To not understand how parents can leave their babies to cry?

[Beatrixemerald]

I just cannot leave my baby to cry, even fora few minutes (exception to this is when driving alone with dd). I have such a strong physical response, I cant do anything and just have to comfort her immediately. She is 5 months old and is always easily consoled so I am always able to comfort her.
My grandmother told me that babies need to cry sometimes (don't believe this) and a friend of mine was suprised I couldn't just tune it out (she also has a baby of a similar age).
To keep my baby happy I am now a sling-wearing/co-sleeping/ebf mother which I never really planned to be, but I just cant stand my baby being unhappy.
I am totally crazy arent I?

I understand what you are saying OP in relation to dealing with your first baby.

I could never leave my PFB to cry either. I once tried leaving him 'to settle himself' - I lasted 47 seconds [grins]

But then I had DC2, and DC3. And found that whatever my own physical response to a small wailing baby, sometimes you have to prioritise an older child over them.

Can vividly remember the first night DS2, then about six weeks, settled himself off to sleep. I'd put him in his basket, he'd started wailing, I was on my way to comfort him when there was another (louder, terrified) wail from DS1's room. He'd fallen out of bed, hit his nose and was in the throes of a nasty nosebleed. He was sobbing, frightened and in pain. DS2 on the other hand was basically screaming because he was overtired.

I left DS2 to cry and comforted DS1 and mopped up the blood. Took me five minutes to do, by which time DS2 had fallen asleep.

Now, never in a million thousand years would I have left my first baby to cry like that at six weeks, but when you have more than one child you quickly learn that you prioritise based on need, and that the need of a small baby does not automatically trump all. In my scenario, I prioritised the child who was in pain and bleeding. Baby had to wait.

So YANBU for a first time mother, but bear in mind your views may change if/when your family grows.

I'm not sure about the BF connection because I FF both my sons and felt exactly the same way when they were very young babies and cried.

The only way I could describe it was distress, but it did get better as they got bigger.

I'm not even sure it's completely hormonal tbh, because my eldest brother had really hard time of it when my niece was born. He would literally go pale when she started crying and instantly drop whatever he was doing to go comfort her. His description is basically spot on with yours Alpaca, minus the leakage of course. :o

DH also cannot bear it if there is even a newborn crying on tv and has to switch it off, not because he finds it annoying but because he feels panicked, like he instinctively needs to do something.

I don't think it's anything to brag about, really. It's actually quite crap.

Totally agree its nothing to brag about !
I don't understand why anyone would think it was bragging- it was excruciating.

Luckily now mine are older Im immune to whining ,whinging and am as tough as old boots

DS2 is 15 months now so he can whine all he wants, and he does.

However this is still a certain type of cry he can do that will have me scaling walls to get to him. That 'Help me adult, I'm hurt! This is not a drill I repeat I'm hurt!' cry.

I think all parents know that cry though.

^There

I didn't read the OP as smug either - I read it as:
'I feel physically uncomfortable when my baby is crying and have an overwhelming urge to comfort her instantly. I know other people don't do this, so are they having the same feelings and dealing with them differently/better than me, or are they actually feeling differently to me?'

I can empathise - I thought I would be the stern disciplinarian cracking down on everything and my husband would be the cool, fun parent. Turns out I have unimagined reserves of patience and am much less inclined towards telling off than I expected (even worried about occasionally) and have gone from a dry-eyed robot type to a weeping ball of mush. I didn't think I really 'did' babies and was planning to ship him off to his grandparents for weeks on end so I could go on holiday, yet I am shocked at how much I miss him when he's at pre-school once a week for 3 hours and cannot bear the idea of not seeing him every day.

Some people are completely different, whether that's through necessity, because their babies need to be allowed to cry, or because they simply don't feel the same way. Personally I felt as though everyone was coping better with parenthood than me because I felt pathetic, but it has lessened as he's got older, and no doubt if I have another I will have to adapt to that too.

