How to Cope With a Crying Baby: Coping, You and Your Baby

Learning how to cope with a crying baby is not always easy for new mothers, particularly if they have not had previous experience with babies. For experienced mothers or those with older babies, periodic bouts of crying or continual crying can be extremely frustrating, challenging and upsetting. At times, it seems that there are no easy answers.    

The article, “Crying baby: What to do when your newborn cries” suggests that “Newborn crying jags are inevitable, but a crying baby can test your patience all the same.”

Consider the following suggestions regarding how to cope with a crying baby.

First, try to learn why you baby cries and what his or her cry means. Finding out why your baby cries and learning to understand his or her cry or different kinds of crying can be a major step towards solving a crying baby problem regardless of your baby’s age.

How  parents, grandparents, siblings or others respond to a baby crying can vary, but it may lead to an increase or a decrease in crying spells. For example, a young mother gets uptight when her baby cries, even after she has tried to meet all of his or her needs. The mother’s own insecurity about caring for her baby may cause fear or fright in the baby and increase the amount of crying.

A grandmother instinctively picks up a crying baby and holds him or her tight and the baby, feeling more secure, stops crying. A young father may get angry when his baby cries and screams at him or her to stop the crying, which results in prolonged crying spells. A grandfather rocks a baby allowing him or her to cry until exhausted, or the baby finally falls asleep. A child begins to talk to a crying baby and soothes him or her. A babysitter uses songs or nursery rhymes to stop a baby from crying.

There are no perfect answers for you or other parents coping with a crying baby. Be aware that there are multiple reasons why your baby cries. If the reason for crying is apparent, it may be easy to resolve the crying problem. If the reason is not apparent, the problem may be more complex. It may take patience on your part to cope with it.

Ask yourself, what is your baby teaching you?

Your baby, in his or her own way, is communicating with you and everyone else around him or her. It may or may not be the kind of communication that you, your parents or others understand easily, but crying usually elicits a response of some kind. A baby quickly learns what works for him or her and what does not work in order to get the desired results and thus, repetitious behavior occurs.

Know that there is instinctive crying, as well as learned crying.

Crying as a behavior is something that comes instinctively to a newborn, but may be learned. Positive or negative reinforcement can play a major role in a baby’s behavior. If you positively reinforce a baby’s good behavior and do not reinforce his or her constant crying, your baby will learn that positive behavior leads to rewards. Learn what soothes your baby like singing, music, or toys.            

Your accurate assessment and interpretation of a baby’s cry can lead you to find the causes associated with excessive crying spells. For example, a crying baby may be cold, hungry, wet, tired or frightened and settles down when the problem is resolved. On the other hand, constant, irritable crying associated with fever, earaches or rashes can be more difficult to assess and may need medical resolution.

Coping with a crying baby may be something that you need to discuss with your family doctor, other parents or even your family. You too, need relief from your crying baby at times and others are willing to help you.