On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep

of hunger or pain, or because her diaper is wet.”^5
Identifying and knowing your baby’s cry patterns and disposition
(personal style) will help you learn to discern real needs. Our first
grandchild, Ashley, had a cry pattern at naptime that could easily be
represented by a gradual bell curve. A gentle whimper built to a mild
wail, which then would fall back again to a whimper. Sleep followed. The
total time elapsed was ten minutes, with the exception of her late-
afternoon cry, which lasted fifteen minutes.
By four weeks of age, it took Ashley just five minutes of crying to
settle into her nap. Often she would be put down and fall right off to
sleep. Knowing Ashley’s cry patterns allowed her mother to be discerning
one day when six-week-old Ashley cried longer than usual. Recognizing
the difference in the length of the cry, Ashley’s mother went in, picked
her up, and held her for a moment. Then she put her back down. Ashley
went off to a contented sleep.
Whitney is Ashley’s sister. Her cry patterns were much different. She
would wail ten minutes, and then stop. About a minute later, she would
wail ten minutes more. Then she would stop again. A moment after that
she would whimper, then sleep. That naptime pattern lasted twelve
weeks. Crying for Whitney became an art form, despite the fact that
Whitney was nurtured, loved, and cared for with the same intensity as her
sister. Whitney didn’t have any more or less nutritional or love needs in
her life, but she did have by nature a greater disposition for crying. Know
your child’s cry disposition and realize that some children have a greater
propensity to cry. This is not necessarily a signal that their basic needs
are not being met.
Our third grandchild, Katelynn, had yet a different history of crying.
She would climb rapidly from a whimper to a wail, like an F-16 heading
into the stratosphere. Then at the height of her cry, she would stop
abruptly and drop off to a sound sleep. Her cry times averaged ten
minutes in length at naptime for the first month. After four weeks, like
her cousin Whitney, Katelynn became selective as to which naptimes she
would cry. After three months, crying at naptime was rare for all three