Calm Your Screaming Baby BLOG

 
Facts about infant crying – time to worry
My previous article (Facts about infant crying – the "healthy reasons") discussed the normal, not dangerous reasons for infant crying. However, as I stated crying for an infant is communication and your infant will communicate when there it is feeling pain, Note that I will not discuss colic in this article. Actually, you should forget about colic for a while since you might risk your infant’s health if you are ruling out all of the dangerous cases because you think your child has colic.

One important rule: do not act as a pediatrician on your own. Do not determine your child’s diagnose yourself. You are gambling with your child’s health if you are giving diagnoses. Please contact a professional (a physician or other another health provider) if your child has abnormal crying.

So, let us look into some of the reasons for abnormal crying in infants. Note that there might be several reasons that are not mention in this article (I cannot repeat this enough times: contact professional health personnel).

1. Ear infection or ear pain. Usually your child will have fever and diarrhea and/or reflux. You might notice that your infant is trying to pull its ear.

2. Sore Throat. Especially for very young infants, it might be difficult for parents to understand that the child is crying due to sore throat. You will most likely recognize a standard cold (symptoms like for adults) but other reasons for sore throat might be difficult to recognize. However, look for signs like fever, vomiting and poor appetite.

3. Eye infection. Eye infections are quite common for newborns. Look for signs in your child’s eyes (swollen eyes, watering eyes or pus formed from eyes).

The reasons above are the most common, and least dangerous, reasons to contact health personnel. However, an infant can have many other diseases, like heart problems, allergy, asthma, etc. Please contact professional health personnel if your baby is acting abnormal. As I said earlier in this article, some things cannot be repeated or emphases enough times. Here is my conclusion for you:

Contact a doctor if
* ...your infant is in pain
* ...your infant has breathing problems
* ...your infant has fever
* ...your infant is vomiting
* ...your infant has diarrhea
* ...your infant has bad appetite
* ...your infant has rashes
* ...you suspect that there is something wrong with your infant

If there is nothing wrong with your child and your doctor has a bad attitude because of your “false alarm”: change doctor. You are allowed to be concerned by your child health. You are obligated to contact professionals if you are afraid that your child is in danger. You are allowed to be wrong. Do not let is stop you from contacting health personnel next time if you were wrong the first time. Your child needs your concern.

Sincerely,
F.P. Larson
- posted by www.calm.your.screaming.baby.com @ 4:59 PM 0 comments  

 
Facts about infant crying – the “healthy reasons”
Infant crying can be frustrating and frighteningly for parents. When you are unable to calm your baby, you forget that all babies cries, crying is the way babies communicate. An average infant cries an average 2-3 hours per day. As we all (hopefully) know, there are no such things as an average infant and parents have enough to cope with to use a stopwatch on their baby and calculate crying averages.

Therefore, what are the reasons for infant crying? Let us first look at the “healthy” reasons:

1. Hunger. Hunger is the most common reason for crying. Is it more than one hour since your baby ate? Is it more than 2 hours since you breastfed your baby? Hunger might be the reason for crying. An infant eats quite frequently, especially the first weeks after birth.

2. Wet diaper. Wet diapers are uncomfortable. Change the diaper and see if it helps.

3. Need of body contact. Maybe your infant wants you to hold it. Especially the first weeks after birth body contact are very important for the child. Besides, by picking the baby up when it is crying, you give an important signal: “I care about you”.

4. Gas pain. Gas pain is common after eating. Try to get your baby to burp. A good advice is to let the baby burp several times during eating in addition to a final burp after eating.

5. Too hot or cold. Infants cry if they feel too hot or too cold. Check if your infant is too hot or too cold and remove or add more clothes.

6. Boredom. Your infant cries if it is bored. Try to play with it, change its toys, put on some music, start singing or whatever you think will stimulate your child.

7. Stress. Your infant is stressed if you are stressed. An easy solution would be: do not stress but since we live in the real world: Try to stimulate the child.

8. Fussy environment. The best example of fuzzy environment is family gatherings where everybody wants to talk to the infant and everybody is talking at the same time. Hey, I want to scream at most family gatherings. Big changes in daily routines might also give the same symptoms. Solution: carry your infant ion your arms. I know: theory, theory… It is easy to get frustrated when your arms gets tired and you are unable to perform any other tasks than carry the baby.

The eight reasons listed above will very often result in eight different sound of crying. You will make your life much easier if you take the time to learn the differences. Other ways to calm down your baby are: give your baby a massage, give your baby a bath, rock your baby, play some calming music, let your baby listen to white noise… You can read more about this on our website.

In my next article, I will discuss the “unhealthy reason” for infant crying, until then: hang on out there...

Sincerely,
F.P. Larson
- posted by www.calm.your.screaming.baby.com @ 6:34 PM 0 comments