Baby Crying Resolutions

Your baby is crying at the top of her lungs, and you think she might be hungry. You take a deep breath and exhale. You note that your heart is racing, there's a pounding in your ears, and you're having desperate thoughts about what you can possibly do to make the screaming stop - you associate these thoughts and physical sensations with a concept you call "stress." Instead of succumbing to this concept and identifying with it ("This is me, I am stressed"), you let it be as one of many other passing objects of consciousness ("there is a temporary experience of stress"). You anchor yourself to the present moment by listening to your baby, and focus on the task before you. You calmly prepare her a bottle of milk, offer the nipple, and... she pushes it out with her tongue and begins to cry louder. She's not hungry. Now what do you do?

As parents are well aware, a baby's primary form of communication is crying. And some babies loooove to communicate. 😅 She wants something she doesn't have? Cry. She doesn't want something she currently has? Cry. She's happy and content with what she has? Um, sometimes still cry. The biggest initial hurdle to overcome is becoming overwhelmed when your baby cries, lest you forfeit the ability to make rational decisions in the heat of the moment. But as the above scenario illustrates, even if you can partially master your mind enough to stay calm in the midst of chaos, handling a crying baby is still a difficult matter of trial and error. Unfortunately, babies don't (as of this writing) come equipped with handy translation boxes to tell you why they're crying.

One solution to this is having a checklist of possible crying reasons and subsequent actions to try, especially in the beginning before you've become a pro at spotting signs for each one. You start with the first one, do a quick test to see if it resolves the crying, and if it doesn't then move on to the next one. The details and order of steps to try here are a quintessential example of "each baby and family is unique," but the method itself could prove useful if your brain works like mine. Here's what I've used:

1. Hungry? Try: seeing if she suckles on a pacifier, your finger, or a bottle nipple, then give bottle
2. Hot or cold? Try: adding/removing blanket, rubbing her legs, turning on/off fan, setting thermostat
3. Full/constipated/gassy? Try: burping, sitting upright, lightly messaging back and rubbing stomach, stair master with legs
4. Diaper full? Try: changing it
5. Lonely? Try: holding her on chest
6. Uncomfortable/restless? Try: tummy time, carrying on her stomach and walking around, rocking in swing, or holding until falling asleep
7. Sleepy? Try: putting down in crib, turning on the mobile, and giving her some time
8. Teething? Try: giving frozen teether, giving frozen wash cloth

If you've come to the end of the list, either start back at the beginning, or consider that she just needs to cry it out a bit. Just let it be and experiment.

Sleepy Habits: A Case Study for Baby #2

I'm baaaaack! And with some exciting news - which may help to explain both my sudden absence after starting this new blog theme, as well as my motivation to write these blogs to begin with - my second daughter was born! In fact, she turns three months old today. 🎂🎊

In celebration, I'd like to share a case study of her sleep training, which we just began a week ago.

Well, it was supposed to begin a week ago. She was over two months old and had officially hit the 11 lb mark, so we were ready to implement the plan that we worked out for our first daughter (see Creating Sleepy Habits for Baby). Up until this point, she would wake up 2-3 times in the middle of the night ready for a bottle and comforting by Mommy or Daddy. She had started to increase her sleeping a bit, from every 3 hours in the beginning to occasionally up to 5 or (rarely) even 6 hours at a time. But on that first night of "sleep training," a magical thing happened: she slept through the entire night without waking up once.

Wait, what?! Yes, she actually slept so long (10 hours and 45 minutes) that we decided to just wake her up. I thought it must have been a fluke! But each night since then, she has slept an average of 9.8 hours. Last night was the first time I actually got to "train" her; firstly I let her cry it out for 15 minutes until she put herself to sleep, secondly I gave her a bottle and rocked her into dreamland after she woke up around 4:30am. Before last night, she had exactly zero middle-of-the-night wake-ups for the week.

How did we accomplish this impossible feat? As usual, every baby is unique, and I can't claim full credit for bringing all of the extraneous variables together for any parent to replicate. However, I will say that our experience with baby #1 (who was, miraculously, also mostly sleeping through the night at 2-3 months), provided a few key techniques that any parent can at least try.

