Dealing With Your Baby's Distress

One of the greatest difficulties a mother faces at the start of her «career» is not being prepared to deal with the distress her newborn expresses, and not knowing how to step in to soothe it.

First of all, it's worth remembering that every baby goes through moments of distress linked to hunger that isn't immediately satisfied, or to the discomfort of being washed, changed, or dressed, or to pain (a tummy ache, an earache), which are expressed and released through crying.

However, the frequency and intensity of these moments vary from one newborn to another, depending on how reactive the baby is to stimuli and on the support they sense from whoever is caring for them.

Even a newborn baby, in fact, can «sense» the presence of a mother able to contain their distress and to communicate security and calm to them, through the «nonverbal language» with which she interacts with them.

This is a way of communicating made up of features that adults often don't take into consideration, since they're used to relying mainly on language. Because the baby doesn't understand the meaning of words, they respond to other cues, which have mostly to do with the kinesthetic system expressed through posture, body movement, gesture, and gaze. These are nonrational, spontaneous aspects that reveal people's emotional state and that unconsciously come through in the way they hold the baby, caress them, or make eye contact with them. Added to this are paralinguistic aspects, such as the rhythm of the words used to speak to the little one, or the intonation used.

It's therefore easy to understand that there are no «miracle» behaviors that relieve a baby's distress, but that the ones common sense dictates (picking them up, nursing them, caressing them, talking to them, rocking them) have a greater or lesser chance of success depending on the state of mind of the person carrying them out.