The sound of a baby crying.

[Magnificentmug12]

I don’t want to ask my friends in real life as I’ll probably get funny looks so thought I’d ask here.

Does the sound of a baby crying make you feel a certain way? And I mean baby, who can’t walk or talk yet.
If it does make you feel a certain way, what are those feelings?

Also, do you respond the same to the sound of someone else’s baby crying? Either a neighbours baby or one in the supermarket?

The sound of a baby crying does something to me specifically and makes me feel a certain way and I’m just wondering if others are the same or feel something different.

I totally blank it out. It bothers me far less than it did before I had a child. Partly relief that it's not my child but I'm also so used to doing other things while DS cries (more when he was a baby) or tantrums (more common these days because I'm the most terrible mother in the world who won't let him brush his teeth with a crayon).

Makes my boobs tingle in a horrible toe curling way. Don't have any children but I have had a still birth. I freaked out the first time

That is so interesting! A few people have said what I feel and the bit about the noise being played as a form of torture is interesting!

I can’t handle the sound of a baby crying- it almost hurts me, like when someone scrapes nails down a black board and it makes your teeth hurt 😂 it brings me physical displeasure and it does also make me anxious, I feel anxiety raising inside my stomach up to my chest.

This happens to me even when other babies cry too, the sound is like some type of trigger to me! Which is so strange and I don’t know why I react this way, so it’s reassuring others react in a funny way too.

My kids are older now and I actually got away with them hardly ever crying as I was always there and ready with whatever, but a baby was crying in the shop today and I could feel my body going into panic mode even though I haven’t heard a baby cry for well over a year! Yet my body reacted the same way!

Yes me too with the tingling boobs. I literally cannot concentrate in the supermarket if a hungry baby is Crying.

Particularly hard when a well meaning inexperienced new parent insists their baby isn't hungry and my tits are telling me otherwise.

It flicks a switch in my brain. I cannot bear it. I've had bad pnd- my baby cried a lot. I can't bear any children crying now. I can handle mine by thats it.

Shudder.

Other people's kids - annoying. My babies/toddlers - deep anxiety and imagining horrible things are happening. I just can't ignore it and have to be with them - I suppose that's the point!

I remember an awful 3 hour flight with my first (usually fairly placid) baby. As soon as we took off, he cried for about an hour despite me trying everything I could think of. I was so conscious that the other passengers were getting pissed off I felt like bawling myself! The poor woman sitting next to us, the tutting and sighing from other passengers. I vowed to never fly with a baby again.

I suppose my point is that it's kinder not to show too much annoyance or displeasure if a baby's crying in public because most mums are feeling a bit mortified and stressed anyway.

@Notashandyta

Do you suffer with bad pms or pmdd?

Curious, what's the link?

Yep I get the boob tingles too and my youngest is over 17, and I haven't fed her for 15+ years!

I try to give the mum a smile if it's nearby, I remember a 50-ish woman saying to me "don't worry dear, they'll be fine" to me as a ftm and as I'm now 50 I'm now that lovely lady who gave me a wee boost when I had a 4 week old!!

Little babies' cries can make me feel quite boody. I have to repeat the word "toddlers" until the urge passes.

After half a term of being back at work, DS (1) continued in nursery over half term. I'd gone past getting engorged in the afternoons.
I went out for a couple of hours with a friend and her 6m old. Baby loathed the car seat and howled every single second she was rear facing, often to the point of being sick or stopping breathing. I realised that I was getting engorged and leaking... my body was responding to her cries.

I had a little milk for about a year after stopping both of mine.

I want to pick it up and cuddle it. Not an overwhelming feeling though, just something I'd rather do.

If I hear it in a supermarket first thought is to make sure the baby is okay. Then, god I feel for mothers of young babies!!

I can't stand the noise. It still makes my boobs tingle and I find it extremely grating.
Most of all I just think thank goodness it's not me.

Before I had children I used to find the sound of babies crying so hard to listen to. I was sitting behind a wee baby who cried the nearly the entire 12 hour flight I was on. It nearly drove me mad. Now that I have kids myself, I can block out the noise now of any child who isn't mine 😂

It arouses a visceral reaction in me. If someone’s small baby is crying in its pram in e.g. a supermarket, and the person is ignoring it, I want to yell at them to pick it up!

Presumably it’s Nature’s way of making sure babies aren’t dumped under a tree and left there for the local sabre-toothed tiger’s dinner.

Other people’s kids crying is just irritating but my own is something I can’t quite describe properly. I hate it, as if there is nothing worse on the entire planet than my baby crying. So I do absolutely anything to help them with what ever it is that’s made him upset.

I tend to get really impatient with people around me when he is crying too, like as if my body can’t cope with thinking about anything else whilst my baby is crying.

Odd but I suppose that’s nature making sure I look after him.

I’m amazed to hear people say a crying baby makes their boobs tingle. Being child-free by choice, I can honestly say that has never, ever happened to me and I had absolutely no idea some women reacted like that.

To me, a crying baby is the most grating, annoying sound in the world. Hearing it just makes me want to get as far away from it as possible as fast as possible. Worse even than bagpipes.

It makes me feel sorry for whoever is trying to deal with the crying and the baby I guess.

It uses to piss me off.

Then I had a baby (now 7yo). He hardly every cried, and wasn't breast fed. Now to this day if I hear a baby baby crying, my boobs tingle and I have to try not to cry. Absolutely bonkers. I was down in London a couple of years ago on a tube with some friends and we had been for a boozy lunch. A baby in a pram was crying and the mother just looked lost and couldn't not pacify the baby. I actually started crying my friends realise I am bonkers.

I wonder why we do feel like this?

Used*

My dc - makes me feel stressed.

Strangers dc - doesn't bother me, no emotional reaction, same as hearing cars on the road or wind blowing.

Newborn cries - love the sound! Not in a mean way, I wouldn't make one cry. But it is a cute sound.

It makes me feel very stressed. When it's my own child and he's properly upset it actually hurts inside my chest. When it's someone else's I mainly feel for the mother.

Being child-free by choice, I can honestly say that has never, ever happened to me and I had absolutely no idea some women reacted like that.

I don't think this reaction could happen until after you have lactated and fed a baby. It's impossible to imagine the vivid sensation of your milk letting down before your body has been through that. It's nothing to do with loving babies or being a particularly maternal, broody woman, it's like muscle memory.

Other people's babies, I can't stand it. Not upsetting, just incredibly annoying, if I can move away I always will. When mine were little and cried I wanted them to stop, of course, but there was none of the annoyance I feel towards other people's kids!

It gives me a clench of anxiety in my stomach and I feel like running. I'm just so relieved it's not mine/ not my problem.