‘Ever since Bernard was born I have never left him to cry. The one time I did I was in tears in five minutes. I figured that he would only cry if something was wrong: hungry, dirty, windy or lonely – and I was the only person who could make it right. As a result I have a contented, happy baby who everyone thinks is wonderful. I am what I would class as a very lucky mum.’
Claire
‘If it weren’t for the fact that Adam cries so bitterly for hours on end at night I would leave him to sleep on his own. But I can’t ignore the tears.’
Sue
No parent wants their baby to cry, but all babies do, some more than others. A baby who seems to cry endlessly, no matter what you do, can be a shattering experience.
‘This beautiful little nursery! She didn’t spend more than three minutes in it. I picked her up, she cried, I put her down, she cried, I turned the washing machine on, she cried, I turned the washing machine off, she cried, I sang her a song, she cried, I bounced her up and down, she cried, her dad came in, she cried, her dad went out, she cried, the cat sneezed, she cried.’
Victoria, mother of Helena, aged 20 months
Hearing your baby cry can be one of the most soul-destroying, anxiety-inducing, overpowering experiences there is. When he cries and there’s nothing you can do about it, you can feel helpless.
But not everyone reacts the same way to their baby’s tears. Some parents feel that crying is a natural part of the way their baby adapts to change, and leave him to calm himself, while others do everything to prevent their baby crying in the first place or to calm him when he does cry.
There are two different strategies that work well for different people:
• Listen to your baby’s cry – what is he really saying? Just keep on listening until you’re sure you know, then relax and do something about it
• Let someone else listen for you, and go somewhere out of earshot
• Listen to soothing music/relaxation tape on headphones
• Count backwards from a hundred before you go – he may be calming down by now
Two of the most common responses to feeling helpless are anxiety and anger, both of which can seriously affect the way you deal with your baby. Most of us have yelled at our baby at least once when he’s woken for the umpteenth time that night, and many of us have lain awake just waiting for him to cry and then rushed in at the first snuffle. But most of us know that neither of these approaches work. It’s knowing what else to do that is more difficult.
‘I’m absolutely convinced that nearly all of Helena’s sleeping problem was me transmitting to her my own paranoia about leaving her.’
Victoria
‘As soon as Camlo screamed I took him out. I didn’t want him to feel trapped. I’m claustrophobic – I didn’t ever want him to be in the dark.’
Kim
‘Sometimes I’d just yell at her. I was up about five times every night, just walking up and down, or feeding, endlessly feeding. I was just shattered. I’d put her down and creep out and then she’d start again, and I couldn’t take it. But it wasn’t any good; she’d just cry harder and I’d have to go back.’
Toni
Dealing with the feeling of helplessness can sometimes enable you to cope with the tears better, to reduce his crying and also to help him to sleep better.
If you have always gone to your baby as soon as he cried, being told to leave him to cry himself to sleep can seem cruel. But is it? Tiny babies cry because they need something: food, cuddles, warmth, stimulation – it would be cruel to ignore that plea. They also cry to protest at the unexpected, or at losing control – being put down, or as they fall asleep; opinion varies about whether it is cruel to ignore this cry. By the time your baby is seven months old a sleep problem may be aggravated by his fear that when you disappear you will never return. If you’ve never done it before, leaving him to sleep on his own at this time may be cruel, because it plays on his very real fears. Alternatively, see page 118 for a method that helps your baby cope with separation anxiety and yet sleep better.
Some parents, who suspect that they don’t love their baby, feel cruel whenever their baby cries because they feel it proves that they haven’t loved him enough, or that they have failed as parents. Such feelings make parents extremely anxious to avoid any crying, and can be difficult to escape. But remember, even babies who are loved cry. Loving parents show they care by accepting what their baby says and helping them to cope with the tears.
When nothing works, do just that. Some parents find that the less they do to help their baby dry his eyes, the more their baby likes it.
‘I put off trying a controlled crying technique for months, because it seemed so horrible. In the end we tried it and it did only take a couple of nights. I was feeding Harry maybe eight or nine times a night, a good night would be four or five times a night. I still carried on breastfeeding him but only last thing at night and first thing in the morning. That first night he screamed for four hours and then later he woke up, again for two hours. The next night it was the same. But within a week he was sleeping through. In retrospect I wish I’d done it a lot earlier.’
Ann
It used to be thought that a mother or father who attended quickly to their crying baby rapidly found that they had a baby who cried less than parents who left their baby to cry.
