Causes And Cures Of Crying

The causes and the "cures" for crying that are outlined here are designed to answer those frantic questions which come into the mind of almost every parent at some time: "What is the matter with him?"; "What can I do?" Somewhere in the topics below there is something that will comfort (or at least explain) your baby. 

Hunger 

Hunger is the most common cause of crying in a young baby and the easiest to deal with. Research studies have shown that if the baby is hungry, only milk will stop the crying. The baby may suck sweetened water, fruit juice or a pacifier, but he will start to cry again after a few seconds. His need can only be met by food going into his stomach. Just sucking, or even sucking combined with a pleasant taste, will have no effect.  

Pain

Pain certainly causes crying from the first minutes of life, but it is often difficult to be sure whether a crying baby is distressed by pain or by something else. For example, he may stop crying when he is picked up, and immediately pass gas from one end or the other. Can we assume that the gas was causing pain? It may have been giving him "bellyache"; it may have been making his stomach feel uncomfortably distended or it may have had nothing to do with the crying, being passed merely by chance when he was picked up.

Certain kinds of pain cause a very clear reaction: the baby will probably cry heartbreakingly if his bottle or his bath is even a few degrees too warm. He will not appreciate being pricked with a safety pin either. But minor knocks and bangs may pass unnoticed in these early weeks, especially if it is the baby's hands or feet which are affected. The myelin sheathing of some nerves is not completed for months after birth, so the baby is less sensitive to some kinds of pain than is an older child.  

Over-Stimulation, Shock and Fear

Too much of any kind of stimulation will cause crying. Loud sudden noises, unexpectedly bright lights, sharp or bitter tastes, cold hands, hot face cloths, too much laughter, tickling, bouncing or hugging can all overcome the new baby.

Sudden happenings, particularly if they involve a sense of being about to fall or be dropped, tend to cause shock and real fear. As well as cry, the baby may tremble and pale.

If there is a minor accident, such as a bang on the head while being carried through a doorway, the baby's crying is as likely to be due to the shock of the bang as to actual pain. 

Mistiming

The amount of any kind of stimulation that is "too much" depends on the baby's mood and state. What he enjoys when he is awake, content and well-fed may make him cry when he is sleepy, irritable or hungry. For example, physical games which he enjoys when he is feeling sociable will reduce him to despair if they are used to "cheer him along" when he is not. Tired, sad babies need cuddles, not play. Hungry ones need food.

Mistiming feedings will obviously cause crying from hunger, but mistiming the rate at which the baby gets the milk can cause trouble too. If you offer food too slowly - by having the hole in the nipple too small or by taking him off the breast or bottle to burp - the distress of his hunger breaks through the relief of feeding, so that the baby who was crying because he was hungry stays hungry because he is crying too much to suck.

Bathing or changing a baby who is very hungry will cause crying, both because it delays the arrival of food and because being handled when he needs a feeding tends to irritate him. He should not be bathed immediately after a feeding as a great deal of jouncing around is likely to make him bring up milk, so choose a wakeful period for baths, or wake him to be bathed before he has woken himself from hunger. Diaper changing after feedings does not matter if it is gently done. But if the baby is one who needs to burp at half-time, or drops off to sleep and needs waking up, you can change him in mid-feeding.

Getting from a sleepy state to sound slumber is often difficult for small babies. Try not to make it more difficult by changing his surroundings when he is just getting drowsy. If you must push him to the store in his stroller, start the expedition before he begins to drop off so that he can go to sleep to smooth motion, or wait until he is sound asleep and then start.   

Being Undressed

Many parents assume that it is their own clumsiness and inexperience which make babies cry when their clothes are taken off. Although skill certainly helps by making the process as quick and smooth as possible, many babies cry literally for the loss of their clothes. What often happens is that the baby gets increasingly tense as his outer garments are removed and finally howls when the garment next to his skin - vest or undershirt - is taken off. This reaction has nothing to do with being cold: it can happen however high the temperature of the room or the undressing hands. The baby misses the contact between the fabric and his bare skin. He does not like the feeling of his skin exposed to the air.

