Babies Have Their Way Of Saying, “Enough!”

My daughter, like many premature babies got easily tired when she cried and due to her excitability. Remember that skin-to-skin contact is during the first months in the house, the best way to calm a baby down. In these circumstances remember that it rarely works to give the baby a pacifier, nor will showing the baby a toy or trying to play help to ease the situation. If you see that for example the baby puts the legs and arms in a very rigid position due to anger, its probable that the baby is rebelling due to an excess of stimulation in the environment and that the only he wants is calm and quiet contact. Evidently the aptitude of your baby to be tranquilized will depend on a lot of factors that have to do more with the maturity of the baby and own capacity to calm him or herself down than with what you can do to get him or her to stop crying. However, since getting a baby to calm down in these situations is difficult and is an experience that is decidedly important for your self-esteem, you will first need to relax yourself. This will seem like something difficult to do if the baby does not stop crying, but it has been proven that many mothers and fathers suffer depressive symptoms or feel rejections towards they baby because they feel they are not capable of calming the baby down. If a baby is not able to console him or herself, for example by sucking on his or her finger or sucking into the air, it’s possible that the baby is still too young and will need to be tucked softly. I remember that my daughter besides having difficulty sleeping, spent the first two weeks crying almost all day straight, but with only grabbing onto her right foot, she calmed down many times. For some reason beyond my comprehension, the sensation of feeling contained in that area while she was lying over my chest seemed to calm her down and from then on, that was another one of the “remedies” we used to get her to stop crying.

In some cases, however, your need for the baby to respond satisfactory could cause you to, without you realizing it, stimulate the baby too much, such as by moving the baby more than necessary or singing in too much of a loud voice.

When a baby’s prematurity is not assumed, mothers could act as if they were dealing with the ideal baby, and in which case, your little one will be sure to take care of imposing his or her own limits to regulate the excess amount of stimulation, by crying more, putting his or her body more rigid, or even, vomiting so that the interaction ends quicker. 

You need to keep in mind that just like the lack of stimulation is very harmful for your baby, excess can also be very harmful since with time it is possible that the baby will inhibit his or her expressions to not have to put up with situations of which he or she might not be prepared to control.

The fact that your son or daughter has lived for so long in the incubator, and due to the continual controls he or she was submitted to and due to the prolonged separation, more experiences of displeasure than pleasure, can be influencing in that the baby is not able to calm down, for example, sucking into the air and having to suck on his or her finger.