Hello, hello!  Melissa here back talking about what I love to talk about, babies… This video mainly applies to a baby who is between 2 months and 6 months old, but the concepts here could apply to newborns as well as older babies.  Read on and watch the video if your baby often cries and you don’t know what to do.

How to Tell if Baby is Hungry or Gassy?

From what I’ve seen, once a baby cries, many moms and dads assume that the baby is hungry, and therefore they feed the baby again, even if they’ve just fed the baby.  It often, of course, is the case that a young baby is crying from hunger!  But what I learned from observing my own babies was quite different: often their cries came from gassiness or fatigue.  So rather than simply feed again, I would try to burp the baby and then put the baby down, and see what happened.  More often then not, the baby would awake two or so hours earlier, in time to feed again according to a young baby feeding schedule.

Remember to always check with your doctor to ensure your baby is not suffering from a gastrointestinal disorder, such as colic, that is behind her crying or from something else!

Baby Routine

Here’s how to implement this whole thing (and it’s good to have a plan because we all now that the sound of a baby crying can send our heartbeat up a million paces!).  If your baby is crying and you have just recently fed her and she doesn’t appear to want more food (i.e. she is rejecting the breast or bottle) she may need to be burped, meaning she still has some gas bubbles stuck in her stomach. So try burping.  If, on the other hand, your baby is rejecting more food and does not seem to need to burp again, then you could just have a tired baby.  In this case, try swaddling your baby (if you’re still swaddling) and putting her down to sleep.   If she does fall asleep, remember to wake her up to feed her no more than three hours from when her last feeding began (or four hours after the start of the last feeding if you are on an every four hour feeding schedule).   If your baby stays awake, try to soothe and comfort her with a massage or some time in a bouncy seat. Even if she doesn’t sleep, feed her 3 hours after the last feeding, or four hours if you are on a four hour feeding schedule. I promise you, she will eventually fall asleep and with this strategy, rather than feed on demand (all day long), which is something yours truly could not handle, you’ll have established a solid baby sleep schedule and eating routine from the first day!

What did you do when your baby cries?  Comment below and thanks for following CloudMom.

Gratefully,

Melissa

OH, and please leave a comment if I have confused you and click here for some of my feeding and sleeping schedules according to age.  xoxo