February 6, 2007
Deafness
I'm spending a lot of time with a four-alarm crier 2 inches from my left ear. Am I risking my hearing?
There seem to be three phases in every cry-athon. It all starts with some stimulus (wet diaper, hunger, whatever).
The first phase is a physical behavior that literally responds to the discomfort. She squirms if uncmfortable, smacks her lips if hungry, turns her head from side to side if gassy. The clearest is hunger -- it looks like eating. The others are less 'legible' as related to the problems that cause them. Head turning as a way of relieving gas? Luckily there are only a couple of sources of discomfort besides hunger, so you try them all. We haven't yet had to deal with 'tired' (she just sleeps if tired rather than complaining); nor with 'sick'.
Second phase is where she begins to announce the discomfort - oral noises that are not quite cries. She is trigger-happy on this too, so there is a high probability (currently 30-40 percent?) that a yelp will be in isolation. That is, it will lead to nothing and possibly come from nothing. However, the yelps are a step toward boiling so you know your time is running out when you hear these. We usually start soothing her with words at this point -- e.g. 'Coming!' or 'Hang on a second' in hopes that this delays things (perhaps naively).
Final phase is hyteria/tantrum. It's relatively easy to puncture this through aggressive soothing - shushing, swaying/rocking, swaddling, sideways hold or sucking (5 S's framework...).
However, it is not a memoryless beahvior. One tantrum builds on the next into a higher state of 'crankiness'. The fuses get shorter. Only a long sleep resets the game clock.
