Screaming babies...
So I took Tramp to the park for a walk last night, and while we are walking I notice a couple playing tennis on the tennis courts. They have a little girl (2-ish) wandering around the court while they play, and I see a stroller off to the side. As I get closer, I hear it.. a tiny, tiny baby, screaming with his whole little heart as hard as he can. And screaming, and screaming, and screaming. I see the mama walk towards the stroller and think, "Ah, she is going to get him!" But, nope. The tennis ball had come to rest right next to the stroller. She walked over, picked up the ball, and walked back to continue to play... completely ignoring her screaming infant.
When I say infant, I mean little; like newborn or maybe a few weeks old. You know how newborn babies have that very distinctive cry with no shape to it yet, just a desperate sound!
I found myself full of... sheer rage. I wanted to run over, punch that lady in the face, grab her little baby, and run. Really. I was steaming, my heart was hurting for this little guy, I thought I might cry.
Talk about hormonal!!!!! Research says that there are biological responses in a mama to her own babies cry. What about to other babies, though???
Anyways, as I continued to walk, I started making myself think of reasons *why* that mama could be so callous to her baby crying. Maybe she is just one of the "Cry It Out" crowd who believes that babies should self-comfort. (Total crap, in my opinion. Babies cry as a survival mechanism, not as manipulation!) Maybe. But even the CIO people usually don't advocate ignoring a baby crying until they are the ripe old age of four months, and this baby didn't sound anywhere near that old.
So, my next thought... amongst "JoAnna calm down!"'s over and over... was, maybe this baby has colic and is simply inconsolable and mama is going completely bonkers. Sometimes babies with colic simply won't calm no matter what you do, so I can see a mama at her wits end just winding up ignoring it.
But still, it was a little chilling to me to watch mama and daddy totally blase' about their babies screaming, and even the little two year old seemed to think it was perfectly normal to ignore a screaming baby. I wound up calming myself to the point of giving them the benefit of the doubt... I bet that baby has colic. I bet she is doing the very best she can. This is not the mommywars, and I am not on this earth to judge other mama's. But I wonder what most mama's do when dealing with colic... just ignore? Or something else?
Here's hoping I never REALLY need to know the answer to that!!!!!
