There are many, but many, times the parents confuse the baby's hunger with the need he has in his arms, of affection, of affection, of not feeling alone. The question, or the requirement, is always the same: "I notice that he is going hungry, because I breastfeed and at the time or so he asks me again crying." Although sometimes the thing does not go so much with hunger, but with sleep: "He doesn't sleep at all and I don't know what to do. Once he has fallen asleep, he wakes up again at half an hour, or at the hour, and starts again ".
And they usually tell me mothers who hold plump babies, looking well fed and that, at first glance, do not seem to be going hungry. The way to know if a child is staying hungry or not is to weigh it and see what happened to the weight. If the weight is fair, if you are not gaining enough weight, it can be a real feeling. However, in most cases the baby is great, so cries for something else, which is usually "arms".
The girl who didn't sleep at all
I think I have explained this case on occasion in the blog, but when in doubt, and as it turns out, I return to it. One day a couple came (to the nursing office) explaining that their daughter, a few weeks old, barely slept anything. "We ended up in the ER because I had been sleeping for almost 15 hours only for a little while and I was very, very irritable."
In the Emergency Department, he was tested for urine and blood, a complete examination and found that, at first glance, there was no cause of such symptoms. He had no fever, there were no signs of infection and, as we already know that you only have to go to a hospital if you are sick, because if you do not hook anything you did not have, he was discharged with instructions that if he got worse in any sense, come back.
In Babies and more Arms are a basic need of the baby, such as eating or sleepingThey did not return, because they did not have a fever nor did they show any clear symptoms of illness, but they did ask me, that since I have had a child of those who are called "high demand", I am very clear that there are babies who do not know They easily conform to what most society expects from them. I asked them what they were doing with the girl, that they explained her day to day a little, and they told me that they fed her and that, when she finished and fell asleep, they put her in her bassinet.
Minutes later, sometimes more, sometimes less, she woke up crying and they caught her again, to sleep her again and leave her again in the bassinet. Minutes later, the same thing happened. Thus came a time when the girl all he did was cry, without falling asleep, and the parents' despair, of course, was evident, thinking that he had something and that not sleeping could not be healthy.
"It goes too far," I told them. "She falls asleep so calmly, but she wakes up because she feels lonely. She goes back to sleep so calmly in your arms, but she wakes up again because she feels lonely in the bassinet.
There comes a time that is so tired, from not sleeping, that she cries from sleep. It goes by thread, it becomes irritable, and then it doesn't sleep well anymore. "I suggested you do a test: feed it as usual, wait for it to fall asleep, and do nothing else. That is, skip the step of" and when she is asleep, I pass her to her crib. "If she didn't pass it, she stayed in her arms for an hour or even two hours, they already had the answer. If at half an hour she woke up again, like in the crib, she would have What to see then if there was anything else.
The hungry girl
These parents told me that they would try it, but others give me the answer at the moment: "Oh, yes, of course. If I leave him in my arms he stays up to two hours, if not more, sleeping." This was told to me by a mother who believed that her daughter was going hungry and, breastfeeding, had already begun to give her artificial milk, she had taken milk to give it to her in a bottle and had added even cereals, because at the time of leaving her sleeping he woke up crying. She interpreted it as hungry when all the girl wanted was to sleep in the arms of her mother or father. When I put it on the scale, what was evident was confirmed, I was not only well-weight, but for the height I had, it could even be said that he had half a kilo left over.
In Babies and more, how do you know when the baby is hungry?"He is not hungry. Your daughter is She is very affectionate and does not want to be alone"And at that moment the parents smiled, looked at her with different eyes and left with a solution that they already knew. The problem? The usual one, that they have told us that babies cannot be with us in their arms, that they have to sleep alone in their cribs and that way they will become more independent or I don't know what absurd rolls that only help to make children and their parents nervous.
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In Babies and more | What I do? My baby only falls asleep in his arms, Eleven compelling reasons to choose raising in arms, "Do not take him in arms, he gets used"
