How can I calm my newborn

How can I calm my newborn ?

It is very usual that new mommies tirelessly struggle with calming the crying newborn baby and at times it is just impossible to figure out what is wrong with the baby. You as a mommy try to figure out by pressing the belly to know if he has a stomach ache, check diapers but they are all dry, try to breastfeed but they won’t take it. It feels like there is something very wrong and you rush to the doctor or atleast give an emergency call to your pedic. When you reach the doctor, the baby has already gone to sleep and the doctor does the regular checkup and tells you everything is fine. But you are in an awe, at what just happened, why did my baby cried for so long and that too so furiously.

It happens almost with all the firs timer mommies that they are sometimes unable to figure out the reason behind baby’s crying. I always tell my new-mommy friends that if your newborn is healthy, has not been diagnosed with any illness whatsoever, then there will be only three major reasons that your baby can be crying for.

1.       Your baby might be hungry

2.       Your baby is uncomfortable in wet diapers or has a diaper-rash

3.       Your baby wants to sleep / Overtired baby

1.       If your baby is hungry

If your baby has started relentlessly crying and you give them a bottle of formula milk or offer to breastfeed and they suddenly just take in with big gulps, yea… he was hungry and you got it right. But to avoid testing and trial every time that your baby cries to check if he is hungry or not, you should ALWAYS MAINTAIN A ROUTINE. Yes this is right. Newborn babies often have to be fed around eight to ten times a day in the first month. So it is better to keep track of your daily routine with the baby. Although it may seem a little difficult because you have just got out of a major medical condition and you might still be trying to sort your life out, but yes once you get on track with baby’s feeding routine, you can certainly schedule your other daily task with that and minimize the baby’s crying of course.

For me as a mommy, I’d always breastfed my newborn with one hour or fifty-minute interval in the beginning. This trick helped me keep record of how many times the baby has fed, and also getting time in between feeding intervals to eat and drink for my own self.

2.       Wet Diapers / Dealing with rash.

Once you have checked that your baby isn’t hungry but still is crying and showing all signs of discomfort, the next thing you always want to check is the diaper. One of the most common reasons of baby discomfort is the wet diaper or the diaper rash. It so happens, that sometimes mommies take it very light, or else the poo of the newborn baby doesn’t have a very very strong smell so you do not really get to know if or when they have poo-ed. It is very important to check baby,s diaper atleast every 3 hours in the first month. Because newborn babies poo a lot frequently and they have a very sensitive sking at that point of time so they get the rash very quickly if not handled properly. So whenever you find that the baby has wet the diaper or poo-ed, clean them immediately, and I would recommend not using baby-wipes so often rather use tap water to wipe or wash the baby-bum.  I have experienced that whenever I relied on wiping with wet-wipes, my baby’s skin would become more prone to rash.

Then if your baby has got the rash and he is very uncomfortable, just take the diaper off  for a while, it is alright if he wets the trousers but it is important to air the rash out. If you just put a rash-cream on and stick the diaper back on for another 3 hours, it can make the rash worse. So it is important that you air out the rash so it can heal naturally and easily.

3.       Sleepy baby/ Overtired baby

Another major reason, or rather I would call it the greatest mistake in handling newborn babies that most mothers make is that, they do not keep track of baby’s sleeping time. Yes, this is the greatest mistake in my opinion because if your baby is sleepy and you do not put them to sleep, this will ultimately lead to baby being overtired. It is very important to understand that newborn babies CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT sleep on their own automatically, you have to PUT THEM to sleep. Yes, it is your duty to keep track of baby’s sleeping time and putting them to sleep before they get overtired.

Once you baby is overtired, then begins the traumatic, consistent and scary crying. Most mommies mistake overtiredness of babies with stomach ache or hunger. Imagine, you being an adult are tired and want to sleep, but everybody else is just talking and walking around, you are not allowed to put the lights off, or just you have some left over work to complete because of which you are unable to sleep and ultimately you get overtired. What happens then? Yes, then you want to sleep but your eyes wouldn’t close, you become irritable, you think you are hungry again and finally start getting headaches. So if an adult cannot handle overtiredness smoothly, how are we to assume that a baby who just came out of the womb and slept almost all of the time in there, would handle sleep depriviation.

Once you know, that your baby is sleep deprived and is very irritable because of that only, then this is what you can do; put the lights out, shush everybody up, hold close your baby, lay by his side, offer him to breastfeed and just wait quietly until he gets calm. He might cry angrily in the beginning for may be 10 to 15 minutes, but if you just do not panic. If you panic or just carry him and rock him to sleep it can make the situation even worse. So just wait and watch until he goes to sleep, and once he is asleep, make sure that there is no noise or discomfort around that may wake him up before a good long sleep.

I hope this post helps you with figuring out why your baby is being very cranky, because when I was in that place, I had no one to tell me and the struggle that I had with my first born was REAL….