The most common cause for your baby crying, particularly during the first three months, is to alert you that she needs to re-establish and maintain close physical contact with you. This type of crying is an instinctive need and has a very important function, quite separate from her physical needs.
Crying to maintain close physical contact with you is a social and emotional need. Social and emotional development is one of the most important developmental tasks of the first three years of life.
Your baby can’t physically follow you around yet, so she cries to keep you close to her. She needs your presence to feel safe and secure. When she can’t see you, she doesn’t know where you are, so she will fuss and cry. If you don’t appear soon enough, she will give you a stronger signal that she really needs you and cry more persistently.
When you respond promptly by going to her with love, reassurance and affection, you make her feel safe and secure. This is how she forms her attachment to you. She cries and calls; you respond with reassurance and help; she feels happy and safe, able to relax and enjoy a feed, social time or sleep.
That’s how your social and emotional relationship with each other develops – and that’s how your baby’s attachment to you forms. This bonding is also vital in helping your baby’s brain to grow and develop in a healthy way.
Research shows that babies cry more when they are separated from their parents and calm once they’re physically back together again. Humans have evolved to carry their babies to ensure survival from predators, as infants cannot run away from danger on their own.
This means that when your baby is separated from you and begins to miss you, she will cry out for you. This type of call for attention and help is a normal response to a physical or emotional need.
Her physical need means she fusses and cries for comfort for a range of reasons, including help with:
• a nappy change
• a feed
• a sleep
• a physical complaint, like a tummy upset
• feeling uncomfortable, like hot or cold.
An emotional need means your baby needs you to help her to manage feelings of:
• loneliness
• anger
• sadness
• fear
• overstimulation
• happiness and joy.
Your baby needs to be close to you so you can help her manage all the strange and new physical and emotional experiences she has to cope with. Having so many new feelings and experiences is exhausting for her. She can’t manage them without your help, so she cries for you. Her crying is a powerful signal to you. The pitch of her cry triggers a physical and psychological stress reaction in you, which helps you to intuitively go to your baby to soothe and help her. This type of stress activation comes from your evolutionary roots and drives your response to your baby. Your baby’s cry is supposed to cause you some stress – if it didn’t, you probably wouldn’t respond.
Parents have always used body contact, facial and eye contact, a soothing singsong voice and rocking to help their crying baby. In return, your baby calms and usually snuggles close. This gives you confidence that you can help her and you both feel satisfied and enjoy your relationship more.
People used to think you could tell by your baby’s cry when she was hungry, tired or in pain, but it’s now understood you cannot distinguish a hunger cry from a tired cry or a bored cry. However, you can tell what your baby needs from the degree and pitch of her cry, together with what her non-verbal language is indicating to you.
You can work out how urgent your baby’s cry is but not what’s causing it. The most important thing to do is carefully listen to her, observe her and get to know her non-verbal language. The more experienced you become with observing your baby’s cues and responding promptly when she cries, the better you’ll understand what she’s trying to tell you (see Chapter 6: How your baby communicates).
In the first three months, crying is the best way she has to communicate with you. When she’s older, she will begin to find other ways to communicate. And that’s when you find her crying communicates definite needs – for example, you can see she’s frightened of a stranger and needs your comfort. But until she can physically follow you to stay close or verbally say what she needs, crying will always be her first and best way to tell you she needs to be close to gain comfort and safety.
Generally, the quicker you attend to your baby’s crying, the quicker she will stop crying and calm down again. Responding quickly and sensitively to your baby each time she cries is thought to help reduce the overall amount of crying she does. The slower you respond to your crying baby, the more she cries and the longer it takes for you to calm her down.
You can expect your child to continue to need your safety and reassurance when she’s upset right through the first three years. This is not spoiling her; in fact, you have exactly the same needs when you’re upset.
When something upsetting happens, it’s common to contact your family or close friends and cry or confide your problems. When you do that, you’re seeking safety and reassurance. If you don’t receive the comfort you’re seeking it feels awful.
