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.