to her baby by staying calm and walking onward despite the fussing. Christopher needed his mother to set the mood and allow him enough time to follow suit. Patricia discovered that without much effort her baby would catch mum’s mood, and they could relax together.
Don’t let yourself panic at baby’s first squeak. This overreaction relays the message to baby that there really is something to fuss about, and he will usually oblige. For some babies, the quick response will ward off a hysterical cry; for others, it stimulates it. This is why you have to play each cry by ear. As soon as your baby starts to fuss, put on a relaxed “it’s okay” expression as you calmly tend to him. With a baby of four or five months, you can delay your response a minute or so, depending on the time of day and the situation, to see if baby discovers on his own that there is nothing to fuss about. Throughout the day, each episode will need an individual response. I notice a difference between many first-time mothers, who get easily panicked by the first whimper and are hyper-responsive, and seasoned veterans, who take a more relaxed, but still nurturant, approach to responding to baby’s crying.
Giving the right response for each situation is part of being mature as a parent. And guess what? You don’t always have to get it right. Babies are forgiving, and they seem to appreciate that at least you are trying. It’s not your fault that your baby cries; nor is it always your responsibility to keep baby from crying. Your job is to set the conditions to lessen baby’s need to cry and to offer a nurturant response when baby does need to cry. The rest is up to baby.
All babies cry, but some cries are easier to tolerate and respond to than others. Here are some practical things you can do with your baby to mellow her cries from mind-shattering screams to easy-listening communication.
Start early. When I was director of a newborn nursery, I learned a lot from veteran nurses who had spent years coping with crying babies. There wasn’t a sound they hadn’t heard and learned to live with. These nurses used to tag the babies’ temperaments as early as the first day of life: “Jason’s going to be easy”, or “Susannah’s going to be a handful”, or “George’s cry is going to shatter his mother’s nerves.” I realized the importance of mellowing a baby’s cry early on so that it can promote mother-infant attachment instead of mother-infant avoidance.
Baby Charlie was the second-born child of an easygoing and nurturing mother. During her pregnancy Janine would tell me,