Your baby is just the same as you. She needs comfort and reassurance when she cries. When she gets that, it helps her to develop an understanding that when she asks for help she will get it.
When you can’t soothe your baby
Unfortunately, there will be times during the first three months when you can’t soothe your baby, and she may continue to cry no matter what you try to do. This sort of crying is a part of what’s called ‘normal developmental crying’.
Your baby’s crying usually follows developmental patterns. Normal developmental crying usually starts to increase at 2 weeks after birth and continues to build up to a peak when she’s around 2 months old. Crying then starts to taper off again, and by 3 to 4 months old, her crying will be less frequent.
During this normal developmental crying phase, you may notice that your baby has bouts of intense, inconsolable crying in the afternoons and evenings. You often really notice this type of crying during the second month or at the peak stage of the normal crying period, around 6 weeks.
You probably want to know how long will your baby cry. Each baby is an individual and some cry for longer than others. Your baby could cry as little as 1 hour per day or as much as 5 hours per day.
The slower you respond to your crying baby, the more she cries and the longer it takes for you to calm her down.
Both lengths of crying are within a normal range. However, 5 hours of crying is very hard for you to manage. Sometimes this type of crying is called ‘colic’ – but it’s still part of normal developmental crying and will usually resolve by 3 to 4 months of age.
There are some popular and traditional reasons that could influence the ways you might be thinking about your baby’s crying, such as these possible reasons:
• She’s being manipulative.
• She’s looking for attention.
• She’s being a ‘drama queen’.
• When you attend to your baby during the day and night you are reinforcing ‘attention-seeking’ behaviour.
• You’ll spoil your baby by giving her too much attention.
• You’re making her too dependent on you.
• You’re weak if you ‘give in’ to her.
None of these reasons is true, of course. The early-20th century behavioural psychologist John B. Watson came up with ideas about disciplining and training babies and children. He believed you could condition a baby to stop crying by ignoring her. Unfortunately, other ‘childcare experts’ over the years have continued to promote his ideas.
Respond to your baby’s crying
A good example of conditioning a baby to stop crying by not responding until she gives up crying is called ‘controlled crying’. But evolution intended parents to respond to their baby’s cry in the early years of a child’s life.
Today’s knowledge about your baby’s early brain and social and emotional development has shown that these old ideas about ignoring your baby’s emotional and social needs actually interfere with a critical period of her early brain development. These ideas also interfere with the development of your baby’s very important first relationship with you.
Consider her first relationship with you as her first experience of falling in love. She wants to be with you, gaze into your eyes, cuddle with you and talk to you. She’s learning what love feels like. Remember what it feels like to fall in love?
Your baby is and has to be dependent on you and will be for a long time. She needs lots of warmth and caring attention, especially during this early period.
So, this early stage of crying is her way of telling you she needs you. She just wants to be with you, which is normal. If she didn’t seek your attention, she wouldn’t survive. When you think about it like that, crying isn’t bad – crying is healthy, necessary and a good thing.
During the first 12 months, your baby is supposed to seek your attention, she is supposed to be dependent on you and needs to be responded to while she’s young and vulnerable. When you attend to her crying, you aren’t reinforcing her to cry. You are soothing her, empathising with and reassuring her, just the same as someone soothes and reassures you when you cry.
If someone comforts and soothes you when you’re upset and crying, you tend to calm down and relax more quickly and feel better. You’re able to get on with your day more easily. And the opposite is also true. If you have a long cry and no one is there to comfort you, you often feel exhausted and sad at the end of it. A worse scenario is, if you are very upset and cry and someone you love is there but they ignore you. You feel rejected, hurt and confused.
Your baby is the same. Once you’ve soothed and comforted her, she’s more able to play and socialise and get on with her day. Everyone likes to feel comforted and understood.
Excessive crying
Babies who cry excessively are the ones at the extreme upper end of the normal range of crying 1 to 5 hours per day.
How can you tell if your baby is crying excessively and you both need extra help and support? Well, if your baby is otherwise well and healthy, and she displays the following three behaviours, then her crying is moving outside the normal range and towards excessive. She cries and fusses for more than:
• three hours a day
• three days a week
• three weeks.
