To ask for your thoughts on crying babies in public places and on trains/buses... what are your thoughts?

[winterlake]

My DS has colic and reflux so he screams and cries a lot. He likes being in sling but still cries especially after feeding. Each bout of crying lasts anywhere between 10mins and a few hours.

I get cabin fever being indoors all day. No car so have to use public transport when DH is at work. Recently DS screamed for 35mins on a bus. Everyone was glaring and muttering but there was nothing I could do other than talk to him, jiggle him and keep offering dummy. On a 1-hour train journey he cried inconsolably the whole way. I felt like everyone in the carriage hated us.

On rare occasions we eat out or go to coffee shops he often wakes up and cries. We take it in turns to jiggle him, walk him, take him outside for fresh air, and end up leaving early if he won't settle. My DH thinks we should stay and finish our food, that all babies cry and it's ok if it's in daytime. But I feel like we're ruining other people's meals.

How do you get out and about with a colicky baby? What you do if your baby cries in public? I'm sick of walking round the local park.

What do you think about babies crying in public places or on trains and buses?

When I hear a baby my first thought is "Oh thank god. I'm not the only one that went out with a loud screaming baby".

Babies cry, people will deal.

Don't worry about it.

I wouldn't glare at the parent and I accept that it's unavoidable. However my heart would sink! I absolutely hate it - I have a headache most of the time so it goes right through me, as does any loud high pitched noise. I would do what I could to remove myself from the source of the noise as quickly as possible, eg get off the bus at the next stop.

However I don't think you will get a typical response on MN - by definition most of the posters are parents so they are more likely to be sympathetic!

My post above only refers to public transport - if I were in a restaurant I would probably be more annoyed if the parent didn't take the child outside. Like everything else, it's about compromise.

Whilst I understand that babies crying is unavoidable sometimes, I think parents underestimate how loud they sound to people who don't have children! Hence why I would get off the bus way before my stop.

Andro in all honesty that is fairly unusual and clearly not what I was referring to.

It would be very worrying for most mental health professionals if a mother were to say she wouldn't go to a restaurant because her baby's crying might cause difficulty to some unknown person with SPD because it would seem quite an irrational sort of fear.

There are a million reasons why life is unsatisfactory and pain and disability are among them, so are depression and anxiety, so are cancer and loss - they are just at the severe end of the unsatisfactoriness spectrum... But everyone experiences objectively awful terrible experiences at some point if they have enough birthdays and we all, to some extent, need to be responsible for wise action in relation to our own struggles. If you were to try to accommodate all the possible permutations of the needs of the world in all your actions you probably would never get out of bed. People in general do the best they can and fare best with a balanced approach to being in the world aiming not to be offensive but not to be overwhelmed by all the things that might be problematic for others either.

The sound of a baby crying triggering an extreme response is quite common amongst people with asd. It does in my son and I know a few others in rl with the same issue. My son starts hurting himself and people around us look shocked and there is face pulling.

^Can relate to that but on a lesser scale. My ds gets v upset at other kids screaming nearby. Hard to avoid sometimes

I wouldn't expect a parent to leave because of it but also my son's reaction to it should be accepted by others.

I too give mums of crying babies a knowing nod.
Sometimes you can't move, because you are eating, but unlike others I mostly expect them to at least move around, so someone is not subjected to the constant crying.
For example, on a train you could walk up and down a bit; at a nativity you could leave and then come back in.
Obviously on a bus, you can't do much. But if at all possible, you should move around, so any one person is subjected to it as little as possible.

OP, don't completely give up on the baby groups - I know exactly what you mean about never getting to talk to anyone because you're always walking/jiggling baby at the other end of the room (or in our case, singing a particular Disney song under my breath which for some reason seems to calm him), but in time things will improve, I promise. My DS can still scream, but I am like a baby-removal ninja now and we just vanish in a puff of smoke if he looks like he's going to go beserk. Oh yes, he screams less now, too!

And re: baby groups, maybe just keep showing up when you can. Half a session might be a real achievement for you. You keep on peoples' radars, too - my baby massage group started meeting at each others' houses as local cafes tend to be small/crowded/rammed, and when DS and I had another bad patch post-jabs and got a bit house-bound again, another mum I had only briefly spoken to remembered me and Facebooked me to invite me along. It is so much easier to socialize with a baby in a domestic setting without the noises/lights/crowds in a coffee shop.

It's a question of balance, I suppose. I didn't realise there was so much sympathy out there! Reading some other threads on the subject of baby-related noise pollution I was getting the impression that no noise was acceptable at all.

I would try and avoid peak commuter time transport as these people are likely to be lest sympathetic and the bus or train much busier

Generally, unless the parent is ignoring screaming child, I wouldn't glare (holding/jiggling etc counts as not ignoring btw, I mean leaving in the buggy screaming with no interaction)

I'd never tutt or shake my head or complain because I'm not a dick.

I always sympathise with the parent/parents,I'm usually the one that stops someone elses babys crys,I'll talk to the child,make a fuss of them,sing them a little nursery rhyme,must have done it well over a 100 times by now and it's always worked and the parents have always thanked me and they usually say about how awful they were feeling because of other people making negative comments.

I tell them what my Mum always told me when I had young children and what my Nan told my Mum when we small.Don't mind them they were obviously so special that were born as fully grown adults who never cried,never had a tantrum and never played up,followed by a very sickly sweet smile aimed at the miserable gits that had helped to make the poor parents feel even worse than they did in the first place.

You have my sympathy OP my first born(DS now 19)had the most horrendous colic for the first 3 months of his life bless him and it was awful seeing him suffer and the sleep deprivation was like some kind of torture.