I had to sit at a governmental agency this morning for a few hours and I was next to a lady with a baby. And I was talking a bit to her and she would say “Oh that cry means he needs to be changed.” Or “Now he’s hungry”
This got me to thinking, all the cries sounded the same, except one that came after about 2 hours where the baby was definately mad (probably wanted to leave). All in all Mr Baby was pretty good about sitting in that stuffy office.
So my question to you mums and dads, is how long after getting your baby did it take before you could tell when miss/mr baby cried, were you able to tell what the cry meant.
I always feel bad for babies like when I think, “What if they have a headache,” they can’t ask for an aspirin.
I never really could tell. We would just go through the list of stuff it could be until something worked. The one thing I could differentiate was real pain. Even now with a 6yo and an almost 2yo, if I hear them go thud I can tell by how they cry whether they really got hurt.
It was a process for us. We figured out Gothlet’s hungry cry before we left the hospital. Tired, pain and wet diaper came within the first month to six weeks. Of course, as they get older the cries change. Gothlet has about thirty words now and can ask for her sippy or food, so mainly she only cries in frustration or pain. And pain is usually prefaced by a loud thud anyway.
Those can be the best. Now and then The Littlest Briston will be off playing in another room, and I’ll hear a whump! Then comes the sound of her quietly searching from room to room looking for me, until she finally finds me and then starts wailing about falling down and hurting herself. I have the hardest time keeping a straight face…
To answer the OP, I had it pretty well figured out after six months or so.
Thank goodness. I couldn’t tell, either, unless he was sick/in pain. If he was hungry, I’d pick him up and he’d root and I knew to start there on the list. Otherwise, you just tick down the list (hungry, sleepy, loney, wet, crabby - great dwarves’ names, by the way) until you hit the one that calms the baby down. Luckily it’s a pretty short list.
They all sounded the same to me, too, with two exceptions: the “mad” one, and the “crocodile tears” one, in which, for instance, the kid thought sobbing because I wouldn’t let him have a candy bar would actually work.
Oh, pain too, but that was pretty much the same as “mad.”
I don’t think any of them ever cared if they had a wet diaper.
Well, it sort of comes around the same time you get your eyes in the back of your head.
In other words, you’ll be able to predict what your baby needs when you know the baby as an individual, know his schedule, and what he needs and when. You won’t ALWAYS know, of course, but you’ll be able to predict it with some accuracy because you’ve learned how to anticipate.
I think that lady was hamming it up a bit, but really what I’m saying doesn’t really disagree with her: when the baby cries and hasn’t been fed in a couple hours, you can be reasonably sure that “that cry” means he’s hungry.
Actually, I’m a lot better at that. Suddenly all my alarm bells will start ringing because there is the wrong kind of silence, and I’ll search around and find that my dipstick husband left our door open and the baby is trying to climb into our bathtub, or my dipstick daughter left her breakfast dishes on the table and the baby is trying out drinking milk from a cup, or my dipstick self left the gate open and she’s in the study stealing truffles off my desk.
Our first daughter was a champ sleeper. So it was easy to figure out her cries when she was ‘off’ her schedule. Our second daughter has been a bit harder to decode.
With our first, I could tell the difference between ‘come and get me now’ , ‘i’m sleepy, but want something…but too lazy to really cry…so I’ll drift off again in about 10mins’, hungry, uncomfortable wiggle cry, tired…cries like that.
But for now you just run through the are they changed/fed/nap time etc. if that doesn’t stop the cry then I don’t know
I knew within the first few weeks. It’s been a long time, but hunger had a more urgent note to it than wetness (actually, I doubt that newborns cry due to wetness until the wetness turns to discomfort–either cold or skin becoming raw). A “I want comfort” cry seemed more plaintive to me.
I can definitely tell the “I’m exhausted mommy; take me home” cry vs “I’m restless” or “in pain” I hear at the mall/store from other babies.
As to when I could distinguish MY infant’s cry vs a strange baby’s–within 24 hours. I was walking back from the sitz bath room (in 1989, when you could stay for 5 days) and I heard Daughter cry. I asked to take her back to my room (rooming in was still optional and not all that common) and the nurse seemed surprised. “You’re right–it is Baby Girl X!” she said.
It’s my one claim to fame.
All I really know with my 9-month-old is hungry, tired, and mad/in pain. She doesn’t do the first so much anymore. She never cried at all for a dirty diaper that I’ve noticed. Tired is more of a whine (and hungry is at this point). Her angry cries (like when she wants picked up and I instead walk away from her) are actually so pathetic they’re almost cute.
Seconding what Ellen Cherry said. It’s not like a baby has a “Stock market fell 400 points” cry or a “The Phillies lost the Series” cry. Babies have limited needs and there’s really only a couple of types of cry at most, and when you hear one you’re at least subconsciously, and usually fully consciously, aware of how long it’s been since the baby ate or slept or had a diaper change or has gone without attention. I suspect that if the woman in the OP, I dunno, woke up from a coma or something and had no idea what had been going on with the baby for the past few hours, she’d have a hard time knowing what was up with the crying with any of the certainty it sounds like she had.
I also suspect that in the cases of the posters who never really could figure it all out, it was because the baby didn’t have discernibly different cries for different specific situations. Not much even an attentive parent can do but guess.
Except, for the “you just gave me a shot!” cry of outraged betrayal after they got an immunization.
The rest of the time, it was just the same old screaming… 24 hours a day… 7 days a week… (my son had 24/7 colic for 3-4 months and remained one of the worst sleepers I’ve ever heard of, for the first 2 years of his life. Yeah, it was horrible).
My daughter is 5 weeks old. I can tell pain (long, high-pitched wail), and hunger (a sort of rhythmic “ooh-ah ooh-ah” cry). Anything else I still have to do trial-and-error to figure out what the problem is.
