6 Ways to Tame Tears

American Baby, October 2007

When my daughter Ruby was born, we waited a few agonizing seconds for her to take her first breath and finally let out a wail. I had never been so glad to hear a baby cry. And frankly, I probably never will be again. Now my husband and I will do anything to keep the girl calm. We shush. We swaddle. We become human swings. On a recent cross-country flight, I spent 45 wobbly minutes bouncing my baby at the back of the plane to keep her howling to a minimum. There's no avoiding it: babies cry, sometimes for hours a day. But as parents, we're hardwired to do anything we can to make it stop, whether that's changing a diaper, offering a breast, or launching into a favorite John Mayer song. "If you can identify the reason for the cry, that's the first step," says Elizabeth Pantley, coauthor of Gentle Baby Care (McGraw-Hill). "If you can't -- and there will be plenty of times you won't be able to -- try some standards that are reassuring no matter what the problem." These six soothers should help restore the peace.

1. Hold Your Baby

Why it works: Babies love to be cuddled for the same reason their parents do: emotionally, it's comforting and connecting. It's soothing on a physical level too. "Massaging or touching your baby tends to help him stop crying because you're stimulating receptors in his skin that have a physiologically calming effect," says Barry Lester, PhD, director of the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk at Women and Infants Hospital, in Providence, Rhode Island, and author of Why Is My Baby Crying? (HarperCollins). One recent study found that 10-day-old babies who were held by their parents for 16 hours a day cried 40 percent less than babies whose parents held them for half that time.

Soothing strategies: "When Mikayla, who's 4 months old, is having a meltdown, I pick her up and hold her in a cradle position, almost like when we nurse," says Andrea Bell, of Maricopa, Arizona. "When I hold her tightly, she seems to calm down faster, usually within three or four minutes." While you rock your child, pat her back rhythmically; once she's mellow and drowsy, put her in her crib so she can learn to fall asleep on her own. Or if your baby has gas, lay her over your knee and gently rub circles on her back; the pressure can soothe a rumbly stomach.

2. Create White Noise

Why it works: For nine months, your uterus echoed with the beat of your pulse, the shushing of your breath, the muted noises of the outside world. "I imagine it sounds like being underwater at the pool," says Jeffrey Sleeth, MD, a general pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "You can still hear what's going on above water, but it's kind of murky. That's why white noise works -- because it simulates the way a baby hears the world when he's in the womb."

Soothing strategies: My daughter Ruby is lulled to sleep every night by a CD recording of a vacuum cleaner, the kind of drone that you can also produce by using a fan, a washing machine, or a radio set to static. Don't underestimate the power of song, either. For Austin Layland, now 5, a Norah Jones CD was an instant calmer. "We had a copy in the car, one in the laptop, and one in his radio," says his mom, Erika, of Ames, Iowa. "Austin had colic, so Norah was a big blessing for me."

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