It’s one of the most upsetting sounds a new parent can hear.
It’s worrying enough when your new bundle of joy can’t stop crying, but it’s worse again when you don’t know why.
It’s how babies communicate – if you couldn’t speak or even roll over by yourself, you’d be wailing too – but that doesn’t make it an easier to listen to.
Everyone from your friends to your own mum to strangers in cafés will have their theory as to why the child is crying, and now a midwife has offered her own advice
Cath Curtin, a midwife with over 40 years experience, reassures parents that it’s unlikely they need to be changed.
“A baby is not concerned with a wet or pokey nappy,” she tole Mamamia.
“They don’t have the developmental capacity to say, ‘I have a dirty nappy and I’m going to cry’. It doesn’t upset them.”
She also denied that babies cry when they’re tired; their bodies take over when they really need to fall asleep, she reckons.
Instead, she says, it’s more likely that your little one is hungry or is just missing you.
“It’s about feeding, feeding, feeding; keeping in your mind that you can’t overfeed.”
“It’s that easy. Just sit and feed. Keep them close, keep them wrapped, keep them on the nipple.”
Having dealt with some very cranky overtired babies in our time, we’re not fully sure about all of this.
It also goes without saying that not everyone can hold or feed their baby all the time, but it’s interesting to get a midwife’s take all the same.
