Understanding Your Baby’s Cry & Sounds

After three months, your baby will cry much less than before, because however often she starts, picking her up will usually stop her. The nature of her crying changes too, and although you might not be able to describe her cry language in words, you’ll certainly find yourself reacting differently to different cries. You know her better than you know you do. She still uses the rhythmic rising and falling hunger cry which soaks your bra if you’re still nursing. She still lets out a pain or fear shriek which floods you with adrenaline, but she adds a grumbly fretful kind of cry and uses that one first on most occasions. She’s not saying, “Help” just “I don’t seem to be quite happy just now.” Soon after, she learns an indignant roar you often hear when you’ve just put her down for a nap. “Come back” it says, but it isn’t sad, and you’ll probably find yourself comfortable, waiting to see if it gets sad, before you go back to her.

She cries less, but she talks more. The second three months produce a positive state of babbling sounds with open vowels, the “oohs” and “aahs” and “pa’s” and “ma’s” which accompany all her play and punctuate your talk to her, to turn it all into conversation.

Penelope Leach, Ph.D., is one of the world’s most respected (and best-loved) developmental child psychologists. She is most widely known for her best-selling books on child development and parenting. They include Babyhood, Children First: What Society Must Do — and Is Not Doing — for Our Children Today, the classic Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five (now in a new edition for a new generation), and Your Growing Child: From Babyhood Through Adolescence.