British midwife Pirosca Cavell, who in her years of practice has brought hundreds of babies into the world, is keen to change popular beliefs about the benefits of letting babies cry.
When your baby cries for hours, it’s normal to worry a little, said Cavill, 55, who now runs a healthcare clinic in Britain. Every loud whining or panting is an indication that something is wrong.
She added: “Check your child’s temperature, look at him, and think about whether he is feeding normally and whether he has wet or soiled diapers, adding that a child may develop colic if he cries more than 3 hours a day.”
Cavell pointed out that babies adapt from other moments of birth to life outside the womb, their lungs are activated when exposed to air, and their first cry is enough to expel fluid from their lungs and help them inflate so that they can function properly.
Researchers in Denmark challenged a 1962 study that said crying peaks at 6 weeks, before declining to a low level after 12 weeks.
“We collected study data from 17 countries, 57 research projects, and 7,600 children,” said neuroscientist Christine Parsons of Aarhus University.
She added: “During the study, the duration of crying was not shown to decrease significantly after 5 weeks, and the available data show that crying forms an important part of the lives of many children after 6 months.”