Understanding baby, 0-3 months

[Seoulmum]

Hi.
Watched Oprah today and there was a segment on the 5 things ALL babies say to communicate.

NEH - I'm hungry
HEH - I'm uncomfortable
EH - Burp me
OAW - I'm sleepy
EAIR- (Lower gas pain)

Don't know if it's true but going to try with my DD - anything that helps me understand her better. (Whilst watching the show DD said EH so I tried to wind her which is what she wanted).
Bit difficult trying to distinguish HEH from NEH though!
Just thought I'd share this info.

We just had an EAIR moment!

Oh that's really interesting!

For the first 2 months, my dd said:

LA! LA! - I'm hungry

EH! EH! - any kind of uncomfortable.

WAAAAH! - (very sad face) I'm tired

My dd is now 12 weeks old, and the LA! has sadly gone, but has actually been replaced with NEH.

Another recent new addition is MWA=MWA! for tired.

I'll keep an ear out for the other sounds now!

PMSL

what is it with threads today

first there was the you're having a boy if left nork bigger than right nork (or something) and now this drivel

PSML

Do you really think it's nonsense, Twiglett? I don't know if ALL babies say the same things when they cry, but the sounds my dd uses for different things are so distinctive that my ds (aged 6) can tell them apart.

Now when my ds was a baby, I had absolutely NO clue, and couldn't differentiate any kind of cry.

yes I do .. total and utter bollocks

now if you ask me if they communicate then yes I think they do communicate feelings (see Baby Whisperer for a chart of what different signs can mean and use it with your baby until you can attune yourself to your own child)

.. but they do not vocalise in 'words' at this stage .. they don't have the motor control to do so

Why don't you have a look at The Social Baby - a really excellent book that shows, by way of photographs, babies trying to communicate from a very early age. It's brilliant (and doesn't, BTW, say that all the babies do x when they y)

Oh, I see what you mean. No, I don't think babies use words either - I'm not sure the OP is saying that babies actually use words. (I've not read the Baby Whisperer).

But I do know that my dd's very distinctive LA sound for feeding probably included the tongue movement of her sucking reflex combined with the cry - as the strength of the reflex is fading, the sound is changing.

OP is saying that according to Oprah ALL babies communicate in those words though

which is patently bollocky-bollocks

Hi again
I didn't really mean that the babies are talking. Apparently they are reflex noises that all babies make when their bodies are telling them something - a bit like your leg jumping when your knee is hit.
If it's rubbish so be it but I'm taking all the help I can get - it's my first baby and I'm clueless.

Blimey I had NO CLUE what ds wanted until he could point or talk. I just couldn't and I tried really hard and spent loads of time with him and carried him loads. I have to say it always made me feel completely inadequate when mothers said 'oh yes that's his/her windy/hungry/tired cry' I would just think 'how the hell do they know that'

Ds was completely unreadable to me.

Maybe some babies are easier to understand than others or maybe some of us mothers are better with small babies than others. I've no idea but I know this would have driven me mad when ds was a small baby as I would have tried to work out the sounds and I doubt it would have been right

I'm with lazycow - I had absolutely no idea either.

someone told me the other day (and i have to say, i thought it was a joke) that a spaniard has invented a baby monitor that tells you what;s wrong according to the cry - yes, it can tell why your dd or ds in crying, something about the sound frequency! she saw it on the news here in spain - anyone seen anythign in uk media, or anywhere else for that matter?

I was hopeless with dd1, but have got better with dd2 and now with ds and pretty wel ltuned-in to what his cries mean. He coughs when he is hungry, and whinges when he is tired, and wriggles and screws up his face when he needs changing. Persistent yelling ususally means that he wants company or a change in view.

with the oprah thing, you have to watch the video for it to make sense

www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200611/20061113/slide_20061113_350_102.jhtml

I'd forgotten it until I read this thread, but my daughter said "la" when she was hungry at about 3 months, which I thought was easy to turn into "lait" =milk (I'd have to swap her from French to English eventually I suppose). Now it is getting hard to know what she means as she babbles all the time and enjoys impersonating guns and demons today!!! But to start with La was hungry, and when she had a wet bum she would grunt.