DoJo - thank you, you phrased it exactly asI meant. I too thought I would be desperate for nights away, turns out I cant stand a couple of hours!

OP and molly, yes, I'm like that too! Thank you so much for letting me know I'm not alone and bizarre :)

DD is 2.5yo now, and yes, there developed a definite difference in cries as she got older. Weirdly, I can't tell by the sound, but if my heart starts speeding I know it's a 'real' cry and she needs me, so part of me clearly knows.

DH took a long time to understand this, as he'd say he'd go to her, I should go on take a bath, whatever. But I couldn't relax if I could hear her, I'd just get more and more agitated until I was ready to bite somebody's head off, and often weeping too. Much better to just be by her. And it was fine as long I was there -- even if she kept crying, I didn't have that panicked reaction if I was touching her.

I also understand the OP's point (as was wonderfully explained by dojo). I did edf for the first 6 weeks, mixed feeding until 3 months and then ff, so I'm not sure if bfing has anything to do with it, but I had such a physical reaction to her crying for quite a long time. I had to go to her. There was no way I could not pick her up. If DH was holding her, even though my head knew she was being comforted, it wasn't enough. I had to hold her. Now she's a toddler I can ignore the tantrum crying, but not the properly upset crying.

I have had intense physical reactions to other people's children, including getting a let down reflex when random children cried on the bus. And I have intense swellings of emotion where I just want to hold and squeeze my darling DCs and never let them go. But I can also deal with them crying - some days better than others - and not feel I have to pick them up to deal with it at the drop of a hat. I guess I'm fairly in the middle of the responsive range..?

alpacasosoft I did read the thread (I wont use the f word like you did because I am bit too grown up to swear at someone I don't know and who doesn't even use their real name) . my 3 were between 5 and 7 months old when I used controlled crying to sort out their sleeping. don't be so rude. I think its really easy to write the sort of thing that the OP has when you have one baby. very different when you have 3 under 4 as I did. as I said to the OP come back when you have 3 teens.

I don't think anyone feels comfortable when hearing their baby cry but i was able to distinguish between 'I am tired and need to go to sleep' whinging crying and real distress.

I wouldn't co-sleep for a few reasons but the SIDs risk was the main one, also as a single parent I knew that to cope during the day I had to have a fairly decent nights kip. So I could 'detach' enough at bedtime to allow dd to fall asleep by herself even if this meant 10 mins of crying. I am talking from 6 months ish.

I think as a parent you have to 'contain' your childs emotions to some point but also help them learn their own coping strategies. The raising dc thread on talk of the day puts much of this in perspective

Why does having teens matter? The physical responses of the mother of an infant is long gone by then.

Not all of us have easy to settle babies that like to be held DS hated being a baby and cried most of the time until he was mobile no matter what I did since my life couldn't stop every time he cried I just had to get on with it it wasn't fun at all it was horrible and depressing.

And your Gran is right some times some babies just need to cry DS got worse if anyone picked him up he just wanted to get it out sometimes he cried for an hour straight we soon realised that the more we tried to comfort him the worse he cried.

You know what works well for you and your baby. I find it hard to hear small babies crying and feel the need to comfort them. Hard to judge people with babies that cry non-stop though as I think it's more important to have a parent take a 5 minute 'time out' to themselves and be able to comfort baby 'properly' than be stressed out and possibly stressing the baby out more. I don't believe that crying it out is a good first strategy for young babies though

I was like you until we had had 14months of no sleep and then I realised something had to give . I did cc and now her sleep is much better I hadn't helped her T all by grabbing her every time she cried and she is very clingy because of it you can't judge others for it .

Basically I would say do whatever works for you but by the time you've had one two or more, it will be different

I don't find having two any different tbh.

Me neither ghost because it was a feeling that we were describing - I had the same feeling with a 3 of mine .

I also really cant stand the competitive Omg - try having 3 under 4 stuff thats always spouted when a newish Mum mentions her feelings, her baby teething,her tiredness.
Er how is it relevant to how she feels now
Baffled as to how teenagers are relevant either !