This type of excessive crying is often long, drawn out and persistent, and your baby seems to be inconsolable. During these bouts of crying it seems that nothing you do can help her to calm down.
Some of the behaviours you might notice are, she:
• resists being held
• resists being laid down
• resists being cuddled and won’t snuggle in for comfort
• becomes stiff and arches her back
• prefers to be held upright
• looks wide-eyed and frightened
• needs you to rock, sway, nurse and walk with her for hours at a time
• doesn’t want to look at you
• doesn’t seem to be able to shut down or fights against falling asleep
• sometimes has a swollen tummy and flexed knees, which makes you think she has wind or colic
• cluster feeds towards late afternoon and evening.
This type of crying is due to immature neurobiological processes that occur during the first 3 to 4 months. At about 3 months, your baby will have a major developmental growth change and the crying usually resolves by 4 months.
Knowing that this sort of crying is normal and there’s nothing wrong with your baby can be reassuring. The crying will reduce. It’s also good to know that just because your baby may cry excessively during the first 3 to 4 months, it doesn’t always mean that she’ll be more wakeful and fuss and cry at night after these first few months. After normal developmental crying resolves at around 3 to 4 months, her sleep and settling patterns will continue to mature as normal and average crying per day will be about 1 hour.
If you are worried there might be something medically wrong with your baby, such as colic, gastro-oesophageal reflux or some other illness, visit your child and family health nurse or your family doctor for help and advice. They can guide you on further steps to take.
You can also look in Chapter 12: Common illnesses and other sleep disruptions, for a description of common problems, such as colic and gastro-oesophageal reflux (GOR), that can cause crying.
Coping with your baby’s crying
Excessive amounts of crying – 3 hours or more a day – are difficult to manage continuously. That’s when you begin to doubt yourself. You can also become so exhausted and focused on the difficulties of the crying that you begin to miss those times of the day when your baby is not crying, such as when she’s quiet and ready to socialise or play briefly, often in the morning.
Unfortunately, your baby’s excessive, prolonged and unsoothable crying can have an intense emotional effect on you and it may become harder to respond to your baby in a calm way. You can begin to feel:
• constantly exhausted
• overloaded
• helpless
• fearful
• on edge and alarmed
• angry or aggressive
• guilty for feeling angry or aggressive
• a sense of failure as a good parent
• powerless at being unable to help your baby
• lowered self-esteem
• a loss of confidence.
And if you are anxious or depressed, the crying may seem even worse for you.
When your baby consistently has excessive and prolonged bouts of crying, your usual sensitive and soothing responses may not seem to work and you can feel disorganised and desperate in the way that you respond to her.
The following scenario is an example of excessive crying and is thought to occur for 16 to 20 per cent of babies and their parents:
Scenario: excessive crying
During the first two to three weeks after birth, your baby may have only cried when she was hungry, grumpy or tired. Soothing her was easier and you usually fed her, changed her or just picked her up, rocked, patted or sang to her and she snuggled in and calmed down. You would both have felt satisfied and continued to feel satisfied each time that happened. Feeding and social interactions were more enjoyable when she wasn’t crying because you knew you could soothe her. You and your baby’s relationship was in a positive feedback loop – that is, you did something positive and she did something positive in return. When that kept happening, you both enjoyed and felt satisfied with your relationship.
At 3 weeks old, the routine started to change as her normal developmental crying phase began. Her crying slowly increased and she wasn’t as easy to soothe. You didn’t understand what was happening and you thought something might be wrong with her.
By 6 weeks old, she was crying for 3½ hours every evening and there was nothing you could do to stop her. She arched her back, screamed and looked like she was in pain. She didn’t want you to put her down but didn’t seem like she wanted you to hold her either. All she wanted was for you to walk around with her. Her crying was unpredictable, there was no explanation for it and you never knew how long it was going to last. You didn’t expect having a baby to be like this.
