The Baby's Cry

From birth, the baby's cry, marked by loud shouts to expel the amniotic fluid that had filled his respiratory tract, functions as a pre-language. On one hand it expresses the newborn's vitality, his joy at having come safely through the risks of birth; on the other, the sense of difficulty in finding himself in an environment with characteristics so different from those he was used to.

Being born, in fact, he is no longer immersed in the amniotic fluid that protected him from light and noise and that guaranteed him a constant temperature. He finds himself in a new environment, no longer enclosed like the maternal womb, which puts him in a state of deep insecurity, threatening his very survival. Freud, who used the term Hilflosigkeit to describe this state of total helplessness in the baby, who senses that he cannot survive without the intervention of another, considered it the forerunner of the anguish the adult will experience throughout life. Only the support of an adult can help him find comfort: crying thus works as a call, the only means available to him to attract the attention of whoever is near him, on whom his life depends.

The baby's cry (without tears in the first weeks, because the tear ducts are still closed) has a higher sound frequency than that of an older child; in the first months of life it occurs frequently, taking up on average between 15 and 60 minutes of the day. Like a language, it expresses different desires (to eat, to sleep, to be cared for); but it is also the way he communicates his sensations of pain, of insecurity, of the need for affectionate contact, or simply of discharging tension when it becomes unbearable.

Often, however, especially if it goes on for a long time, crying makes the parent anxious, since at first they are not able to decode it, to understand the meaning of the variations in intensity and tone. This is why it is essential, during the first weeks after birth, to devote time to observing the baby in order to learn to know him and to understand what his cry expresses. Otherwise the parent ends up attaching a pathological meaning to it even when in reality it expresses something else, or projecting onto it their own sense of feeling inadequate in their caregiving ability (which intensifies the baby's feeling of not being held).

Some newborns, from birth, show a greater ability to soothe themselves, trying to put a hand to their mouth, sucking on a pacifier, or simply listening to their mother's voice if she manages to convey calm through it. Others, instead, need more physical contact, which however unsettles them further if they sense the tension of whoever is picking them up.