Thanks to all who have reflected my own gut reaction that it is wrong, wrong, WRONG to call 90 minutes of daily crying 'normal' no matter what age person we are talking about. I've since discovered that the authors of this book may have lifted the idea from the existing freebie book, in which a pediatrician of whom I think very highly writes 'one study that found that babies up to three months, cried on average 1.6 hours per day, and that after 3 months it decreased to 1.3 hours per day'. He did not call it normal in so many words, but neither did he comment on the researchers' frame of reference. There was no citation provided. I have looked in several of my books, and it was in 'Bestfeeding' by Renfrew and Fisher I found this, under 'myths' on p. 157: "MYTH: Young babies always cry a lot, so you should leave your baby to cry. REALITY: A baby has all the feelings an adult has. She cries because she has a need. Crying only expresses pain or upset, nothing else. People comfort adults who cry. A baby cannot meet most of her own needs, and she needs us to take her crying seriously; she needs comfort too (see pages XX)." A look at the pages in question is also very encouraging, as the authors give a compassionate, helpful account of reasons babies cry, and suggestions for how to help deal with them. They also make it clear that they never use the phrase 'demand feeding'; they say 'flexible feeding' and define it as 'feeding a baby when the mother and child decide the time is right rather than by a set schedule'. In other words, they don't call a baby 'demanding' when all the baby is doing is responding to a biological need. I think I am going to have to address infant crying more specifically in the teaching sessions we have on our ward. It is quite common for parents to say 'but they just need to cry sometimes, right? I mean, we can't pick them up every time they cry?!' Sure, babies have feelings that need to be expressed and sometimes crying is the appropriate expression thereof, AND it is always an attempt at communication which should be responded to and acknowledged if we want our child to be able to acknowledge the feelings of others later. Sigh. Rachel Myr Kristiansand, Norway *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html