Anna McGrail - You and Your New Baby

Time – all children sleep through the night eventually

Sleep – can you have a nap when the baby does? Why not? Whatever needs doing, can’t it be put off? Your rest and your health come first.

Sad

SOME BABIES spend a lot of time crying. There’s no denying it. And there’s no denying that for much of the time in those very early days, we won’t be able to work out exactly why they are crying.

Rose never discovered what upset her son as a baby: ‘ One of the most useful things anyone ever said to me, in Sainsbury’s, when Thomas had grizzled for days non-stop was, “He’s one of those that just doesn’t like being a baby. He’ll be different as a child.” That really kept me going, because, as he grew, I began to see that it was true .’

Cross

AFTER WAITING for so long to meet your baby, and being overjoyed at his arrival, it can come as something of a disappointment to find that your baby seems less than enthusiastic about the world. Some babies seem to find it very hard to come to terms with the stresses and strains of babyhood: hunger, tiredness, the need to meet strangers – think how cross all these things can make you, and you get some idea of how your baby might be feeling.

Louise’s son would scream and scream for hours at a time: ‘ Nothing would calm him, nothing. No tears. Just this red face and so much anger .’

CRYING IS at its worst in the first year of life, and at its very worst in the first three months. Unfortunately, this is just the time when you are most unsure of your skills as a new parent, and the crying can sound like an unfair judgement on your ability to care for your child.

Chloë comments: ‘ I used to think that I must be the world’s worst mother. He was only three weeks old and already I’d somehow got it monumentally wrong. Other women from my antenatal group had babies who’d taken regular naps practically since birth and it seemed like it was just me. It made me feel lonelier than ever when we were awake in the dark .’

IT DOES HELP if you don’t compare your baby to other people s. How can there be any comparison between, say, a breastfed baby who weighed 61b 7oz at birth, and a baby who is given a bottle every four hours and who weighed 121b at birth? How can, in fact, there be any comparison between your own highly-gifted offspring and any other baby in the universe?

CRYING CHECKLIST

If it makes you feel better, you can prepare a list of possible reasons for your baby’s crying:

Hunger

Wet nappy

Temperature – too hot or too cold?

Wind.

And it will probably make you feel better if you have a list of things to do:

Feed the baby (and yourself if necessary)

Change the nappy

Add – or remove – a blanket

Walk up and down.

You’ll find yourself pacing up and down anyway…

It is always worth trying a feed if your baby is very unhappy, especially if your baby is breastfed: breast milk is so perfectly absorbed into the body and so quickly digested that your baby may need to be fed quite often. This is also true if your baby is very tiny; his stomach capacity may mean that he had all he could hold at the last feed but he now needs a bit more. If you can, it’s worth spending some time just cuddling your baby and letting him feed whenever he wants to so that you build up your milk supply. This can also double as a time for you to replenish your reserves of energy: crying is tiring and miserable for the baby, but to listen to it can be just as tiring and unhappy for the parents.

Clingy

FOR MANY babies who cry, the answer will simply be that he wants to be held, especially in these very early days. Some babies have a very strong, instinctive desire to be held and soothed. If you have one of these, then you have the sort of baby who’s fine and happy while you are holding her, pacing the bedroom, or patting her soothingly on her back, but who starts wailing the instant you put her back in her cot. A surprisingly large proportion of these babies, with practice, develop a magic ability to know when you are moving towards the cot and start wailing in protest before you get there. A few – and this is a theory largely maintained by fathers deranged from pacing the bedroom floor once too often – after a quiet period in which they’ve lulled you into a false sense of security, know when you are just thinking that perhaps you might just move towards the cot again and instantly start howling, before you’ve so much as actually lifted a hopeful foot in that direction.

Place your baby on a folded blanket.

Tuck one side under him…

The next side over him…

And neaten the end…

You can try:

Swaddling – see right and above, or ask your midwife or health visitor to show you how

Doing shifts: taking it in turns to hold her.

Emerging patterns

BY ABOUT three months of age, the causes of your baby’s crying will have become much clearer: you will also have got to know her patterns and can predict or anticipate what she needs. Olivia found this made motherhood easier and more rewarding: ‘ I can usually tell what’s the matter with her, yes. It surprised Robert the first couple of times I did it. I was having a bath and he was walking up and down with her because she was crying and all he could say was: “What is it?” I said, “Has she got a dirty nappy?” And of course he was most peeved to find out that she had. Now I can say, “She’s hungry”, or “She’s bored”. But the best one to learn to understand was, “She’s tired”. If Robert’s with her and she makes that cry, I can say, “She’s tired, she just wants to go to sleep. Stop playing with her, stop trying to keep her amused”. It had often happened, I realised, that we’d been waving toys in her face and all she wanted to do was to go to sleep .’

SWADDLING

Swaddling with a cotton sheet is a tried-and-tested method for calming and soothing newborns. Anyone who has watched a newborn can see the sense in it – those flailing arms and legs can’t be very conducive to sleep. It stands to reason that a baby who has been used to being warmly cushioned in the warm waters of the womb may find the sudden change to fresh air and unlimited space rather frightening. Swaddling can give a sense of security, and enables you to rock your newborn or hold him close to you gently and firmly – which babies like. The only word of warning concerns overheating, which can happen quite quickly to some babies if they are overwrapped. So swaddle your baby to sleep, but don’t overload him with blankets as well.

THE GROWTH OF LOVE

IF YOU’VE GOT a baby who’s behaving in a way you find hard to cope with – whether because she sleeps all the time, is awake all the time, is cross or clingy, you may find it very hard to love your baby. And, if you feel that way, you probably feel guilty, too. Guilt is an unpleasant, gnawing feeling, so, if you feel guilty, you probably resent the baby for having made you feel that way. And you love her less.