evidence.
Throughout the book you will find quotations from different experts, philosophers and public figures regarding children and childcare over the last couple of centuries. They are quoted at the beginning of each chapter, then at the end you will find out when it was said. You will see that some opinions on childcare haven’t changed at all, whereas others will seem completely inappropriate. They are there to remind you that opinions on childcare change all the time, and that as a parent you can only do what you think is best for your baby at the present time according to all the information and advice you have at that moment.
With this in mind, try not to worry or feel guilty if you find it overwhelming being a parent, or if you are unsure that you are doing the right thing for your baby. Instead, enjoy your baby, celebrate his presence in your life and know that if you can meet his three basic needs for contact, food, and sleep, you will be well on the way to bringing up a happy and contented baby.
~ Times change – does the advice stay the same? ~
At no previous time has there been such a wide general interest in all that concerns childhood, as shown by the numerous books constantly issuing from the press upon these subjects and the periodicals devoted to the different phases of the child problem.
Most people can ignore all sorts of noise – the buzz of conversations, engine noises, even the radio or TV – but the instant a baby starts crying, everyone looks tense. They need it to stop.
Your baby’s appearance is designed to make you want to take care of him; he has a smooth, round forehead, big eyes, a head that’s large in proportion to his body – in all mammals this signals, ‘I’m a baby – take care of me!’ In the same way, the sound of your baby’s crying is designed to make sure you attend to him – now! We all react to the sound of a baby’s cry with increased heart rate, raised blood pressure and sweating – the common reactions to stress. A baby’s cry is meant to be stressful, to evoke an instant response.
How Easy Is It to Tell Why Your Baby Is Crying?
Mothers quickly become tuned in to their own baby’s crying, so well in fact that after only three nights in a postnatal ward, a new mother can pick out her own baby’s cries in her sleep.1
However, although you will quickly learn to identify your own baby’s cry, it’s not like a language where such-and-such a cry means, ‘I’m hungry!’ while another cry means, ‘I’m bored!’ With most babies, what varies is only the intensity and volume of their cry, rather than its tone or content, though as your baby gets older he will be more sophisticated at letting you know what he wants.
We know this from research. In one study, researchers played two tapes to mothers: one was of a one-month-old hungry baby, the other was of a newborn baby who’d just been circumcised. When the mothers were asked whether the babies were hungry, sleepy, in pain, angry, startled or wet, only 25 per cent could correctly identify the hungry baby (40 per cent thought he was over-tired), while for the other tape, only 40 per cent could identify the pain cry correctly, with 30 per cent thinking he was startled or angry2 Another piece of research, from Finland, asked 80 very experienced baby nurses to listen to recordings of babies crying. Once again, even with their experience, they were correct only 50 per cent of the time.3
Some researchers have tried analysing babies’ cries using acoustical measuring equipment. People like Barry Lester at Brown University have found that a baby’s cry may be significantly different when he has certain medical conditions; for instance, a malnourished baby has a weaker cry, while babies with cri-du-chat, a chromosome disorder, also have a distinctive cry. However, apart from these unusual examples, it seems impossible to classify the average baby’s cry as a precise language.
DID YOU KNOW?
– babies know more about crying than you do!
Researchers played tape-recordings of crying babies to newborns, and discovered that at birth they could distinguish their own cries from those of other babies. Hearing another newborn baby cry was also likely to start ‘sympathy’ crying in these listening newborns, but they were not disturbed by computer-simulated cries, a crying baby chimpanzee or even a crying, five-month-old baby.4
This does not mean it’s not worth trying to understand your baby’s cries! In time you probably will get to know what your baby wants, not by interpreting his cry, but by coming to know who he is, what he likes, and of course by the context: whether he has been fed recently, needs a sleep, and so on.
How the Three-step Plan Will Help
The three steps are a great way to start thinking about responding appropriately to your baby’s crying. Over time, as you grow in confidence, and as you and your baby get to know each other and to learn to communicate, you will begin to learn what is wrong without any help from other people.
Am I Spoiling My Baby by Picking Him Up When He Cries?
Some people believe that picking a baby up when he cries, teaches him to cry, and this view is at the heart of many sleep programmes, as you will see later in this book. But while there is a stage at which a baby can be encouraged to fall asleep alone, a newborn who is left to cry will not feel loved and secure, just abandoned. Tiny babies are incapable of comprehending why they might have to wait, but if your baby knows his needs will be met when he cries, he will learn that he is not alone – he is loved, he can influence the world, and the world in turn is dependable (all important lessons).
Tuning In to Your Baby’s Needs
Take the time to tune in to your baby and find out what he wants. You will not only have a happier baby and a good relationship, you will be encouraging his development!
Barry Lester worked with one-month-old babies, taping their cries and playing them back to their mothers, asking what was wrong.5 He found that the babies whose mothers could interpret their cries correctly, had higher mental scores at 18 months of age and had learnt 2½ times as many words as babies whose mothers had not tuned in to their babies’ cries.
‘If the mother can read her baby’s cues she is more likely to be providing the kind of child-rearing environment that will enrich development and facilitate cognition later on,’ Lester says.6
Try to remember that most babies have fairly simple needs – the need to be touched, held and fed, the need to be comfortable, the need to feel safe, the need for human company and the need to sleep. They cry to let someone know there is a problem, and all they expect is that someone will deal with the problem.
