What exactly leads a newborn baby to cry right after it is born? Is the baby in pain? Is it protesting leaving a very warm and comfortable place? Is it acting violently?
I’m gonna guess and this might be wrong, that the new born is reacting to a new environment. You know being violently ripped from a warm dark place into a cold bright place then poked and prodded for about five or six minutes(if your lucky) is a tramatic experience.
Oh yeah and sometimes, I don’t kow if they still do this, but the delivering profession might actaully wack the babe to make sure its a live. This is an old practice, like I said this might not be done today but I read about this happening in a book called The Red Tent.
>> Is it protesting leaving a very warm and comfortable place?
I have a friend who has this theory. That we were so comfortable in there and that’s why we spend our lives trying to get back in there. I know I do. It feels good in there. 
The exit from “the warm and comfortable place” is likely about as uncomfortable for the exiter as it is for the exitee. A rather tight squeeze to say the least.
But, just a WAG, it is probably hard wired into our brains to cry just to get the breathing thing started.
Hey, you try getting squeezed out of a hole hardly bigger than your head and see if You dont cry.
and crying isnt instinctive. My daughter came out fine breathing on her own so they didnt induce crying.
Most mammals do give out sounds when they are born. Its actually a biological signal for the mother to start making milk, lick off that slick stuff, and start bonding. I’m glad humans got over that second part.
Plus, if reincarnation is true, maybe they know what kind of hell hole they’re getting thrown into.
It’s a thought, just not a real good one.
Actually they “wacked” the baby to get them crying to clear out all the mucus and junk in there throat. Now-a-days they use some type of suction piece instead. Back in my day…
Babies seem to cry because they are suddenly cast into a cold, bright environment with zillions of clarion sounds and alien things to look at. Five years ago I remember watching the surgeon pull my daughter out of my wife per a C-section. The surgeon held the baby up for me to see and ID her gender. What was unexpected is that she didn’t cry until about 45 seconds passed and then she roared forth. Of course they got her under the warming lights and all that and she calmed down mostly.
Entering into the unknown.
The same reason people cry at death.
Gosh, I always cry just after I’ve been forcefully extruded!
Does that make me less of a man?
Having recently bought a house and been through a move of my own, I can testify that I sometimes felt like crying during the process.
And I still can’t find anything.
RR
My daughter didn’t cry when she was born. Instead, she came out and looked around with a REALLY annoyed look on her face like “What the. . .”
I think most babies cry, however, because they don’t know what the hell is going on. It’s got to be the weirdest experience to go from a small, comfy place to this bizarre environment where giants are all standing around you cooing and laughing. It’s got to be friggin’ bizarre.
My son didn’t either. The doctors were worried enough that they took throat and chest x-rays to see if something was wrong with his vocal apparatus. He had good color and oxygen saturation from the start, though. So we just put it down to him being a naturally calm kid.
Then we took him home and he didn’t stop crying for two weeks.
“Please stop crying! Do you want food, a cuddle, a warm bath? Honey, you’re only getting the baby more upset!!!”
Louann “yeah, sure, when you can get more than an hour’s sleep at a time THEN it’s funny” Miller