Follow up on babies crying

I thought I was going to be done with crying after my last post (ahem, talking about crying, haha), but then I read this amazing article: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2011/09/7-reasons-to-calm-down-about-babies-crying/ about why we shouldn’t get upset when our babies cry or do whatever it takes to stop the crying immediately. So instead of talking about this myself, I want you all to go and read that article and learn about exactly how to respond when your baby cries (hint: you still don’t ignore them!) and tell me what you think.

I really love how they emphasized that we need to love and support our babies through their emotions, even if that means that they keep crying for a bit. I have to be honest, I did not always do that with my crying baby. Often I would just offer to nurse even if he didn’t need it because it would get him to stop crying. So now I try to help him work through his feelings: asking him questions, validating his sadness, holding and hugging him if he wants, and trying to meet whatever his real need is at the time.

One of the articles cited in that post is this one: http://www.awareparenting.com/comfort.htm. It talks about why crying-it-out is undesirable, but also why sometimes babies can use a good cry in your arms (what she calls “crying-in-arms”). It is a little long, so the author has a shorter version here: http://www.awareparenting.com/article1.htm, but I definitely recommend the long one if you can (though the short one is good too, and good for passing along!) So if you want a little more information about helping babies have a good cry if that is in fact what they need then that is a great source. I hope you find these as useful as I did!