Your partner and mother couldn’t soothe her either and you felt like everyone was blaming you. You blamed yourself. Everyone seemed to have a reason why your baby was crying but no one had an answer. You fearfully started to anticipate the crying episodes.
You didn’t think your baby liked you anymore. You cried and felt helpless, overwhelmed, angry and guilty. Sometimes you just couldn’t go to her when she cried and so you left her to cry while you calmed yourself a bit, but this made you feel like a failure.
You or your partner drove her around in the car to get her to sleep. When she finally fell asleep at midnight, you felt shattered and exhausted. Feeding her was often difficult and social times weren’t enjoyable either.
You and your baby’s relationship had become a negative feedback loop and unsatisfying.
Excessive crying will create intense and conflicting emotional effects inside you, such as anxiety, an urge to comfort and calm your baby, an urge to run away, fear, increasing frustration, anger, love and warmth. This is a very exhausting and confusing time for you.
Excessive infant crying can lead to:
• problems in your relationship with your baby that can contribute to persistent crying
• postnatal depression and/or anxiety
• relationship difficulties with your partner or family
• shaken baby syndrome.
What you can do
First and most importantly, remember that your baby is not crying because of:
• your lack of care and effort to soothe her
• your inexperience
• her birth order
• having a difficult temperament.
You must reassure yourself that it’s not your fault that your baby is crying. You also need to find someone you can talk to who will listen to you and support you.
Don’t try and tough it out on your own, without someone to help you with all those intense feelings, fears and worries that something might be wrong with you and your baby. If you are concerned about your baby, you can visit your local child and family health nurse, who will check her and be able to reassure you that there is nothing physically wrong. On the rare occasion that a health need is identified, your nurse will be able to refer you to the appropriate health professional.
This ‘someone’ you reach out to mustn’t undermine your confidence any further. If you feel like you’re being undermined and feel blamed by someone you’re seeking help from, then don’t keep speaking to that person, find someone else.
You’re having a hard time and you deserve to be supported, listened to and helped. This is not the time for lecturing or blaming. You and your baby need comfort and care during this difficult period.
When supporting your baby through this time, the first thing to attend to is her day–night sleep rhythms (see chapters 1 to 3). Next is to make sure you have a predictable daily and bedtime routine in place (see Chapter 4: Creating a conducive sleep environment). A predictable daily routine will keep her more relaxed.
It’s also important to be able to recognise her non-verbal body language. She will signal to you when she’s had enough interaction with you or there’s too much stimulation in her environment. A baby who cries excessively probably can’t cope with being overstimulated, so you will need to avoid that happening.
Recognise, too, when she’s getting tired and ready to sleep. In the first three months, your baby should tire and be ready for sleep about 1 to 1½ hours after her last sleep. If your baby cries excessively, stay very alert for signs of drowsiness so she doesn’t get overstimulated and over-alert. In Chapter 6: How your baby communicates, you’ll learn more about understanding your baby’s non-verbal language.
When you are playing and socialising with your baby, go for relaxing types of play rather than vigorous, very stimulating play. Her play periods may be quite brief, so make sure she’s ready and interested in talking and playing and watch for signs when she’s had enough.
The sorts of signs she’ll give when she’s had enough are:
• looking away
• looking down
• pushing the toy away
• having glazed or droopy eyes
• fussing
• kicking.
When she’s doing any of these, just sit back and wait to see what she does next. This behaviour may mean playtime is over. She’ll look back at you if she wants to play some more.
If she keeps fussing and moving her arms and legs in all different directions, this is a sign that it’s no longer time to play and socialise. Continuing will only overstimulate her and lead to full-blown crying, so she now needs calm and soothing actions from you.
The most effective method to soothe a crying baby is to carry her.
Soothing actions for your crying baby
There are lots of ways to soothe a crying baby. In fact, there are an overwhelming number of methods available in books and on the internet. There are crying baby apps, white noise apps, baby sleep sounds apps, massage oils, music, swings, baby slings, changing baby formula and prescription medicines.
