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Dads and Babies Can Cry
When Infants Cry for Stress Release
By Laura Paul
(Shining Star Press, 2001). "The dads think the baby does not want to be with them. That's usually not the case. There are usually other reasons for the crying. Dads take it personally."
Solter does not recommend leaving a baby alone to cry. And distracting a baby with music or a car ride may wear the parents out and postpone cathartic crying.
She says studies have found babies whose mothers needed medical intervention at birth or who had long labors or complicated deliveries cry more than other babies. "Very often the colic is nothing more than just a baby who has been traumatized who needs to do a lot of release crying in arms, just like adults do after a trauma," she says.
When nothing else seems to work – the baby's diaper is not wet, she or he is not hungry and is being held – it's a good indication it's stress-release crying. "You can get babies to fall asleep with the soothing artificial mechanisms, but those are often the babies who then wake up at night," Solter says. "It soothes them, but temporarily. Some of them still wake up needing to cry."
Stress-release crying is difficult for both mothers and fathers to handle, but for different reasons, she says. "The moms feel their role is to soothe and the fathers think that, too, but they are more likely to feel the baby wants to be with the mother at that point," Solter says. "They feel they are not competent. They feel, 'I'm not the one.' That's usually not the case. The baby is usually just making use of the father's attention to have a good cry, and then they usually fall to sleep after crying."
She suggests holding a baby while sitting in a comfortable chair. Wear earplugs if necessary, but try to make eye contact and physical contact, reassuring the baby.
