Is crying in arms as bad for babies as crying alone?

Quite some time ago, a couple of Facebook followers asked me a question in response to this post that debunks the myth that babies need to cry to exercise their lungs. What they asked was: ‘Does the damage that prolonged crying does in a baby’s brain still occur if they’re crying in arms?’ My instinct has always told me that it does not, but I’m not about to write a post telling you what I think about such an important issue. So I’ve done a load of research and I’ve found that, happily, my instincts are right!

In fact, not only is it not as damaging to babies’ brains, but it can actually be beneficial to babies. We are often told by books etc. to check that our crying babies are the right temperature, not hungry/thirsty, have a clean nappy and are not ill before deciding that they just need to cry themselves to sleep and leaving them in their cot on their own.

From the writing I’ve been reading over the last week, I would advocate nearly the same thing, except for the last bit, which I would change to: we need to check that our crying babies are the right temperature, not hungry/thirsty, have a clean nappy and are not ill before deciding that they need to cry to release pent-up stress and holding and holding and comforting them while they do it.

There is a lot of evidence out there that crying can actually be good for us – babies as well as adults – as long as it’s not because we are distressed and, in the case of babies, crying alone. Psychologists, counsellors and therapists often say that it’s a good sign when their clients cry – tears are known to be healing.

What’s going on in your baby’s body when he’s crying? If he’s crying alone, then he could be crying from fear of being abandoned, and that means that his brain could be being bathed in all sorts of harmful stress chemicals. However, once that distressing factor is removed i.e. he is held close and begins to be crying in arms, that problem dissipates.

Also, tears have an important factor in removing harmful stress chemicals such as adrenaline from the body that accumulate in times of stress – substances that could prove to be toxic if they were to remain in the body.

The fact is that babies do sometimes need to cry, but they should not have to cry alone. I think that this is great news because the stressful feelings that can overwhelm new mothers when their babies cry a lot are usually down to the feeling that we must be doing something wrong, that we must help our babies to stop crying at all costs.

Now we know that actually that’s not as important as we are lead to believe, it may be that we can at last relax and just let our babies know that we’re there with them in their pain while they cry out all that stress so they can sleep peacefully.

They still don’t need to cry to exercise their lungs, though!

Did you have a baby who cried a lot? How did you manage it?

Babies need to cry to exercise their lungs? Really?

I have just spent a whole hour Googling for research into this long-standing old-wives tale, and I have found nothing whatsoever to back it up. I did, however, find that this ‘advice’ is actually still being given, not just by ‘old wives’ but by actual books that are still in actual bookshops! I give you Parenting for Dummies. And I also found an article by a paediatric psychologist, no less, Dr Lynne Kenney, who says that not only does it exercise the lungs, but crying also helps babies to maintain their eye health!

Isn't this photograph beautiful!

I know what they say about assuming things, but I do believe that most of the people reading this blog do actually know that this little gem is a load of rubbish, but sometimes it’s nice to know why so we can tell any ‘old wives’ why we’re ignoring their advice, should they deign to impress it upon us.

There are always times in a Western baby’s life when it is better for her to be left to cry than not. In more natural cultures, babies arecarried all the time, and rarely cry. If mum isn’t available, or is too ill/tired/fed up to hold her baby, then there are always plenty of other adults around to share some of the work.

In our culture, however, we get too tired/fed up to hold our babies rather a lot sooner, simply because we are forced, by the way our society works, to parent in isolation. When it gets to the point that you are so angry you fear you may do something awful, then it is far safer for you to put your baby in another room and let her cry while you have five minutes to try to access what emotional reserves you can find. Or to call a friend to come and share the day with you.

In general, though, it appears that prolonged crying is actually very bad for babies. Actually, I’ll be more specific here. It’s prolonged, uncomforted distress that is bad for babies. Being left to do this over and over again can actually cause changes in their brains that can cause them to overreact to situations for the rest of their lives. Dr Margot Sunderland calls it an over-sensitive stress-response system in her book: What Every Parent Needs to Know.

Truby King

So, if it’s so bad for babies, what’s the history of the ‘it’s good for babies to cry’ myth? Well, I thought, initially, that it was the…ahem…delightful Dr Truby King (I refuse to apologise for linking to Wikipedia – sometimes the stuff’s good, and as long as you know that, like anything, it may need to be taken with a pinch of salt, then it’s actually quite a useful resource! Anyway, I digress…).

It turns out that he wasn’t the first person to posit this theory, and that it was probably Soranus of Ephesus , the Greek physician who, in the 2nd century AD suggested that crying was helpful exercise for the respiratory and digestive systems (9th para), but he did clarify that persistent crying could cause physical harm.

In 1908, a Dr Holt wrote, in his book The Care and Feeding of Children, that newborns should cry for at least 15-20 minutes every day to expand the lungs. Truby King’s advice came a few years after that. Neither of these writers ever produced any scientific evidence for their guidelines for parenting babies.

I think we can safely say those guidelines can be entirely disregarded and, as there actually is scientific evidence for the opposing idea of not letting babies cry any longer than we have to, it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade any ‘old wives’ you come across that their advice is, well, ill-advised.