How to interpret what a crying baby wants

A baby is trying to express through crying that he is hungry, tired, thirsty, cold, hot, bored, lonely, or uncomfortable. It may not be easy for parents at first to interpret what the baby requires or what is making him uncomfortable but gradually with careful observation we can see a pattern in all such actions.

Crying is a baby's first language. Like all languages, it is spoken in a very individual way. It takes time, patience and perseverance before one can truly say one has mastered the steps and can understand precisely what is being said.

On some days your baby may cry for twenty to thirty minutes four or five times a day before feedings, sleeping, or elimination. You can modify this before naps by placing your baby on his tummy. This position helps him control the startling that still accompanies his crying. On other days the baby's crying, squirming, and fussing before sleeping in the evening can last from one to three hours at a time. The longer periods may follow a noisy, busy day, a weekend when father is at home, or a "blue period" for mother.

After lying for hours looking around quietly, a baby may slowly begin whimpering. At first he can be talked to and will become alert and stare at your face for several minutes. You can rock him for almost thirty minutes before he tires and begins to wail again. But sooner or later he will reach a point when no comforting really succeeds more than briefly. Play, rocking, swaddling, changing his diapers, feeding him to be sure he isn't hungry are all useless. He will continue to cry for long stretches, tapering off to deep, shuddering sobs before sleep. These periods may be his attempts to discharge enough energy so that he can settle down. Infants who fuss are more likely to sleep for long periods at night.

Studies on infant crying show that environmental tension does add to the length and intensity of crying spells. A baby can tune in his family's feelings. When his mother is tired or tense, he is impossibly fussy. When she is rested and calm, he is delightfully responsive. Studies show that crying for "unknown causes" decreases sharply when a baby gets more gentle handling, talking to, looking, and listening.

Do not feet badly if you cannot soothe your baby as quickly or easily as you expect. There may be nothing wrong with either you or him. Some crying may simply be inevitable and necessary. Psychologists tell us a "bad" day of crying and fussing may indicate tension before a thrust into a new developmental stage. The good, quiet, peaceful days are usually those when your baby is operating on the same level and not responding to any kind of change.

Then, too, babies differ as much in what quiets them as in how much stimulation excites them. You might try another method of soothing him some babies like crooning, some prefer being rocked, some like being held at the shoulder, others, enjoy cuddled, still others like sucking.

Babies tend to form attachments on the basic of the kind of stimulation they want and get. A baby may prefer the uncle who rocks him to the one who tickles, just as he may prefer one voice to another. You might work out a system of letting him cry for twenty minutes, then picking him up and cuddling him, getting bubbles up by feeding him sugar water, and putting him back to bed to cry again. Handling him calmly with his routine may quiet him.

Some doctors find that babies held in close contact over their mother's hearts cry less. The heartbeat seems to soothe them, possibly because in the womb they have already heard their mother's heart.

Lastly, what we need to understand that every baby is individual and different and would respond differently and we, as parents, have to be patient and attentive in watching baby’s reaction to judge how baby responds to various gestures and actions and this should help us in devising a proper response mechanism to gently calm the baby.