Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 65

Nothing pierces parents’ hearts more than the cry of their baby. Yet cries can push dangerous buttons, too: feelings of anger, helplessness, despair – feelings that may overwhelm you and fill your mind with scary thoughts. Some very loving mothers have confided to us crazy thoughts they’ve had, such as throwing their baby out the window. And while it’s not unusual to plead with your baby to “please, be quiet”, there are good mothers who, on occasion, actually scream “shut up” at their baby. These feelings are aggravated even more by the fatigue that comes with parenting a fussy baby.

You can guard against doing something that you would immediately regret by rehearsing ahead of time what you would do if you felt yourself about to snap. Programme this behaviour into your mind, play-act it when things are going well, so that you will know how to react if you are pushed past your limit. When you feel overwhelmed by anger, feel like yelling at your baby, or feel that you are at your wit’s end, do one of the following: hand your baby to a less distressed set of arms; put your baby down momentarily and walk out of the room to compose yourself; put your baby in the sling and take a long, hard walk; or call an empathic friend, one who has survived the same trials.

Having these angry feelings does not mean that you are not a good mother. The mothers most bothered by their infant’s cries are often the ones who are most sensitive. Sensitivity can work to your advantage as a mother because it prompts you to try many ways of comforting your baby. Yet this same sensitivity can also set you up to feel like a failure if you can’t stop the crying. Having these feelings means that you are a tired mother, and your baby’s cries are getting to you. Take these emotions as a signal that you need some help in managing your feelings, managing your own care, and managing your baby’s cries.

The rooming-in option. Baby awakens in mother’s arms or with mother nearby and begins to cry. Because mother is right there, she hears the attachment-promoting sounds of baby’s cry, which trigger in her a nurturant response. She immediately caresses and comforts her baby – before the cry has to escalate into a more disturbing sound or enter the avoidance-promoting phase. After several of these cry-response rehearsals, mother learns to recognize baby’s pre-cry cues: a squirm, a grimace, followed by lip-smacking attempts to find something to suck on. Mother offers her breast before baby has to cry. Soon baby learns that he does not have to cry, certainly not in a disturbing way, to get what he needs. (As an added perk, the attachment-promoting phase of the infant’s cry can trigger the release of mother’s milk-releasing hormones, giving her a biologic boost for comforting; the avoidance-promoting phase of the infant’s cry can tie the mother up in knots, inhibiting her milk-releasing reflex.)

Early in my years as a newborn nursery director, I realized the difference between how nursery-reared and rooming-in babies act. We used to say, “Nursery-reared babies learn to cry harder; rooming-in babies learn to cry better.”

Imagining how your newly born baby feels can be a learning experience for a new mother who is struggling to develop a parenting style. Everything changes for the baby at birth. Think how he must feel in the drastically new environment in which he finds himself. He goes from warm, dark, smooth wetness, where he is held on all sides, and never experiences need of any kind, to cold, light, rough dryness, where he is alarmingly free on all sides and experiences a desperate need to be securely held. He has never felt the sensation of hunger before, and initially does not know that mother will ease it for him. He only knows that if he can suck he will survive. This terrifying hunger thing must be stopped! It is crucial that mother be there before baby becomes anxious and frantic (and this is possible only if they are not in separate rooms). Then baby learns not to associate the feeling of hunger with the feeling of distress. This realization is one of the earliest “house rules” that baby can learn: crying frantically when hungry is neither necessary nor the norm in this strange new life.