He will stop crying as soon as he is dressed again. But he can usually be kept completely calm while he is naked if a piece of textured material (a towel, a diaper or a light blanket) is laid across his chest and stomach.  

Cold

Feeling chilly will cause crying if the baby is awake or almost awake at the time. Much of the crying that goes on when babies are first put to sleep outside in their strollers is due to feeling cold air, especially a cool breeze. It is not a dangerous kind of cold - the crying reaction will keep the baby making heat for himself - but he does not like it. The crying will stop as soon as he is brought into a warm room.

Jerks and Twitches

Most new babies jerk and twitch when they are in that drowsy state of near-sleep. A few are startled awake over and over again by their own movements. They cry, drowse, jerk and cry again, unable to get themselves past the twitchy state and into deep sleep. 

Efficient wrapping up or swaddling (see below) will always deal with this kind of crying.  

Lack of Physical Contact

Babies who cry until they are picked up, stay cheerful while they are being held and then cry again when they are put down are usually crying because they are uncomfortable without physical contact. This kind of crying for lack of "contact comfort" is often misunderstood. Parents are told that the baby is crying "because he wants you to pick him up." The implication is that he is making an unreasonable demand on you and that if you "give in" you will start "bad habits." Infact, the reverse is true. The baby is not making unreasonable demands, you are. He is not crying to make you pick him up but because you put him down in the first place and deprived him of contact comfort. It is natural and instinctive for a small baby to be most easily content when he is being held by somebody. In many parts of the world (and not only in "primitive" societies either) babies are held and carried almost all the time. Grandmothers and older sisters take turns when mothers must be free, but most chores are carried out with the baby slung on the mother's back.

Picking the baby up and cuddling him will almost always stop the crying. If it does not, then holding him against your shoulder, so that his stomach and chest are pressed against your breast, will. If whimpers still break through the contact comfort, walk with the baby in this position; the rocking movement will soothe him and peace will descend.

You probably cannot hold and walk your baby for hours on end, even if there are two of you to take turns and you use a sling or carrier. But you can deal with most of your baby's need for contact comfort by wrapping him up in such a way that the wrapping itself gives him the same feeling of warmth and security that he gets when he is held close in your arms against your body. 

Wrapping your baby up is rather like old-fashioned swaddling except that it is not intended to "keep his back straight" or any nonsense of that kind. It is intended simply to give him tactile comfort, by surrounding him with a warm, soft, gentle holding layer of material which prevents his own little jerky movements from disturbing him.

Efficient wrapping is magically soothing to most babies. Wrapping which is too loose may have the opposite effect. Your aim is to encase the baby completely so that his limbs are gently held in their preferred position and so that, when he moves, he moves as one complete bundle rather than feeling himself moving within the blanket. If you use the method outlined here, you need not worry about getting the wrapping too tight. It is held in position only by the baby's own weight, and this is not enough to hold it tighter than is comfortable. The ideal wrapping material is light and slightly stretchy so that it molds itself a little to the baby and "gives" with him. A receiving or small thermal blanket will do in winter. In hot weather a flannelette crib sheet will be comfortably warm to feel without being too hot to wear. In extremely hot weather a baby who enjoys the comfort of being wrapped but is too hot will be happy if a soft gauze material is used.

The baby's natural position is with his arms bent at the elbow and his legs flexed. Wrap him like this, making no attempt to straighten him out before you start. Above all, leave his hands where he can suck them if he wants and is able to do so.

Babies vary widely in the length of time they continue relaxing best when wrapped up. Let your baby be the judge: when he wants to rid himself of the wrappings he will begin to kick and struggle to get them undone.

You can also keep crying for contact comfort to a minimum by making sure that all the surfaces the baby lies on are warm and soft. Plastic laminates and sheets may make life easier for you but they are horrible for him. So cover all plastic mattresses, mats, etc., with a textured fabric such as terrycloth. Even a cloth diaper spread under him will make a difference.

