Our Beautiful Princess

I get little newsletters by email every week, giving me little tips and stories for parenting. This week's newletter I found interesting, for many reasons. I decided to include some of these interesting parts in my post....

Everything in Purple below was taken from www.babycenter.com Nine Month newsletter.

Your baby may be the most sociable young creature around until somebody unfamiliar comes near. Many babies this age have begun to show signs of fear or shyness around strangers. Some even start withdrawing from familiar relatives and friends, and want to be close to no one but you. This phase can be so brief you barely notice it, or it may last for months, depending on your child's temperament.... Not Maida! She went through this stage two months ago! Now she'll go to anyone, stay with anyone, love anyone. She's Miss Social all the time! I hope that this means she won't be shy cause I was a very shy kid and I wish that I wasn't.

Is it bad to let my baby "cry it out"?

Kelly Ross, M.D.Pediatrician at St. Louis Children's Hospital in Missouri, and mother of triplets: One of our biggest jobs as parents is to teach our children that we will keep them safe and attend to their needs. Babies cry for a reason. They may be hungry, tired, overstimulated, or hurt. If your baby seems to be crying more than usual, play detective. Do you need to rearrange her sleeping and eating schedule? Is the environment too loud or busy? Is she getting sick? Or is she just going through a developmental period where she needs more of your attention? When you consistently respond to your baby's cries, she learns you are there to keep her safe, and she'll cry less than if you try to let her cry it out.

Samantha Maplethorpe, M.D.Family physician in Issaquah, Washington, and mother of three: This is a controversial topic that affects new parents dramatically. No one can tell you when or whether to let your baby cry it out. It has to feel like the right thing to do. Trying a strategy like 'crying it out' to modify your baby's behavior requires extreme consistency and determination to be effective. Until your baby has better-developed language skills, crying is a form of communication. She may simply want to be picked up, rocked, and held, or she may be hungry, in pain, in need of a diaper change, or overtired and need help settling down. I generally recommend that my patients educate themselves on the different choices and choose the approach that speaks to their heart.

Leslie Gavin, Ph.D.Child psychologist in Orlando, Florida, and mother of four: Crying in babies is primarily a way of communicating that something is not right with their world. They are too hungry, tired, overstimulated, sick, cold, or hot. As parents, it's our job to be sensitive to our baby's needs and moods, and to change things as necessary. However, sometimes we can find nothing wrong, and nothing we do helps. At those times we may simply need to put on earplugs, hold our baby or keep her in a safe place, and let her cry until she falls asleep. She'll probably be fine upon awakening. If not, or if she's continually cranky in a way that is unlike her, I'd call the pediatrician.
.... I love these answers, mostly because I hate letting Maida cry it out and I don't want to feel like I have to. I know that there are a lot of parents who do let their babies cry it out and it works for them, but I am just not one of them. Which is why I rock Maida to sleep every night and go rock her back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night. In our baby classes that we took before Maida was born, they told us that there were numerous studies that were done and parents who responded to their babies EVERY cry, up until they were at least six months old, had more emotionally stable and secure children. Coming from a psychology background, I can understand this perfecty. When you respond to your babies needs, your baby is going to learn to trust, love, support, and a lot of other good things! :o) (I just want to add, though, that I know there are times when you just have to let your babies cry it out... like yesterday when Maida cried almost all morning and I had no idea what in the world was wrong. She wouldn't eat, sleep, play, or anything. I had to just put her in her crib and let her cry because I was getting so worn out.)

This weekend we are helping out with Spirit Fest, a youth rally here in Duluth that Erik and I grew up going to! We are going to be housing four 7th graders here at our house on Friday and Saturday nights and also helping out with registration tonight, and transporting people to and from places. We are so excited for the weekend and we're happy to be apart of it. I might not post until after the weekend, because we'll be so busy.