The most recent evidence suggests that it’s not quite this simple. It’s not just what you do that matters; it’s the way that you do it as well. If you are relaxed when you pick up your baby, even if you have left him to cry a little longer, your baby will eventually cry less than a baby who is attended to immediately by an anxious parent.
Probably the best advice is to go to him when he cries but take a deep breath first and relax, especially if you weren’t quite ready for him to need you so soon, and then walk there. It’ll be better for him and certainly better for you too. If you can’t get to him immediately, don’t worry, go when you can and relax on the way. He knows you’ll come eventually.
Most babies cry when they are surprised by a change to the regular programme. If he has been used to your continued presence as he falls asleep, your baby of more than a year will probably cry when you first leave him to sleep on his own. But if you do it firmly and gently, he will know that he will be all right. You are not trying to break his will; you are showing him that even when he is frustrated and shows it, nothing awful happens.
Maybe he will feel temporarily unhappy, but he will not feel abandoned or deserted, especially if you adapt one of the behavioural programmes in this book to your way of doing things. What is more, you may even find that he wakes in the morning more cheerfully than he has previously done. He certainly won’t hold it against you. Have a look at pages 21–4 to see how to be kind to yourself and your baby while you leave him to sleep alone.
Many babies cry as they go to sleep, as you leave them or even while surfacing from sleep. But this cry may be a protest, not a plea. A protest at a change, rather than a plea to be picked up and stimulated again, and after a few minutes they settle to sleep.
Most mothers rapidly learn to recognize their own baby’s cry. But it may take you a little longer to sort out his different cries one from another, by which time you may have got used to reacting to his cry in a certain way.
When your little baby cries at night, you feed him and he falls asleep. Later, he cries at night, you feed him and he remains awake. It’s time for a change. You need to begin to decipher his different cries and respond accordingly. If you can identify what his cry means, you will be better able to meet his needs.
Kim, mother of Rowan, three, and Lloyd, four months, has learnt that her baby has different sleep patterns to her daughter:
‘At night when Lloyd cries out, I don’t rush in at the first moan, it’s just him coming to and calling in his sleep, I know that if I leave him he’ll go back to sleep for 40 minutes or an hour, but when he cries again that means he really is hungry, and I go.’
Some parents Some don’t like solving a sleeping problem by leaving their baby to cry even when he is no longer experiencing separation anxiety because they believe that the baby will feel helpless, rejected and frightened. Yet research suggests that, when following a behaviour modification programme to help their baby to sleep (like the ones in Chapter 11), parents rate their babies as:
• slightly more secure
• less tense or emotional
• more agreeable, and
• more likeable.
Maybe the babies hadn’t changed. Maybe the parents just felt more positive after a good night’s sleep. But this in itself is good news. A baby whose parents think he is agreeable is more likely to grow into an agreeable toddler.
Listen to the cry before you go. Decide what sort of cry it is. Is he frantic, angry, sad, hungry? Deal in the most appropriate way with that emotion. A hungry baby obviously wants food. But a sad or frantic baby may just want a cuddle. And an angry baby may just need to know that you are still around but that you expect him to sleep now.
Of course, a few babies cry at night because they are in pain. It isn’t always easy to spot this cry, because it’s so unexpected, but if your baby is in pain he won’t be able to respond to a sleeping programme.
‘Something that helped us to cope when times were bad was changing our attitude, that is focusing on the fact that Ella was in pain from the colic and needed our help, rather than feeling that she was crying just because she was awkward! This made us feel sorry for her more than angry with her. Also accepting that we didn’t have to make her stop crying (something we could only fail at) but just needed to be with her while she cried. In retrospect maybe this was a factor in Ella becoming more settled and peaceful.’
Karen, mother of Ella, three-and-a-half months
Some researchers have suggested that some young babies may cry because they are attended to when they wake at night. It’s an odd thought but the logic behind it goes like this. Every baby wakes at night and babies who have suffered difficult pregnancies or births or are premature may need to wake more frequently for a variety of reasons. Such babies are used to coping with a difficult situation alone, and don’t know what to do when their parents want them to be a part of a caring relationship and so, the theory goes, they cry. If the theory is right, it may be worth leaving your baby who’s had a difficult birth to cope with things on his own a little more.
Some psychotherapists believe that babies cry when they are unhappy or confused – when your baby has cried enough, he will stop and he won’t be distressed any more. According to this theory, it’s good for your baby to cry things through. So next time he seems inconsolable try just holding him and loving him without trying to make things better. Support him by staying with him and accepting his tears as calmly as you can. It may work for you.