t’s a sound that you’ve heard all your life - though not quite like this before. A baby crying - not particularly unusual. But when it’s your baby crying, this common, everyday sound you’ve heard throughout your life in the form of background noise or mild annoyance suddenly elevates to the status of language.

Responding appropriately to your baby's cry is one of the most difficult communication challenges you will face as a new parent. You will master the system only after rehearsing thousands of cue-responses in the early months. If you initially regard your baby's cry as a signal to be responded to and evaluated rather than an inconvenient habit to be broken, you will open yourself up to becoming an expert in your baby's signals and pave the way for a strong line of communication between you and your child.

The Perfect Signal
Pediatric researchers have long appreciated that the sound of an infant's cry has all three features of a perfect signal: it’s automatic, appropriately disturbing, and adjustable.

A newborn cries by reflex - the baby senses a need, has no idea what to do (doesn’t even know what an idea is), and responds immediately by sounding the alarm. There is no smoke detector or car alarm in the world with this kind of reliability. Time for food? Let out a big cry. Wet diaper chafing at your privates? Let’s hear that cry. Time for some more attention? Just cry! A baby’s cry is easily generated - once his lungs are full of air, he can initiate crying with very little effort. And it quickly becomes his trusty role of gaffer’s tape - it will fix just about anything.

The baby's cry is also a perfectly designed sound - ear-piercing enough to get mom and dad’s attention and make them want to stop the cry, but not so disturbing as to make them want to run out of the house clutching a bottle of Xanax (at least for the first hour).

What really makes the baby cry’s design impressive, though, is its malleability. The signal can be modified with increasing precision as both sender and receiver learn the language of timbre shifts, pitch changes, rhythm, and dynamics. What begins exclusively as “Red Alert! I don’t know what’s going on, but you better get in here and fix it pronto!” evolves into “May I trouble you for a warm bottle of milk?”

Voice researchers have found that each baby’s cry is unique. They call these sounds “cry prints,” which are as individual for babies as their fingerprints. So unless you plan on using a device like the Baby Crying Analyzer (yes, this really exists), you will have to tune in and be patient just like the rest of us.
 
Biologically Correct
Responding to baby's cries is instinctive. A mother is biologically programmed to give a nurturing response to her newborn's cries and not to restrain herself. Fascinating biological changes take place in a mother's body in response to her infant's cry.

Upon hearing the call, the blood flow to a mother's breasts increases, accompanied by a biological urge to pick up and nurse. The act of breastfeeding itself causes a surge in prolactin, a hormone that some researchers believe forms the biological basis of the term "mother's intuition."

Oxytocin, the hormone that causes a mother's milk to let-down, brings feelings of relaxation and pleasure - a release from the tension built up by the baby's cry.

Dads don’t get to participate in the prolactin/oxytocin rush, but I do have a friend who said he could actually feel his temperature rise when his child started crying. Maybe it was the early onset of “Oh-no-not-another-sleepless-night anxiety,” but there’s an undeniable connection for fathers, too.

When to Cave
So what do you do? Ignore or respond to the cry? Ignoring your baby's cry is usually a lose-lose situation - especially in the early stages. A more compliant baby gives up, stops signaling, and becomes withdrawn. He may even realize that crying is not worthwhile and conclude that he is not worthwhile. The baby loses the motivation to communicate with his parents, and the parents miss out on opportunities to get to know their baby. It may be hard to think of it as getting to know each other when your baby summons you at 3 A.M., but that’s exactly what’s going on.

Babies with more persistent personalities may not give up so easily. Instead, they cry louder, escalating the signal, making it more and more disturbing. You can try to wait it out until your baby stops crying and then pick him up so he won't think it was his crying that got your attention, but you also teach him that he has no power to communicate. This shuts down parent-child communication, and in the long run everybody loses again.

Most pediatric professionals agree the best option is to get in there quickly and deliver the nurturing. This is the win-win way for baby and parents to work out a communication system that helps them all. The parents respond promptly and sensitively so that their baby feels less frantic the next time he needs something. The baby learns to "cry better" and in a less disturbing way since he knows help will come.
You have to adjust your reaction time based on your child’s age: a quick response when your baby is young and just learning about expressing his needs (or when the cry makes it clear there is real danger); a slower response when your baby is older and begins to learn how to settle things on his own (or wants to see just how far he can push things).

My wife and I took a recommended “baby class” at our hospital before our son was born, and one of the more useful things I remember hearing was there is nothing you can do to spoil your baby during the first few months.

[Note: When it comes to sleep, sleep specialists and members of The Cradle’s board of advisors, Jennifer Waldburger, LCSW and Jill Spivack, LMSW from Sleepy Planet say, "After 4 months, a baby's cries and wakings at night or after a very short nap may have more to do with a habit of waking rather than a genuine need for mom or dad's help. For instance, if a baby wakes but has fed only an hour before, parents can gently encourage the baby to soothe herself back to sleep by checking in but keeping her in her crib instead of rocking her back to sleep."]

Pediatric researchers Sylvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth performed studies in the 1970s that helped to spoil the spoiling theory.

They studied two groups of mother-infant pairs: One group of mothers gave a prompt and nurturing response to their infant's cries; the other group was more restrained. Bell and Ainsworth found that children in the first group whose mothers had given an early and more nurturing response were less likely to use crying as a means of communication at one year of age. These children seemed more securely attached to their mothers and had developed better communicative skills, becoming less whiny and manipulative.

Numerous trials over the years have supported these initial findings. And in spite of those bonus points your newborn may have gotten on the Apgar test for letting out an ear-splitter in the delivery room, crying is not good for your baby’s lungs.

Fine. Let’s say you’re committed to sleepless nights and 24-hour nursery service for the first six months or so. But what about after that? It’s not like you can just hang up a sign that says “New Parenting Hours!” It’s that transition from nurture-on-demand to let-baby-work-it-out that can really drive you nuts. Was that a “drop-what-you’re-doing cry” or a “protest cry”? Only you can be the expert interpreter when it comes to your baby.

Try to view your baby's cries as a communication rather than a manipulation. Think of it as a signal to be listened to and understood rather than something to simply “work through.”

Trust your instincts. Learning the language of crying can be difficult because there is no instruction manual to let you know if you’re overdoing it or creating distance. It’s a two-way communication - imagine being stuck on an island with one other person and neither of you speaks the other’s language. You both have to make an effort to learn how to communicate. Your child is trying to talk to you. It may be that he’s just telling you he thinks naptime is bogus and shouldn’t be required, but it’s your job to convince him to relax because it’s exactly what he needs.

Making 30 Minutes Last
Time does not fly at all when your baby is crying. In fact, it slows way down. Einstein actually proved this phenomenon with his little known “Special Theory of Crying Baby Relativity.” Once you move into that post six-months training stage where you want your child to start learning that protest crying is not the answer, you will find that time stretches like a bungee cord. Every minute your baby cries feels like an hour. Each scream sounds like an indictment of your parenting skills.

Use a clock. Listen to the cry. Is it getting more or less frantic? If it sounds like it’s headed for meltdown, get in there and soothe away. But if the crying is simmering down toward Wimperland, your baby may be learning to adjust. At this point, you have probably built a strong foundation for communication and he may just be openly “expressing” himself before drifting off to sleep.

All the time and effort you put into learning about these sounds and cues will eventually leave you with more time to enjoy one of the very best sounds in the world: your baby’s laughter - a sound that actually does make time fly. And you should enjoy every moment of it because potty training is just around the corner...