When my son was a few months old and left alone with me, he would cry for hours despite my every effort to console him. I cried, too. It was unnerving, overwhelming and frustrating. I was out of my element, out of control, and going out of my mind. I could not find any reason for his crying, any cause for the plaintive effect, which was a great challenge for the scientist in me to overcome.
When asked about our son's excessive crying, our pediatrician's only response was just about as succinct as you can get: "Babies cry." And just about as unsatisfying as you can get for a scientist. I wanted, actually needed, an answer and even better, a solution.
As I have written previously, I learned over the course of my son's first year that parenting was much easier when I tried not to be a scientist and just a dad. But now that my son is so sweet at 14 months and 25 pounds of charm with only an occasional crying jag, and with some time and distance from this troubling tearful time, I couldn't resist going back to re-analyze the experiment.
I recall during one crying fit that I once tried to estimate how many muscles my son was engaging and the amount of calories he was burning. He was doing his own infant Cross-Fit workout with a focus on inhaling and exhaling that would impress a yoga instructor.
Of course, I even wondered once if somebody had studied this phenomenon. I have since found that "crying" is an active, broad, and mature field of science. One study even showed that when babies cry they consume 13 percent more calories than when not crying (consistent with my theory that my son was getting a great workout).
Some researchers have also argued that excessive criers may be signaling how vigorous they are. I wish I knew that then. I might have accepted his crying as a "good thing" and not struggled with it as much.
I distilled why I struggled down to four reasons. First, his crying was not only loud, but also had some resonance frequency, specific to me, that could shatter my soul like a crystal goblet when a singer hits a high note.
Second, I have a huge ego and am competitive. For a scientist, there are well-defined metrics for success. I equated my inability to calm my son as a failure, like getting a grant denied or research paper rejected.
Third, I knew that once my wife came home, he would usually stop. Despite knowing full well why this would happen and that she had something I couldn't compete with, I was jealous of her.
Finally, I was frustrated with my son's opacity. His environmental needs, internal and external, seemed to be taken care of. He was loved, stimulated, and fed. He had a dry diaper, fresh clothes, and a warm, comfortable home on a nice street.
In fairness, I am neither the first nor last parent who has had similar feelings or thoughts. But, I was often more concerned with my own hardships than my little boy's who clearly was in distress. I was selfish, uncaring, and insensitive and never realized that these events were, in fact, bonding moments. But we made it, and he is such a treat.
However, if my dog had whimpered or cried, I would have handled it better. Yet it is pretty easy to tell why a dog is upset. He licks a wound, needs to go outside, or is hungry: The causes are usually accessible and correctable.
My son never provided a clear indicator or reason for his crying. What I learned is simple and humbling: When our pediatrician said "Babies cry," she wasn't providing a reason, she was telling us that sometimes a reason is unknowable. You cannot have an answer to everything, which is antithetical to every scientific bone in my body.
I hope that one day someone develops an app--sort of like Shazam for new parents--that listens to a baby's cry, analyzes it, and provides an explanation: A very human wail ("Waaaaaah!") ... followed by calm computer voice saying, "he wants his mommy, deal with it."
I learned and now accept that my son was a baby and that's what they do. Cry. Until some scientist creates that app, that's the best cause-and-effect you're going to get.