1. We kept her awake for 3+ hours before bedtime

After deciding on baby's new bedtime (which would not overlap with her sister's), we knew that we wanted her to be really tired by that time. So three hours before, if she was already awake we'd keep her awake, and if she was sleeping we'd wake her up. Then we'd spend considerable energy doing whatever we could to prevent her from falling asleep again. Eventually this started feeling a little cruel, especially if she had already been up for a bit before the three hour mark. So I've modified this to encourage a forced nap at least an hour before that, usually using an electric swing.

2. We engineered her schedule to encourage sleepy habits

Using the previous blog, we came up with a tried-and-true, step-by-step routine for nighttime that primes baby for sleep. Each step comes with a time estimate that we can refine over time, for the most accurate picture of her schedule. I was going to save these sorts of details for a future post on schedules (here it is!), but I'll share this one because it's relevant to this post. I fully expect the times and exact steps here to vary baby to baby, parent to parent.

Baby Bedtime
Prep bath if necessary: 0-5 min
Get & warm/prep bottle: 5
(non-bath night) Wash face with warm wash cloth & change diaper OR (bath night) bath & lotion & brush hair: 5-15
Change into PJs: 3
Feed: 10-12
Burp & hold: 15
Read book: 5
Swing if necessary: +10
Total: 43-60 +10 min

Baby Late Night Wakeup
Get & warm/prep bottle: 5 min
Feed: 10-12
Burp & hold: 15
Change diaper: 3
Swing (if not sleepy): +10
Swaddle: 2
Total: 35-37 +10 min

3. We automated the schedule and environment for efficiency

What good is a schedule if you have your hands/attention occupied and you forget the details? Just throw it out, in that case. That's why we use smart devices and assistant speakers to keep us in the flow, and to automate the room's environment where possible. A big first step here is scheduling the thermostat to prep her room to an optimal 68-72 degrees. During the summer this is much cooler than the rest of the house, so when we bring her from another room (that's at least 3 degrees warmer) it will help to drop her core temperature, thus making her sleepier; additionally, this can be done using warm water from a bath or from a wash cloth.

We set Family Bells in the Google Assistant to go off on our Google Home speakers throughout the house. So three hours before bedtime it tells us, "Time to wake up <baby name> until bedtime;" then at bedtime we get, "It's <baby name>'s bedtime! We hope." The rest of the automation is from a Google Assistant routine that we trigger with a Google Home speaker in the room. The routine itself is assistant-agnostic, in case you use Alexa or Siri instead. Again, I was going to save this for a future post, but it's relevant here.

Trigger:  "Goodnight <baby name>"

Actions:

1. Turn off the overhead lights and turn on a small side lamp
2. Set the media volume to a low, but audible level
3. Announce, "Goodnight to <baby name>!"
4. State the time
5. Announce, "If it's not a bath night, start by washing her face with a warm washcloth and changing her diaper"
6. State the weather for the evening
7. Announce, "Choose pajamas appropriate for tonight's weather"
8. Shuffle sleepytime music playlist
9. Announce, "Time to feed <baby name>! After burping, read her a story. Then swing if necessary to get her sleepy"

All we have to do is follow those steps, then wrap her in a swaddle. As we leave the room, we perform another routine:

Trigger: "Go to sleep <baby name>"

Actions:

1. Announce, "Lights out. Don't forget to shut to curtains and turn off the mobile"
2. Set the media volume lower
3. Turn on do not disturb on the speaker
4. Set the music to stop in 20 minutes
5. Turn off the remaining lights in the room so it's pitch black
6. Announce, "Only come back if she throws up, is crying loudly, or is still crying after the music ends"

Then we leave the room and turn on the baby monitor. No additional timers are required, as the routine suggests we just listen out if the music stops before her crying does.

As is the case with most parents, I value sleep. Without adequate sleep, night after night, our ability to take care of ourselves and our families diminishes. One thing I struggle with is that when I pay attention, I notice sensations that I identify as "anxiety" if I'm put in a situation that could jeopardize the sleep that I otherwise planned for the evening. I'm basically becoming anxious ahead of time for when I think I'll be sleep deprived. I get that same anxiety if my children's sleep is jeopardized. But with mindfulness, I'm working on recognizing myself getting caught up in these thoughts. A thought appears about how poorly I'll feel the next day, I have a tendency to identify that thought as reality, and then effectively manufacture "negative" sensations and emotions in the present. Perhaps by focusing on what's actually here in the moment, with the insight that the anxious thought is temporary and even out of my control, I can let things be and maintain a much more positive frame of mind. Then I can make the best decision available to me as a parent, now. Not based on what could have been or what might be later on, but now.