WHEN BABY CRIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 May 1938, Page 5

WHEN BABY CRIES

DON’T WALK FLOOR WITH HIM. When baby stabs the peace of the night with a shrill, piercing cry. the immediate impulse of most parents is to pick him up and quieten him. But the father who walks the floor is often making a rod for his own back. Baby is cunning and will waken the following night at precisely the same time and expects more soothing floor walking. If often pays to be cruel to be kind.

Sleep and rest are vital, and right sleeping habits should start from the child’s earliest days. The amount of sleep and rest needed by the normal child does not always receive enough attention. While the baby is usually kept rigidly to his hours of bedtime, one still does see him taken out during his sleeping hours. Bodily nutrition and good digestion, dependent on fresh air, sunshine, and correct diet, will not benefit him to the full extent unless he has the right amount of sleep. No infants start life with the same characteristics, and a baby of a nervous temperament, inclined to be restless, unusually active, and often crying a great deal more than he need, will be more wakeful and sleep much less than one who takes life calmly, sleeping peacefully, and needing to be awakened only for meals and bathing. ANXIETY TO THE MOTHER. The constant crying of the highlystrung baby, the lack of sufficient sleep, and the failure to gain weight as he should, are all sources of discomfort and anxiety to the mother, and advice on baby's welfare should be sought and rigidly followed. This type of baby really needs more sleep to help soothe and rest the over-stim-ulated nervous system than the more placid chi'ld. The hours of sleep a baby needs should on no account be altered. He should not be picked up and walked around the floor, and he should not be fed at the wrong time. Peace at any cost is a false maxim in the care of babies. A'breaking of the rules is common enough when the family lives in areas with neighbours in close proximity or in flats where comments by the other residents are feared. Yet, persistence along the only certain road to permanent good health must be maintained with patience and perseverance so that baby will gradually adopt good sleeping habits. More care should be taken through his growing childhood days to preserve the habits how begun, and laxity and interference with his sufficiency of sleep must not be tolerated. PREVENTING FATIGUE. Authorities are urging that- a child must not be over-fatigued; it is more essential than ever now that a mother should keep to regular bedtime hours for her baby. But the child who has been accustomed to sitting up a little later than he should, and has had broken bedtime hours in the past, will not be able to adjust himself straight away to earlier hours, and may lay awake longer than usual. This should not cause the mother to change her improved line of management, though, for the child will fall in line after a few nights and sleep more readily. It is during the “toddler” stage that a mother often encounters a period where baby “fights” sleep and may only sleep fitfully. A certain amount of crying may occur at any time, but a definite habit of crying at this same time may easily be established. Whether or not to leave baby to “cry it out” is a much-discussed question.

Excitement directly before bedtime should not be allowed, and any romping after the evening meal must be checked and bedtime stories of a suitable and soothing nature introduced. The “going-to-bed” should be made a “passive” duty, and small duties connected with “going-to-bed” should be given the child who is usually good when interested in doing something. Turning the bath-water on and off, letting the bath-water out afterwards, putting shoes and socks to bed and all the clothes in their proper places, dolly or the woolly doggie in its bed —everything in preparation for sleep, with the whole atmosphere converging towards sleep-time and its needs, will divert the active young mind and suggest sleep. A cry following the exit of the mother then will not be so hard to curb with a reassuring pat, and the fact that no more notice will be given to his efforts to obtain sympathy, because he has had to go to bed, will convince him that it is best to discontinue the practice and do as he is expected.