Wrapping Up

Wrapping your baby up is the most effective of all ways of giving overall physical contact with a warm, soft surface. Once wrapped, the baby will also stay warmer than with ordinary covering. Stray drafts will not easily penetrate the parcel. Although wrapping is most often used to promote sleep, it will also help your baby to feel securely held when being carried around. 

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• Lie the baby on a soft, light receiving or thermal blanket.  

• Take one side up, level with the back of the head.

• Bring it down diagonally over the shoulder; elbow held, hand free. Tuck the end under the baby's knees.

• Take the other side up with as much tension as you can without shifting the baby.

• Fold this side straight down.  

• Lift the baby a little to secure the end beneath the body.   

• The result: a secure bundle; warm, relaxed, ready for sleep.

If all else Fails . . . 

If you have looked for all these causes and tried all these "cures" and your baby still cries, inexplicably maddeningly, there are a few other techniques you can try. But "try" is the operative word. There may be nothing you can do but your best; you may all have to live through a difficult few weeks.

Rhythm

A baby who cannot relax can be helped to do so by a variety of constant rhythmical stimuli. These seem to work by blocking out whatever internal or external discomforts were bothering him. You apply a soothing blanket of overall stimulation which wipes everything else out for the baby. It will not work if there is a simple cause for the crying which you have failed to discover. Hunger, for example, will break through everything. But it will work if the trouble is some kind of general and diffuse irritability or a tenseness which is preventing a tired baby relaxing into sleep.   

Rhythmical sounds

You can buy a recording of a mother's heartbeat, as heard by a baby in the womb. It can be very effective. Soft rhythmical music on the radio or stereo works almost as well but make sure that it does not stop before the baby is properly asleep. If it does, the change in stimulation will wake him.

The burring sound of a fan or heater works excellently. So does the sound of a car engine. Most babies sleep peacefully in cars while they are running but tend to wake again the moment the engine is switched off, so a desperate drive around the block in the small hours may not really solve your crying problem!  

Rhythmical movements

Rocking a baby is universally effective in stopping crying and inducing sleep. Parents who find that it does not work are almost certainly rocking too slowly. Research has shown that the effective rate is at least 60 rocks per minute through a travel of about three inches. Such a rate is difficult to achieve by hand, even if you have a rocking cradle. There are various automatic rocking gadgets available, but you may find it easier to walk with the baby. Time yourself and you will find that a walk around the room rocks him at just about this rate. It seems likely that the soothing effect of this rate of rocking comes directly from his experiences in the womb, when you walked about with him inside you.

You can provide this kind of rocking and lots of contact comfort while leaving yourself free to get on with at least a few other things, if you carry the baby on your chest. There are a variety of commercial carriers available, but for soothing crying babies a simple sling made out of a small crib sheet is probably as good as a bought model. A stiff carrier puts a barrier between his body and yours. A sling holds him warmly against you. 

Sucking

Sucking will not stop a hungry baby crying unless it brings him food, but it will almost always soothe a baby who is not hungry.

Pacifiers

There are pros and cons to the use of pacifiers. Reasonably contented babies can manage perfectly well without them and it is better that they should do so. But they can certainly help babies who are often miserable and difficult to comfort in any other way. The furious howling mouth latches on to the pacifier and all that energy goes into sucking instead of crying. Gradually the rhythm of the sucking becomes gentler. Eventually the baby goes to sleep. Even while he sleeps, having the pacifier in his mouth protects him against a fresh bout of crying: whenever something begins to disturb him, he sucks instead of waking.

If you decide that your baby does need a pacifier, do guard against the habit of popping it into his mouth whenever he cries. Try first to find out what he needs, and provide it. His pacifier should be used only when you have tried everything else.  

Thumbs and fingers

Some babies find and suck these before they are born and use them efficiently for comfort sucking from the first day of life. Others cannot find their own hands without help until they are several weeks old. If a lot of crying that is difficult to "cure" is worrying you and you do not like the idea of a pacifier, you might compromise by helping the baby's hand to his mouth to see whether he can quiet himself by sucking it.  

