March 17th, 2004
Hungry or attention seeking?
» baby footprints
I have been reading on how to take care of babies. While all books and resources agrees that babies love to be carried, cuddled, touched, some advised against carrying the baby when they cry for attention, while some believe that “excessive” carrying is not going to make the baby a fussy one.
Oh no! Baby cries, to cuddle or not to cuddle? Week one, it pains me to see a fragile baby wailing, so we carried her once she cried. Week two, good baby, sleep all the time, no problem. Week three, fussiness sets in. She must fuss at least once a day. She don’t look so fragile now. We decided to leave her to stop her crying on her own. It never really worked out. We failed! Week four, we carried her once she cried, saved us all the distress. Four weeks of experiments, my conclusion is: she only cries when she is hungry, soiled or feels lonely. So, i decides to cuddle her once she cries.
Anyway, the feeling of cuddling a baby is great.
March 23rd, 2004 at 3:19 pm
We’ve had two babies now, so we’ve had some practice. At the beginning, we took constant care of our kids, and like you say, they usually only cry when something is wrong. After that they go back to sleep (its so nice in the beginning, starting after two months they’ll be awake longer).
What we didn’t do after three months was let our first son learn how to calm himself when he was upset, but nothing was wrong. With our second son, we were more careful, and could discriminate between something wrong and just being fussy. Our second son is much more able to handle little upsets by himself now.
I’m working on my list of “advise for new dads”. I’ll make sure James gets a link when I finish it.
March 31st, 2004 at 11:20 am
Oh yes, Wolly..pls do have the list!
August 17th, 2006 at 5:42 am
The idea of babiesbeing left alone because they are merely “attention seeking” is
a dangerous one..Many psychological problems in adulthood can be traced back to leaving a
baby to cry…the baby may stop crying if left..but only because they have concluded that no-one cares about their loneliness…herein lies the beginning of a person who thinks they are
worthless.