tips on staying calm please help

[jen93]

i find it very hard to stay calm and to stop myself getting cross with dd when she is screaming the house down but i dont know what the problem is. i am a first time mum so any advice would be greatly aprieciated.

This might be bleeding obvious but sometimes I decide to 'act' being a patient mum with a quiet voice when inside I'm fuming. 'Are you cross my little darling? Come here and tell mummy why? etc' In an exaggeratedly calm tone. It's weird but this really helps.
Other times I tell mine I'm going to lie on the bed in my room until she's decided it's time to behave resonably.

how old is your dd?

nearly 5 months. i know my problem sounds daft but im new to all this i dont have much experience with babies

Oh, at that age, all you can do is, try anything that might help, and if nothing helps, take a break and try again.

My DS2 is this age but is pretty cheerful - his brother was cranky, and we often found a change of scenery did the trick.

It's certainly not worth getting cross at her (it's never worth getting cross), at this age they're certainly not doing it to wind you up.

go to another room and have a break.

god, it sounds anything but daft.

i have a checklist i go through when baby is screaming, hungry/tired/cold/hot/dirty/wet nappy/

if none of these i assume baby is fine, just bored, wanting a cuddle.

i find going for a walk if the weather is nice, or if its not, just pacing around the house having a cuddle is fine.

distraction tips are, sit in front of the mirror, babies love mirrors. run a bath and both get in the bath, it will calm baby down. have a wee baby massage session, just use grapeseed oil from the supermarket, and get down on the floor, it will keep baby amused and soothe at the same time. you dont have to be an expert, just make it up as you go along.

have you got a door bouncer? if you need to get on with a couple of things, like dishes or hoovering, this can keep baby amused for 30 mins or so. my 4 mth old dd LOVES her door bouncer

hth and good luck

This is going to sound really obvious and also impossible to do, especially when she is screaming her head off, but the best thing I found to do was go through the usual routines i.e. hungry, wet, tired etc and if you get through all these things and there is nothing wrong and she can't be distracted with a toy or the tv etc then just leave her somewhere safe and walk into another room, make a cup of coffee etc and give your self time to calm down.

Close the door behind you and let her scream, it won't harm her and you'll have time to take some big deep breaths and get your own thoughts back in order.

I've been here with this one as my ds was a screamer and I suffered PND so it wasn't much fun but once I started to walk away and let him get on with it for a little while, he'd either get bored and stop or I'd regroup and go back in and start again, trying to do as welshmum suggests and be exaggeratedly calm until it was time to leave the room again, normally about 5 minutes later! .

The noise can drive you crazy but they do grow out of it and it's often only frustration that they can't make you understand what they want and even if you do guess right, I think sometimes they like to scream just for the fun of it!!!

Take her out in the pram for a walk, or put some music on, or put the vacuum cleaner about a bit - sometimes they get overtired and 'white noise' helps calm them down.

Oh, and if nothing you're doing is working, walk away, as everyone else says. Every so often, DS2 gets in a foul mood, and keeps shouting at me even when I'm holding him. So I put him down somewhere safe and wander off for a few minutes. It might not cheer him up, but it keeps me functional.

Oops jen93 shouldn't have assumed she was the same age as mine!
Going into another room is still a good option but also trying to get inside their little heads -when she's screaming how long is it since she last slept/drank her milk? Has she had a bit too much stimulation?
A change of scenery is also a good idea - we used to sit our dd infront of Baby Mozart for 10 mins and she used to love that - calmed her down and us.
Failing that - a walk to the park if it's nice or to a caf if it's not. Hopefully by the time you get there she'll be asleep and you can put your feet up and read a magazine.
Good luck I found it really hard going early on too.

Sometimes white noise helps. The sluglet could be calmed by the light and fan in our bathroom.

Have you got a sling? I found strapping the small one to my chest (even though she protested at being put in the sling) worked a lot of the time.

You aren't at all daft - I felt the same way with my first. Basically, it made me feel totally hysterical and crazy and also angry when she would cry and cry. All good advice here. The thing that helped me mainly was to leave her and go in the garden for 5 minutes where I couldn't hear the screaming, calm down a bit, then come back in. Also sometimes just going out for walks helped dilute that 'in the house screaming bouncing off the wall' feeling.
The other thing that I worked out was that she was often overtired. I know many people hate her, but I used the Gina Ford books and it really helped us sort ourselves out and helped me feel calmer and more in control (or at least that I could do something).
It will all change too.
Best of luck.
Oh yeah, getting out and chatting to other mums helped lots too

I put music on and sing at the top of my voice (badly), when they were younger they would sort of sit in shock now they just start laughing. I use this a lot in the car when the nip nipping in the back starts.

I also use the acting idea just pretend there are some hidden cameras all over your house and act the way you would if you were appearing in some daft parenting programme. Then you can smugly imagine how good everyone would think you are whilst secretly wanting to hang them up by their dungarees whilst taping their dummy in .

skribble - LOL at your kids sitting there in shock! I put my Footloose CD on sometimes (oh yes I do) and dance up and down the kitchen like a maniac and my kids just stand there with open mouths wondering what happened to their mama!!

The best stress buster ever (oh, apart from a huge bottle of wine, that works too!).

Jen93 - my DD used to love loudish music as a small babe (Robbie's Angels came out when she was a babe and I used to play it constantly whilst rocking the pram). It distracted her from the reason she was crying!

I used to go in another room and phone one of my ante-natal gang, and whinge and moan about how awful it was, and they would whinge and moan about their bundle of joy, and then we'd laugh and feel better. Do you have any friends/family with babies of the same age?
Sitting in bouncy chair in front of the washing machine never failed either. You don't sound daft at all!

my baba is nearly 5 months old and if i failed to try and get her to calm down, i put her in her bouncer chair and go out of the room.. it works for me everytime as she cry for a minute in the bouncer and stops.

or put music on - baba goes all calm and laughs when she watched me dance like a loopy mummy

And sometimes, just deciding to do something seemed to help. Like picking up ds1 and walking quickly upstairs to change his nappy, after faffing around for ages trying to work out what was wrong. Didn't necessarily mean he needed his nappy changing - I think either my determination or the sensation of going upstairs just seemed to calm him.

A lot of the time, I was trying to work out what was wrong when there wasn't necessarily anything wrong as such - he might just be tired, when I thought I should be DOING something, so making him overtired, or bored, when I'd try to rock him to sleep. Trial and error I guess.

Good luck

Definitely a big vote for dancing around the room, this always used to cheer DS up when nothing else seemed to work. It stopped me getting so anxious about what was wrong--I think babies can pick up on your own anxiety and this can make them more unsettled.

I recall he went through a particularly grizzly phase at 5 months and later we realised it was because he was teething. We bought some homeopathic teething powder: Ashton & Parsons (your chemist will have it) A little later, at 6 months, he was started on solids and the change to his diet made him a bit constipated, hence more grizzles.

I also found visiting a homeopath for advice very useful.

Good luck!