No, I don’t mean “Is your toddler hungry?”  

They usually are.

And no, I don’t mean “Is your preschooler hungry?”

They often won’t admit it, unless they’re at the house of a friend whose mother isn’t nearly as good a cook as you.  Political prisoners could take hunger strike lessons from a preschooler who has figured out that what mom really wants is for her to eat the green things, too.

But enough about cutting the edges off grilled cheese sandwiches  <flashback shudder>  let’s get back to the real question:  Is your newborn baby really hungry?

Crying unnerves adults.

It sounds so urgent, looks so awful, and it does a new parent’s head (not to mention self-esteem) in when they feel unable to help their baby.

That’s kind of how crying is engineered — to be unpleasant.  To motivate you to solve the problem to which baby has just alerted you.  Yes, crying (“stress” translated into baby language) is contagious, but so is calm.

Before you pick up your baby, get a grip on yourself.  Do something to dissipate your anxiety  – something to calm you.  You could breathe … sigh … genuflect?

Clear your tension, so you’ll be able to focus on the work at hand.  Like translating your baby’s language of the cry.  By 3 to 4 weeks of parenting, you’ll have the skills to hear and decipher the different cries and their different meanings.