Why does my baby’s crying make me feel like this?

Dear Momma,

Your sister took the baby from you at the front door, still crying, and said, “Go. I’ve got them.” So you went. Not far. Out to the car in the driveway, where you’re sitting with the engine off and the keys in your lap. From here the crying comes through the wall thinner than it did on your shoulder.

Some of what you feel is relief, the plain, animal relief of being out of the sound. Some of it is worse. An hour ago, on the fourth lap of the hallway, with the baby rigid and screaming and every trick used up, something in you went very hot, or very far away, and it frightened you. You didn’t do anything. You just felt it, and now you can’t stop feeling that you felt it.

The cry is real, and what it found in you is real, and neither one makes you the wrong mother for this baby. In some of us, a baby’s crying reaches somewhere older than the baby. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means there’s something in you worth understanding.

And you did a good thing tonight. You gave the baby to someone safe, and you stepped outside. That counts as answering your baby.

What answering really means

You may be holding yourself to a rule nobody ever said out loud: a good mother makes the crying stop, and if she can’t, she holds on until it does.

That isn’t the job. Answering your baby means taking their need seriously and making sure it’s met safely. It doesn’t mean the crying has to stop, and it doesn’t mean holding them without a break until you fall apart. Some babies cry hard in the arms of someone who loves them completely and is doing everything right.

Here’s the sentence I’d most like you to keep: self-sacrifice is not a prerequisite for secure attachment. Your baby doesn’t need you to give up everything. They need you to keep coming, and to be someone when you get there.

The disappearing

You don’t decide to disappear. The shower moves to tomorrow. Lunch is the edge of the baby’s plate. You stop finishing sentences on the phone. You keep saying “after”: after this feed, after this nap, after they sleep through. And “after” has a way of turning into a year.

But when you go missing, your baby doesn’t get more of you. They get you, with less left to answer them with. Start small: catch the next “after,” and if it can be now, let it be now, even a little.

Use it tonight: before the next hard hour

Decide two things while you can still think: where the baby goes if you ever need to put them down (their crib, on their back), and who you’d call. Put that number somewhere you’ll see it without looking.

When they’re crying and it’s getting to you, take one good look at your baby. If this isn’t their usual cry, or they don’t seem like themselves, start with the safety lines below. Otherwise:

• Check your hands. If they want to grip, or jolt, or put the baby down harder than you’d ever mean to, lay your baby on their back in a safe crib, go into another room, and go back as soon as you’re steady. This is never a way to teach a baby to stop crying, and never the everyday answer to crying. Never shake a baby, not for a moment and not gently. Shaking can cause serious, permanent injury or death.
• Take the deadline off. Tell yourself there’s no deadline tonight. Sit somewhere you could sit for a long time, and put the phone face down so you stop timing it. You’re keeping them company through it, not racing to the end.
• Get another voice in the room. Tag the other adult before you break. If there isn’t one, call someone and put them on speaker while you walk.

When it’s more than the fog

• If your baby is seriously unwell, or you believe they’re in danger, call your local emergency number now.
• If you have thoughts of harming yourself or your baby that feel like a plan, or you or someone close to you notices confusion, seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, or not sleeping at all, put the baby somewhere safe and call your emergency number now.
• If you’re afraid you might hurt your baby, put them somewhere safe, like the crib, step out of the room, and call someone.
• If you’re having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988, in the US or Canada, any time.
• If you’ve felt low, empty, numb, anxious or not like yourself for two weeks or more, or you’re having frightening thoughts that won’t let go, or you feel rage or dread most of the time, talk to your doctor, midwife or pediatrician this week, or sooner if how you feel frightens you.

Sudden, unwanted thoughts or pictures of your baby being harmed, even by your own hands, are common after a baby, and a thought like that, on its own, isn’t a sign you’ll act on it. If they keep coming back, or you’ve started avoiding your baby because of them, tell your doctor or midwife this week.

They’re inside, crying, held. You’re out here, breathing. Both of those are part of looking after your baby tonight.

— Momma

This letter draws on Loving Them, Keeping Me, the Baby Guide for when the first year takes all of you: for when everything wants a piece of you, how to answer the cry and keep yourself, in your baby’s first year.