Shortly before my baby was due this past winter, I realized that I had no idea how to take care of a baby. My friends A and J, who have two small children, invited me to their apartment for Thai food and an emergency cramming session on topics like changing diapers (not that hard, they reported–true!) and how long I should expect to bleed after giving birth (weeks and weeks).
“What about crying?” I asked anxiously. “It’s mostly when babies are hungry or they have a dirty diaper, right?”
They nodded. “Or gas.”
That third option was one that hadn’t occurred to me, but it turned out to be very relevant when Emmett was between five and ten weeks old and his digestive system was working itself out. I felt awful for the little guy: He’d be puff-cheeked and milk-drunk after a good feed, perfectly content, and then just minutes later the strange feeling in his stomach would have him wailing uncontrollably while I bounced him in the Baby Bjorn while singing the greatest hits from The Sound of Music until the pain eased.
Now, at four months, he’s thankfully pretty much figured out farts, and I’ve learned to distinguish between his different types of cries. There’s the squawk when his pacifier has fallen out and he needs me to replace it. The lamb-like bleat when he wants to be put down for a nap, and the flat, one-note “wah” when it’s time for me to come into the room because he’s woken up. Hunger gives rise to an escalating series of cries that get louder and angrier the longer it takes to produce a bottle. When I accidentally cut his finger while attempting to clip his fingernails, his mouth opened in a wide, silent scream for a few long seconds before a cry so indignant and pathetic I vowed to only use an electric nail file tool from here on out.
So it’s true that Emmett does his big-time cries for three reasons, but there are a lot of additional reasons he sometimes cries that I suspect A and J just didn’t get into in order to avoid overwhelming me. I’ve come to appreciate that crying is one of babies’ major communication tools.
“When he cries, it’s because he wants something to be different from how it is,” my cousin summed up after observing Emmett during a stay at her house in Tennessee last weekend.
I think that’s why a lot of adults cry, too, but we tend to be a lot more hard on ourselves about it.
For my part, I actually miss crying. I cried plenty in my younger years, but these days I’m on antidepressants that make it difficult, though not impossible, to produce tears even in situations where I’m deeply moved or sad or scared. I didn’t cry when I found out I was pregnant after years of trying, or after Emmett was born. I didn’t cry at the memorial service of a beloved friend and, just a few months later, that of a wonderful mentor, or when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. (He’s doing well now.)
I seem most likely to cry when I feel bad about myself—when I’ve made a mistake at work, or when Emmett was a week old and I realized I’d forgotten to take the shots meant to prevent blood clots because I was so immersed in the work of caring for a newborn. The circumstances that give way to tears make me feel self-centered, as if I feel the most not when experiencing love and loss but when my back is against the wall.
But thinking about what I’ve learned from Emmett’s cries, I think maybe what’s going on is that I cry when I need help. Tears mean I need someone to show compassion to me, even if I’m alone, and that someone is myself.
I’ve noticed that children these days are taught a lot more about the art of self-soothing than when I was growing up: how to take deep breaths or step outside to calm a racing heart. The books I’m reading say self-soothing is a skill babies can start to learn as early as three or four months. To help them figure out how to settle themselves, parents are supposed to avoid rushing to comfort them at the very first sign of tears.
Wait a few moments after the baby wakes up, the books advise. Listen to what kind of cry it is. See if they can find their thumb or turn their head a different way and drift off again.
I’ve been writing this newsletter on the couch while Emmett takes a nap in the bedroom. He started crying softly just now. I want to go in, but I force myself to take the pause first. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life learning his language; trying to hear whatever it is he tries to say
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