Her face turned bright red as she laid on my bed crying. My heart clenched up as I saw my little newborn girl wail. "Shshsh". I said softly, "Please don't cry." A quite fear tied me up inside as I tried to comfort her.
Many years prior, after our first child was born, he too cried. He cried loud and strong. When my little one was a couple of weeks old, I laid in bed and asked my husband to go pick up our new baby, and try to comfort him for me. I was so tired.
He tried and failed miserably. He told me, "I want to bash his head into the ceiling". I could see in his eyes that he meant it. He spent his childhood bashing gopher heads for a quarter each for the local farmer. I believed he meant it.
I never left him alone with our new baby after that. Our first baby cried continually. My heart clenched up every time with fear. My husband had a temper, and I always tried to keep everything around him perfect hoping to prevent an event.
But our son cried so much. I remember waking up to his cries, trying to comfort him. He cried when I picked him up. He cried when I put him down.
I felt like a failure as a mother. I didn't understand what I was doing wrong.
Friends, family, and books said I should let him cry it out. When I tried that, he would cry for two hours every night, several times a night.
I made sure my husband wore ear plugs every night. I remember laying there on my side watching him in silence while he slept and our son cried, always wondering, Is my husband going to lose it?
Sometimes, as I held my little one crying in the middle of the night, I cried too. I tried everything. Every time he cried, I was afraid of my husbands temper.
My husband could be fine one minute, and blow up the next. So when he looked like he was handling it fine, I felt no peace.
One day my husband sat me down at the table for a talk. He wanted to take our son somewhere and drop him off. Abandon him. A parking lot, a park, anywhere. I looked in his eyes, and I knew he wasn't kidding. He was dead serious.
I reassured him the best I could. I knew if I couldn't comfort and help our son, and keep him quiet, the consequences would eventually be horrible.
One evening as we drove home, our son, then two years old, sat crying in the back of our two door vehicle next to his infant brother.
Our older son cried and cried and refused to be comforted. I was so afraid. My husband pulled over into a parking lot. My heart stopped. I froze like an opossum.
Whenever he became angry, I always froze, hoping that if I did nothing else to make him angry, he would calm down after venting.
He pulled our son out of the car, and set him in the parking lot next to the car. He pushed our son away from the door of the car. He was barely two years old. My husband told our toddler that he was going to leave him their because he cried to much. I froze. I didn't know what to do. Nothing in my life seemed to prepare me for this.
What do I do? What do I do?
I believed if I sat very still and didn't make him mad, he would calm down and everything would be alright. I was always afraid of what would happened if I stood up to him. I was so afraid he would blow up.
Our second infant was strapped in the back of the two door vehicle. If I got out of the car to save my toddler, I wouldn't be able to get move my seat fast enough to get our infant out of the car.
If I stepped out of the car, he could leave with our infant. I never left him alone with the children. What would he do to our infant in his anger?
My toddler in the parking lot or my infant in the car.
He yelled at our little toddler. He told our son, if he didn't stop crying he would leave him there. He meant it. This was no idle threat.
My little boy cried louder and he looked so scared. Didn't my husband know what he was doing to him.
You can't stop a child from crying by threatening. He cried more.
I am ashamed. I froze. I just didn't know what to do. After these events we can look back and know what we should have done. At the time, my brain froze.
After about ten minutes, my husband calmed down, and put our son back into the car.
I never forgot it. He never apologized. He never showed any sense of remorse.
I came to understand that my children could feel my fear. That when I entered my son's room at night, he could see my fear.
I couldn't comfort him because he knew something was terribly wrong.
None of the how to get your baby to sleep at night books talk about it.
Babies can feel the fear of their parents.
One of the signs of an emotional abused wife, is inconsolable babies.
To comfort a crying baby, you have to be at peace first.
Realizing that, with each child, I learned to focus my heart, and choose to feel peace and love when caring for my children, no matter what was happening around me.
It worked, most the time.
After our second child was born, he cried, my husband looked at him angrily and said, "He's going to be just like our first child."
I reassured him that even if that were so, we had learned. We now knew how to comfort such a child.
I bound up my heart, and gave nothing but peace and love to the child.
After our third child was born, she cried, my husband looked angrily and said, "She's going to be just like our first child."
I reassured him that even if that were so, we had learned. We now knew how to comfort such a child.
I bound up my heart, and gave nothing but peace and love to the child.
After our fourth child was born, she cried, my husband look angrily and said, " She's going to be just like our first child."
I reassured him that even if that were so, we had learned. We now knew how to comfort such a child.
So back to the beginning of this story, I looked at my crying fourth child.
Events at that time in our family were too traumatic. I couldn't bind up my heart for her and comfort her. I looked at her in fear as she cried.
I remembered an old movie I saw and loved many years ago.
Quigly Down Under.
Crazy Cora. She was a wild woman. She was crazy. She was beautiful crazy. Why? She lived in a farm house of the old American frontier. A drunken Indian broke into her home while she was alone with her child. Crazy Cora hid in a closet with her baby.
"Hush baby, don't cry. Hush baby, don't cry." She tried to quiet her baby. But the baby kept crying. Finally she hushed the baby. She kept her baby quiet the only way she knew how. The drunken Indian left. Her baby was dead. She had smothered him. Cora went crazy after that.
Well, at the end of the movie, Crazy Cora was now in the wild Australian frontier with a beautiful aborigine baby. She was hiding in a cave at night with the little baby. Dingos circled the outside of the cave, while the baby started to cry.
"Hush baby, don't cry. Hush baby, don't cry." She tried to quiet the baby over and over again.
Then suddenly she snapped.
She pulled out the guns she had been left with and started shooting wildly in the air.
"Cry, baby Cry!" It was a beautiful moment. The dingos ran off.
Or something like that. It's been a decade since I saw the movie.
I looked down at my crying child. I tilted my head as I realized, I personally have no problem if she wants to cry. Her kindly grandpa was patient, he wouldn't mind or threaten. The other children didn't mind.
Her father had just left us.
It was alright. She could cry.
I picked her up smiling. "Cry, baby Cry." I said softly.
When I see little infants crying at church, or anywhere else, I smile. I ask if I can hold the child.
I love to see babies cry. It's alright if they want to cry. Take care of them. Love them. If something is wrong, fix it. But if they want to cry, it's alright. They can cry.
It's funny how if you let the baby cry, but you are at peace, and smile at your little one to comfort them peacefully.
They stop crying.
A troubled mother cannot comfort a stressed baby. A mother must first be comforted.
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