Tearful baby time and why babies cry more than parents expect.

Dear parents,

Already at the beginning of your pregnancy you were filled with deep love and the desire to live peacefully and harmoniously with your child. Parents today are usually well informed and well prepared for the first time with their child. They read educational guides, know about the emotional needs of the child, attend preparation and baby care courses and exchange ideas with other parents and their midwife. The “nest” is carefully prepared for the baby to grow up in.

But again and again parents are surprised that their lovingly expected and cared for baby cries far more than they ever imagined.

The first surprise can soon lead to helplessness, stress, helplessness, fainting and even rejection.

The parents feel helpless, tired and disappointed. They puzzle.

What can only be? The diaper is changed, the stomach is filled.

Mommy has sung a little song (or already several), Daddy has been carrying the baby up and down for two hours with rhythmic movements. They have offered tea, given drops of flatulence and massaged the belly. But the baby cries. If this goes on for several days or even weeks, the parents don’t know what to do. With this small brochure, I would like to give you new background information so that you can better understand your child’s tears, find your way out of helplessness, disappointment and powerlessness and face the difficulties safely and calmly.

“But my baby has no reason to cry.” This is what many parents think, who devote all their attention to their child and are always there when it cries. Optimal care today means that parents always pay attention to supposed signals of hunger, that the baby gets plenty of tenderness, speech and body contact and has sufficient opportunity for a “belching”, that colics are “treated” with droplets, abdominal massage or the so-called flying grip and – above all – that the parents react immediately to the child’s crying with calming measures.

The painful experience of many parents shows, however, that their child is not satisfied despite this loving all-round care. So what is missing?

This question cannot be answered in a few lines. Basically, however, it should be noted that each child is an independent personality, a unique individual with a distinct emotional life long before birth. This little person has not only physical, but also mental and spiritual needs, which are not fulfilled by the care described above alone. Some of these needs I would like to describe in the following.

Why babies cry:

Contrary to the mostly held view that babies cry when they are lying in a wet diaper, feel hungry or thirsty, have a stomach ache or longing for closeness and attention, there are many more and much deeper reasons why a baby cries. Here I would like to convey to you, dear parents, that they are not “to blame” for the tears, because they have overlooked the essential. On the contrary, you have quickly, reliably and lovingly eliminated the reasons listed above.

But why does the baby keep crying?

There is now sufficient evidence that even an unborn child can have feelings of mental pain, loneliness, grief, abandonment, disappointment, rejection, being at the mercy of others or being overtaxed if it has the appropriate experiences. It can perceive these feelings, differentiate between “pleasant” and “unpleasant”, remember them and possibly communicate them with others.

Compare memories. It is known that babies perceive exactly what is happening around them.

A baby calls for help:

Suddenly we realize: There’s a little person who doesn’t understand the world yet. There is a person in need. A baby, deeply frightened by the bright vastness, who is terrified by the first bath, which falls in deep dismay by the unexpected and incomprehensible separation from the mother and now wants to express his horror with tears and screams.

Now we understand the child. It’s not the wet diaper that leads to discomfort – no, it’s the countless visitors who “get on the baby’s nerves” and don’t let it calm down. It is the violation of his self-esteem, when he has to hear during the frightening examination: “Don’t act like that! It’s not hunger if the baby wants to have his breast again after half an hour, but the desperate attempt to cope with the impressions, to cope with them and to “swallow” them with the help of sucking.

Each individuality experiences itself and life differently:

And so it becomes understandable why even a lovingly cared for baby can cry much more than parents ever expected. The care of the parents has no influence on whether the child has experienced fears of narrowness at birth, whether it has been desperate that its right to a self-determined time of birth has been taken away from it, that it feels despair, even panic when it is separated from the mother – even only for a short time.

The good care does not change the pain of repeated, often unnecessary blood tests, it does not alleviate the horror of routine examinations when the Moro reflex is triggered again. “These examples are intended to show that your baby perceives the whole world with all its bright and dark sides, and not just the loving efforts of the parents.

How do parents react when their baby cries?

“You don’t have to cry.”

Loving parents are very anxious to quickly bring the tears of their children to an end again. As soon as the baby cries, the mother tries to find out what it could have on its heart. She offers him the Nucki or a tea bottle, carries him around, swings him in the child seat or seesaws him on the gymnastics ball. Papa changes his diaper, hums a melody and takes the trained baby for a spin around the apartment.

If everything doesn’t help, the parents unpack the hairdryer to calm the child with the humming sound and the pleasantly warm air. There are no limits to the ingenuity of the parents. Who doesn’t know the reports of the overtired father, who has to drive around the block at night in his car so that the crying finally stops, and of the mother’s act of desperation, who puts her baby in the child seat on the spinning washing machine so that his eyes finally close because of the jerking?

Why do these measures not help?

Dear parents, if you are one of those who have tried everything and still stand unsuccessfully in front of your crying baby, then you also know how exhausted these attempts have been. You have tried everything and given everything and are now very disappointed, desperate or angry about the lack of resonance. The baby has always been calm or fallen asleep, but only to scream again with new strength shortly after lying down. Why do all your efforts fail?