What should I do if my baby needs constant comforting?

Comforting a crying baby is very important, but it can also be difficult, especially if a baby cries often or during a busy moment. If you find that your baby needs a lot of comforting during the day, use a cloth infant carrier that will let you hold your baby close while leaving your hands free. The contact and constant movement can be very soothing.

If your baby does a lot of crying at night, you may feel frustrated and unsure how to respond. Your natural instinct may be to pick her up and feed her, but you also may be tired, and you may be getting negative advice. Your pediatrician might advise you to let your child “cry it out.” Many people advocate ignoring a baby’s cries in the hope that she’ll learn to sleep through the night. One theory says that if parents refuse to comfort or feed their baby during the night, she’ll stop crying after twenty minutes to an hour and go back to sleep. After many days or weeks of this routine, she’ll no longer wake up at night.

Although the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted sleep may certainly be attractive to you, when you comfort your baby, you let her know that she can depend on you. When you hold and soothe her, you give her a sense of certainty that you’ll be there when she needs you.