Murrah left, Courtney practiced swaddling Annie in a looser fashion, the way she had tried with the support of the specialist—and it worked. She began to pay closer attention to Annie's yawns and other signals that she was tired, putting her down at the first signal. Courtney recalls, “I started paying attention to cues like yawning, rubbing eyes. When I thought she couldn't be tired, [Annie] was telling me she was tired. When I thought she couldn't be hungry because she just ate, she was telling me she was hungry again. It was a matter of learning how to really listen to her.” Right about that time, Annie stopped crying. Not completely, of course. She just developed a normal, recognizable pattern of crying that her mother could now decode. Also, as Courtney grew less fearful and more confident, Annie could relax and feel that her mother was ably in charge.
WHAT'S THE ANSWER?
There is no magic formula. Babies are human, and all humans are different.
The first three months of a baby's life are not about training him to be an independent person. That comes later. The first months are all about helping him to shift from depending on the comfort of the womb to adjusting to the world he's been born into. What he needs to know is that when he is distressed, someone who cares about him is there—even if his problem is inexplicable. The response he gets as he makes his transition from womb to world is his first lesson in how life can be expected to respond to his woes.
Maybe an infant is telling her parents that their best-laid plans might not suit her needs. Dr. Heidelise Als, director of the Neurobehavioral Infant and Child Studies program at Children's Hospital in Boston, has seen thousands of babies and their parents. She says,
I've seen parents, often professional, who had everything planned. They had their careers going, the house ready, the nursery ready, everything on schedule. They expected the baby to fit in.
Then the baby screams, and they're befuddled and don't know what to do, because he's not doing what they want him to do. I see that baby as a strong baby. He's asking, “Are you there for me? How much time can you make for me?”
We can be so pushed now. Women can be so focused from pregnancy on to get things scheduled. And that's not how parenting goes. That's not how growing up goes. I would prefer to support parents earlier, to tell the truth. This is a big step. This will reorganize your whole life, your whole emotional life. You'll gain a ton from it, but it's a dimension that a nonparent can't appreciate.14
A study of 157 infants, whose mothers recorded the duration of their crying for a full year, found that when mothers responded rapidly to crying, infants cried significantly less.15 The sound of an infant's cry has been found to increase heart rate and blood pressure in adults, and to elicit feelings of anxiety and irritation. The common adult reaction is to run to the baby and try to relieve his distress. When a baby is described as “easy,” caregivers still have increases in heart rate and blood pressure, but not as great as those in parents who describe their offspring as “difficult.” According to research from the University of Michigan, those with “easy” babies were more alert and attentive to a crying infant than those with “difficult” babies. In other words, nonstop crying, excessive crying, and the crying of premature babies—which occurs at a higher and more irritating octave than that of full-term infants—can turn parents off, to the point of making them slower to respond.16
While that is understandable, it's important to try the opposite approach. Rather than shutting out the sound, try to provide comfort. Those attempts can be clumsy, but nevertheless they provide the kind of visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation that promotes infant development. Even the most bumbling attempts to soothe a baby, when performed as calmly and consistently as possible under jarring circumstances, have a positive effect. The infant is learning that someone important takes his distress seriously.
Newborns provide plenty of clues to how to care for them. And evolution has equipped people, whether biological parents, adoptive parents, or other adult caregivers, with the right instinctive responses: they hold their newborns close, offering soft words, kissing them tenderly, and gently stroking, warming, and feeding them. Even during interminable minutes or hours when none of it seems to be working, the comfort that is offered lays important groundwork.
PARENTS HAVE NEEDS, TOO
When an infant's crying overwhelms you, it's time to step back. I have an uncomfortable memory from my firstborn's infancy. I tucked my inconsolable daughter safely in her crib, and then trekked down two flights of stairs to our basement. I think I was crying, maybe shaking with frustration. I picked up a plastic laundry basket and hit it against a wooden support beam, and then hit it again. After a minute or two of this highly physical but harmless exercise, I was somewhat relieved, definitely spent, and more than a little ashamed. By the time Jenny was three months old, the laundry basket was ripped, tattered, and unusable.
I shouldn't have been ashamed. I didn't know it then, but I was doing exactly what experts today say is the right thing to do.
When frustration over a baby who won't stop crying gets out of control, first make sure the baby is safe, out of harm's way. Then walk away for the minutes it will take to regain calm control. Away from their infants, mothers and fathers can then do whatever makes them feel better: Clench and unclench their fists. Hit a laundry basket against a beam. Ears covered, jog in place. Call a friend, neighbor, or relative and ask for help. Do anything necessary to get the frustration out, as long as it's away from the baby. Then, relieved and refreshed, they can go back and tend to the infant's needs.
CONFIDENCE
Parents should remember: they're still the people they always were. When infants continue to cry despite all the best efforts of parents, it's easy to follow them down that rabbit hole into escalating fear and panic. But rather than take that route, it's time for parents to flex their parental muscles—not by being cold and unresponsive, but by holding on to the confidence and certainty that they're truly doing all they can. Sometimes doing all they can means simply being with the baby through moments that are particularly hard.
The infant is disorganized internally, but the adults around him don't have to be. They can take a cue from Saturday Night Live’s character Stuart Smalley and recall: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, this baby likes me. This is true even when the baby's face is red, his stomach is tight, he's looking in all directions, and he's screaming. As mothers, fathers, and caregivers stick with it through the difficult times, they're teaching infant brains that, when in distress, help is nearby.
It helps to share calming information with a baby. We'll get through this, sweetheart. Remind the baby that the last time he cried for a long time, he eventually stopped and fell asleep. Remember this morning? You cried hard then, and after a while you had a good sleep. You will again. Mustering up a confident voice, parents can remind their infant that someone is there for him when he's happy, and remains there for him when he's distressed. In the process, those brain connections that signal comfort will be formed and strengthened; those that signal neglect will be ignored.
A confident voice sounds far different, even to an infant, than a voice shaking with uncertainty. Courtney Bowles, during those weeks when she was unable to soothe crying Annie, lost what was probably the most crucial element in her arsenal—her self-confidence. And don't think Annie didn't notice. Babies take everything in through their developing senses. When a parent's body speaks with calm conviction—the voice, the face, the movements—it must sound to an infant like reassurance.
REASSURANCE, EMPATHY, SUPPORT, AND TIME-OUTS
Reassurance is crucial for parents of colicky or fussy babies. They understandably want certainty that nothing is physically wrong with an infant who cries more than average, and this reassurance is the first step in helping parents deal with a baby who cries inexplicably