But what methods work? Well, the effectiveness of these methods has been hard to measure or prove because most babies start their normal developmental crying at around 2 to 3 weeks and by 3 to 4 months their crying resolves anyway.
That can mean that each of these methods to stop your baby crying seems to work because you bought equipment or used a method at the peak of her crying at 6 weeks and after a week or so it worked. At the same time, your baby’s crying is going to start decreasing and resolve at 3 to 4 months by itself. That’s why no one has proved that the methods do or don’t work. Any of these methods are perfectly fine if they work for you and you have checked that the equipment is safe for your baby’s developmental stage.
‘Well that’s no good to me!’ you say. And you’re right.
The most effective method to soothe a crying baby is to carry her. Most studies have found increased carrying reduces crying. If your baby cries excessively you’re probably already carrying her most of the day, so let’s look at some other ideas.
Soothing strategies to reduce crying
It’s important to use a range of three or four gentle and affectionate strategies that are easy to follow and have a slow, soothing pace. These examples might suit you and your baby:
• Carry her in a sling next to your chest, making sure you’re as relaxed as you can be. She will be able to hear your heartbeat, so you won’t need a heartbeat app.
• Speak to her in a calm, soothing voice.
• Sing to her in a soft, low voice.
• Cuddle her.
• Put her on her back or tummy and use a gentle pat, rub or touch to soothe her.
• Take her for a walk in her pram.
• When she’s very upset and crying, place her in a firm wrap or just gently hold her arms and hands.
• If you use white noise, baby-safe massage oil, etc., then incorporate that into your soothing routine.
Whatever strategy you decide to use, don’t keep changing it for new and different ones recommended to you by friends, family or the internet. Stick with the soothing and calming strategies you feel comfortable with and make them part of your routine.
Your baby needs familiarity with your soothing strategy so she can relax and not be overstimulated with too much variety and change. Remaining calm, consistent and predictable is really important to her.
When your baby is ready for sleep, she needs to be firmly but comfortably wrapped in a soft wrap, with her arms flexed against her chest so she can get her hands to her mouth in case she wants to suck them, to prevent her from startling herself and then overstimulating herself. She may appear to struggle initially but most babies will respond to the feeling of being wrapped as it gives a sense of being contained, safe and secure.
If you feel very distressed, anxious, angry or aggressive because your attempts to soothe your baby aren’t working, put your baby in a safe place, such as her cot or crib, and take a break. It’s perfectly fine for you to walk away and take some time to calm down. This is the best thing for you and your baby, and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. What it means is that you need some help, rest and support. You could contact Tresillian’s live advice website or ring the parent helpline (see page 276) for support and guidance in those moments.
By 3 to 4 months of age, most babies will have resolved this crying period with no long-term negative effects. About 5 per cent of babies continue to be unsettled at 5 months. If your baby continues to be unsettled and cry for long periods, seek advice from a health professional to ensure she is physically well.
You will also need to ensure you have adequate emotional support. Coping with a crying baby for five months will put a strain on your close relationships, including with your baby. The support of your family and friends isn’t always enough, because they don’t always understand all the intense feelings you might be experiencing.
Talking to your child and family health nurse or a counsellor, such as a social worker or psychologist, who works with parents and babies, may give you some much-needed space where you can offload your pent-up feelings. Talking therapy can help you and your baby enjoy each other again.
If you feel very distressed, anxious, angry or aggressive because your attempts to soothe your baby aren’t working, put your baby in a safe place, such as her cot or crib, and take a break.
Shaken Baby Syndrome
This is a form of injury to a baby caused by violent shaking, an impact to the baby’s head or both. When a baby is violently shaken out of frustration or anger by an adult, her heavy head jerks back and forwards on her weak neck. This makes her brain move about in her skull and it gets injured. Shaking a baby can cause serious brain damage, which can lead to mental retardation, learning deficits and behavioural problems. Ultimately, it can cause death.
This injury usually happens because a parent or other caregiver loses control of their emotions. They usually don’t mean to, but they can become so frustrated and angry with the baby’s crying that they pick her up and forcefully shake her to make her stop.
