Last year, I worked at an infant center where I was responsible for caring for three infants at once.
This task was overwhelming at times, but I learned a lot about motherhood in the process.
While I’m not a mother right now, I would like to be someday.
After picking up a few techniques from my experiences with infants, these few tips may help you to get your baby to stop crying:
1. Sometimes, babies just want to be held.
If your baby isn’t tired or hungry and doesn’t need a diaper change, then he or she might just want to be held.
Human beings are social by nature, and we crave contact from birth.
If your baby won’t stop crying, lay your baby down on top of you.
Place your baby’s chest on top of yours, so you have ventral-ventral contact. I suggested this to someone once, and his baby was immediately soothed.
2. Babies love music.
When I used to work in the infant center, we sang to the babies. The music immediately caught their attention.
When we wanted to put the babies down for a nap, we would sway them in the rocking chair and sing to them.
This would subdue them into slumber.
3. Babies love white noise.
I've seen videos on YouTube where parents placed a fan, a hair dryer or another object that provided white noise next to their baby.
Within a few seconds, the baby stopped crying and fell asleep.
In the infant center, we had fans in all the babies’ rooms. When we would put them in their cribs, the white noise helped them to stay asleep for a while.
4. Use your intuition.
Unfortunately, since infants can't speak, we must use our intuition when trying to understand them. Think of how frustrated you'd feel if you couldn’t speak.
Parents also become frustrated when their baby won’t stop crying, which is understandable.
However, when you start to feel flustered, just remember your baby is completely helpless.
They are relying entirely on you to meet their needs.
One time, a baby girl in the infant center was crying, and we couldn’t figure out why she was upset.
I told everyone I thought her foot was bothering her because she was crawling, and she normally walked around.
Nobody believed me at first. Then, I picked her up and looked at her feet.
Her pinky toe was sticking out of her sandal, and it was hurting her. I placed her toe back into her shoe, and she stopped crying.
Soon after that, she started walking again.
If you can sense that something isn’t right, trust your intuition. If your baby is behaving in a way that's unusual, probe further.
Don’t listen to other people right away. See for yourself, as you might be correct.
Try to remember being a baby is tough. You leave your mother’s warm, dark womb and enter the cold, bright world.
There are a lot of adults poking at you, and everyone is guessing what you need. So, you just continue to cry until your needs are met.
I hope these suggestions helped you to better understand your little bundle of joy.