Extra Warmth

Wakeful babies tend to be fretful if they are having to warm themselves, and flourish when air temperatures around them are high, provided they are lightly dressed. If your baby is crying and you cannot persuade him to stop, you can use extra warmth to calm him down and help him to relax. Although the warmth will not cure whatever discomfort is making him cry, he will react to the discomfort less if you can keep the temperature at around 75 degrees F (24 degrees C) until the episode is over.

A baby who is often miserable and difficult to comfort will give you and himself more peace if you take trouble about warmth right through the newborn period. Wrap him carefully when you carry him. Don't put him outside in his stroller on chilly days or take him for trips in a cold car until he has grown up a bit. Keep his own room and any other rooms he regularly uses as near 75 degrees F (24 degrees C) as you can manage until he seems happier and more settled.  

Colic?

There is one quite common kind of crying. It usually begins something like this: your three- to four-week-old baby seems to cry more, and more distressingly, in the evening than at any other time. As he becomes more settled, so that his daytime crying lessens and he becomes easier to comfort, the evening crying builds in regularity and intensity until he is having regular screaming fits every late afternoon or early evening.

Somewhere around this time you probably take your baby to the doctor. You want to know why he is having these regular and uncontrollable screaming fits and why you do not seem able to comfort him. What is the matter with him?

Your doctor will examine the baby and talk to you. He will assure himself (and you) that the baby is healthy and thriving and that there is no physical reason, such as pain or indigestion, to account for his apparent distress. By the end of the interview  you will know that nothing is seriously the matter with your baby but you may still be no closer to understanding why he screams or how to live with it.

The answer is probably "colic" (or "evening colic" or "three-month colic"). If your doctor does not use these terms to you it is probably because the terms are extremely unscientific. "Colic" sounds like the name for an illness needing diagnosis and treatment, potentially serious. But "colic" is not an illness; only a very distressing pattern of newborn behavior with no known cause, no treatment and absolutely no ill-effects except on parents' nerves. The term is used because your nerves matter and even an unscientific name may help you through the two or three bad months ahead if your baby does have "colic". You are the ones who are going to have to see your normally cheerful baby beside himself with screaming every evening. You are the ones who are going to have to try everything you can think of to help and accept the fact that, although every one of those things helps for a little, nothing but time ends each episode.

Don't be too ready to believe that your baby really does have "colic" though. If you jump to that conclusion when he cries in the evening for the third day in a row, you may miss some much more obvious and easily dealt with kind of distress. The chart (below) may help you to identify the syndrome.      

Living with "Colic"

There is very little you can do for a baby suffering from "colic." Your helplessness, together with the fact that the dreadful bouts of screaming occur at the time of day when you are most tired and in need of peaceful time together, makes colic one of the most difficult things for new parents to cope with.

Try to accept the fact that the cause is unknown. If you continually search for a cause, you will only confuse every other aspect of your babycare by changing feedings, feeding techniques and routines, all to no avail. "Colic" has been variously put down to overfeeding, underfeeding, too rich, strong or weak feedings, milk which was too hot or too cold, milk which flowed too fast or too slowly, allergies, hernias, appendicitis, gall bladder trouble, gas and nervous exhaustion in the mother! All these contradictory explanations share one decisive fallacy: if any one of them was the cause of "colic," why should the trouble occur after one and only one feeding in the 24 hours? However you feed your baby, you do not do it in a particular way at 6pm. If the baby had a physical problem, it would not reveal itself only at this time of day. If maternal fatigue was a cause, rather than a result, of "colic," the trouble would not occur when father took a turn with the bottle. . . .

So instead of worrying about why, worrying in case you are doing something wrong, worrying in case the baby is ill, try for a mood of constructive resignation. You are faced with a bad few weeks. Although you cannot cute the baby's attacks, you cannot leave him to suffer them alone, either. He will need all your time and attention while they last, so concentrate on organizing life so as to free yourself to cope with the least possible stress. And remember: however awful the "colic" may be, it will not harm your baby, neither will it last for any longer than twelve weeks at the very most.