Evidence indicates excessive infant crying is the most common cause of Shaken Baby Syndrome. Shaking a baby does stop crying, but that’s because the baby has experienced a blow to the head similar to a concussion injury.
Much of this heightened frustration and anger can come from a parent feeling that they are unable to calm their baby and meet their baby’s needs, or from a caregiver wanting to stop the crying.
For more information on Shaken Baby Syndrome and ways to manage prolonged crying, visit the Purple Crying website and Kids Health website (see page 279).
After 3 months
At about 3 months of age, your baby undergoes a major developmental change and becomes more socially aware. This is when her non-specific type of crying resolves. At this age, her crying starts to become more purposeful and social. Her crying will usually be directed at someone and her preference is you. After 6 months, she will definitely prefer her favourite person above anyone else. However, after 3 months you still need to respond to her crying in just the same way you have been doing. She still needs your soothing and loving response when she’s upset.
After she is through her peak crying period, your baby will definitely be signalling and trying to communicate with you through both vocalisations and crying. If you have been responding predictably and promptly to her cries through the early months, she will anticipate your soothing actions and begin to quiet when she sees you, sometimes even before you give her physical contact.
This is how your baby learns that her communications mean something and are a way to gain your help to achieve a goal. Asking for help is important for all future learning. This enables her to know that it’s all right to ask for help when she has problems later in life, such as when she’s at school.
At 6 months, your baby can use her crying to protest about something she doesn’t like, such as getting her nose wiped. Protest crying continues well into the second year. It’s normal for her to protest about something she doesn’t like and crying is the way she will tell you. You need to remain calm and soothing as you continue to wipe her nose or wash her face so she knows everything is okay.
By 6 months, you are her most favourite person in the whole world and she misses you when you’re not around, so she’ll cry and call to you. This behaviour is usually called ‘separation anxiety’, and it happens to all babies between 6 to 8 months. She cries because she doesn’t know where you are, or if you’re going to come back. Her brain isn’t mature enough to know that yet.
Eventually, she will learn that each time you leave a room, or leave her to go to sleep, or at day care, you will return. At the same time, she’s going to cry when you separate from her – a separation cry. Each time you come back from a separation, she needs you to gently reassure her. You use the same familiar soothing strategies you’ve developed over the first three to six months. You continue to soothe her until she’s calm and ready to play, go back to sleep or return to whatever the present activity might be.
After a while she’ll understand and trust that you’ll come back to her. But many children will still suffer from separation anxiety right into their third year. When it resolves will depend on many factors, including her temperament and personality.
When your baby is 9 months old, she will go through another major developmental growth period. Her brain is growing rapidly and her social and emotional development is maturing along with it. She shows great interest in other people and wants to gain much more of your social attention. This is the time when your baby becomes much more sociable and interested in what’s going on around her.
From nine months onwards, your baby uses crying to let you know that she has a physical, emotional or social discomfort that she needs you to help her with. She uses her cry as a clear communication of her need to get your attention. When she cries, she will look at you in her effort to communicate with you. She usually accompanies her crying by holding out her arms to you, clinging to you and crawling to you if she’s able.
The types of physical needs that make her cry remain the same. She cries because she needs something to eat, a nappy change, needs to sleep or she might have hurt herself. At this age, she has clear social and emotional needs, such as a fear of strangers or animals. She can protest cry at an older sibling who is bothering her, or she may be lonely for your company.
This is when your baby is becoming very much part of the family and a sociable person in her own right. She wants to be involved with family goings-on.
It’s also when another peak of crying occurs, but this time it’s at night. Once again, there’s nothing wrong with her, she is going through a normal developmental phase. This crying can signal further sleep problems if you don’t put into place a bedtime routine and some gentle, reassuring sleep and settling strategies.
What you can do
Crying at this age has a much more social component, so as well as the soothing routine you’ve already established, you can try other ways of responding to your baby. First of all, determine whether she has a physical need or a social need.
