Chapter 2 - Crying…our babies' ancient survival tool

Main points:

• The Crying Reflex: Your baby's brilliant attention-getting tool
• How a baby's crying can make a parent feel
• Do different baby cries have different meanings? Some babies scream even for little problems.

At delivery, your baby's powerful wails are a welcome sign that you've given birth to a healthy child. However, if after the first week or two, your infant continues to scream, his crying may become the last thing that you want to hear! But, we should be grateful for our baby's crying - it's one of their most wonderful abilities.

During the first few months of life, your baby will have no problem getting by without the foggiest idea of how to smile or talk, but he would be in terrible danger if he couldn't call out to you. Getting your attention is so important that your newborn can cry from the minute his head popped out of you. This great ability is called the "crying" reflex.

The Crying Reflex - Nature's brilliant solution for getting a cavewoman's attention!

"A baby's cry…cries to be turned off."

-Peter Ostwald, Soundmaking: The Acoustic Communication of Emotion (1963)

My guess is that millions of years ago, a Stone Age baby accidentally was born with a perfect way of getting his mother to come to him - screaming. Even if he yelped just because he had the hiccups or had scared himself, his mom appeared in seconds.

Other baby animals also need to get their mother's attention quickly, but they would never scream for it. Loud crying could be fatal for a young rabbit or monkey, because the sound might reveal his location to a hungry lion. For this reason, modern kittens meekly meow for help, squirrel monkeys beep softly if they fall out of a tree, and baby gorillas barely whimper when they need their moms.

Baby humans, on the other hand, gave up such caution a long time ago.

Whenever they needed their cavemom's attention, they wailed! Perhaps such
brash, demanding babies were safe because their parents were able to fight off dangerous animals. Or perhaps a powerful cry was the only sound that could carry far enough for a baby's mom to hear him while working or chatting with friends outside the cave. Some scientists even believe successive generations of babies began to shriek louder and louder because such noisy infants received more food and attention to keep them quiet, and thus were more likely to survive.

We may never know exactly when or how ancient human babies learned to cry, yet it's clear that the cave babies, who survived and passed their genes on to us, were those who could "raise a ruckus".

Your baby's shrill cry is powerful enough to yank you out of bed or hoist you off the toilet with your pants down. (Not bad for a ten-pound weakling!) However, it is a mistake to think your baby is crying because he's trying to call you for help. During the first few months, trying to get your attention is the furthest thing from your crying baby's mind. In fact, the amazing truth is your baby has absolutely no idea he's even sending you a message.

When you hear your two-week-old scream, you're not getting a communication from him; rather you're accidentally eavesdropping on his conversation…with himself.

His cries are like agitated complaints he's muttering to himself, "Gosh, I'm hungry." or "Boy, I'm cold." Since you're right next to him, you hear his grumbles and want to lovingly respond, "What's the matter sweetheart? You sound upset."

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Chapter 3 - The Dreaded Colic - A "CRYsis" for the whole family

Main points:

• What is colic?
• The top ten ancient theories about colic
• The Colic Clues: Ten universal facts about colic
• Today's top five colic theories

"The sound of a crying baby is just about the most disturbing, demanding, shattering noise we can hear. In the baby's crying there is no future or past only now. There is no appeasement, no negotiations possible, no reasonableness."

-Sheila Kitzinger, The Crying Baby

Waaaa….waaaa..…waaaaaa……WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

The word infant derives from Latin and means "without a voice".

However, many colicky babies wail so powerfully that their parents think a better name for them would be mega-fants or rant-fants!

There's no doubt that colicky infants can cry louder and longer than any adult! We would drop from exhaustion after five minutes of full-out screaming, but these little cuties can go and go, with the tenacity of the Energizer bunny.

The word colic derives from the Greek word, kolikos, meaning "large intestine or colon". In ancient Greece, parents believed that intestinal pain caused their babies' crying. (While a gas twinge may start a baby's screaming fit, at other times these very same babies have gas and noisy stomachs yet they don't even make a peep. More on this in Chapter 4.)

All babies have short periods of crying that usually last for a few minutes, totaling about a half hour a day. These babies settle quickly once fed, picked up or carried. However, once colicky babies start their frantic screaming, they can yell, on and off, for hours.

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Appendix A

Red Flags And Red Alerts - When you should call the doctor

Fortunately, most colicky babies aren't physically sick; rather they're sot of "homesick" - struggling to cope with life outside of Mama's womb. But, how can you know when your infant's cries are a sign of sickness?

Here's a primer of the ten red flag's that doctors look for to decide when a baby's cry signals illness, plus a review of the ten red alert medical conditions they may indicate.

The 10 "Red Flags" Your Doctor Will Ask You About

Whenever you're worried about your baby you should, of course, contact your doctor for guidance. And, when you do, it's likely he'll likely ask you these two questions to help him decide if your baby has colic or something more serious:

• Is your baby growing well and acting normal in all other ways?
• Is your baby calm for long periods of the day?

If the answer to either of these questions is "No", then your doctor will ask you how your baby acts when she isn't crying. He's looking for these ten red flags:

• Persistent moaning (groans and weak cries that continue for hours)
• Super shrill cry (unlike any your baby has made before)
• Repeated vomiting or any green or yellow vomit (more than one ounce and more than five episodes a day)
• Change in stool (constipation or diarrhea, especially with blood)
• Fussing during eating (twisting, arching, crying that begins during or shortly after a feed)
• Abnormal temperature (a rectal temperature of more than 100.2°F or less than 97.0°F)
• Irritability (crying all the time with almost no calm periods in between)
• Lethargy (a baby who's sleeping twice as long as usual, "out of it", or not sucking well over an eight- to twelve-hour period hours)
• Bulging soft spot on the head (even when your baby is sitting up)
• Poor weight gain (gaining less than a half ounce a day)
  

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Appendix B

The New Parent's Survival Guide - The top ten survival tips for parents of new babies

Now that we've talked all about the baby's crying…let's talk about yours! All new parents know if you ask five people for their advice (not that people even wait for you to ask) you get ten different opinions. So, even though you didn't ask me for my opinion, here is my list of ten sanity-saving, survival tips to help you endure the challenges of your baby's first months a little more gracefully.

1) Trust Yourself - You are latest in the unbroken chain of the world's top parents

Leslie, still in bed with four-day old Gabriel, told me,"I'm usually such an optimist, yet I've had weird dreams of dropping him and leaving him places. My husband jokes that some special 'inexperienced-parent' alarm will go off when we take Gabee home from the hospital."

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." - Dr. Benjamin Spock

If you're like most new parents, you probably alternate between feeling like a major league pro and an amateur. It's enough to give a person "parental whiplash". And, the conflicting advice given by many baby experts can deepen the confusion.

But, before you lose confidence, please remember this: You are part of an unbroken chain of successful parents that stretches all the way back to the beginning of time! You and your baby have survived because you are descended from the best mothers, most protective fathers and strongest children in the world! That's why Dr. Spock's advice to parents is so correct.

Trust your feeling. Relax and remember that all your baby really needs from you is milk and your nourishing love. And all you really need is patience, support, a little information, and perhaps a massage every once in a while.

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