Crying for physical needs can be met easily with a feed, sleep, nappy change or attention to sickness or pain. You would respond to her cries in the same way you have done through the previous three months – promptly, gently and with some sort of soothing action.
You can respond to your baby’s social crying initially by speaking to her and showing her your face to reassure her. Sometimes singing, rocking or even distraction with a game can work. If she is very upset, just as you did when she was younger, use some sort of gentle physical touch to soothe her. Physical contact usually stops crying more quickly than anything else.
Whatever the reason your baby cries, make sure you respond to her as promptly as possible so she doesn’t get too upset. The more upset she is, the longer it will take her to calm down.
Crying is your baby’s best way of communicating with you in the first three to four months of her life. She cries because she wants to be close to you, especially when she’s tired, lonely, hungry or just needs a cuddle. During her first 3 to 4 months, she will go through a normal developmental crying stage. During this period, her crying will increase and at about 6 to 8 weeks she might cry as much as 3 to 4 hours a day. This can be very hard for you to manage, but it’s important to remember that she will stop crying. By 3 to 4 months, she will find lots of other ways to communicate with you and her crying will reduce.
All babies have periods of crying when you can’t soothe them – remember, it’s not because you’re a bad parent or that you’re doing something wrong. As long as you try to comfort and reassure your baby that you’re there to help, she’ll soon learn that she can rely on you to help her when she’s upset.
If your baby does cry a lot and it’s getting you down, try to get support from your family, friends and/or a health professional to make sure that you remain emotionally and physically well so you can continue to provide the care and attention that you want to give to your baby.
Alison’s story (mother of Jack, 6 months)
I found the first few months of my son’s life really tough. For the first 12 weeks he just cried and cried. He wouldn’t sleep unless he was in my arms, so I would sit up in bed holding him all night long.
We were going to see the early childhood nurse every week as he wasn’t putting on weight and she referred us to Tresillian. She said I was bordering on postnatal depression. To be honest, I think my issues with my son started well before he was born.
We struggled for almost four years to conceive and went through countless rounds of IVF. When we finally found out we were pregnant, we were thrilled of course, but then reality set in. I was pretty anxious about my pregnancy, and we were worried about money and how we were going to cope with a small baby. I went to see the midwives at the hospital and they referred me to a psychologist who said I was suffering antenatal anxiety.
By the time little Jack arrived, I was already pretty worn out but things just got worse. He was crying a lot and because he wasn’t putting on weight, I thought he was hungry so I tried to feed him all the time. He was probably crying out of tiredness but I wasn’t very confident and just didn’t know what to do.
The nurses at Tresillian gave me so much confidence in tackling the sleeping issues by showing me how to look for his tired signs (Jack gets really jerky when he’s tired) and then how to settle him in my arms until he was relaxed and drowsy. I then learned to put him down in his cot and pat him gently while saying ‘shhh’ until he was asleep.
We also tackled the feeding issues. We started with one tactic that didn’t work as he kept losing weight, so we tried another that worked much better. For every second breastfeed, I would pump what I had left, then give it to him as a top-up after the following feed. They even let me remain in the Residential Stay for a few extra nights to make sure it was all working, which I really appreciated.
When I got home, it was like I had a different baby. For the very first nap I put him down in his cot, used the techniques I’d learned and he went right to sleep! For the first week I needed to pat him to sleep, but after that it was like something clicked and he started to go to sleep on his own. These days he prefers to self-settle, it’s amazing!
Sometimes I feel sad when I see newborn babies as I feel like I missed out on really enjoying that stage. But I’m so glad I got help when I did, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back if I needed help in the future.
Key message
• Today’s knowledge about your baby’s early brain and social and emotional development has shown that the old ideas about ignoring your baby’s emotional and social needs actually interfere with a critical period of her early brain development.
• You must reassure yourself that it’s not your fault that your baby is crying. You also need to find someone you can talk to who will listen to you and support you.
• Whatever the reason your baby cries, respond to her promptly and sensitively, and follow a predictable, soothing routine.