What a Baby Needs?

As a parent, one of the best ways to help your baby stop crying is to always keep in mind what a baby needs. In terms of basic needs, what a baby needs is the same as all of us, but babies cannot be expected to have the reason and patience of adults and older children – what ever a baby needs, all they know is that they need it now!

Let’s start with basic needs for your baby. What is one of the major needs is food, and one reason why your baby might be crying is hunger. If you are trying to figure out what your baby needs and are trying solution after solution, be aware that sometimes a baby is so upset that he doesn’t even realize that food is being offered. Try offering food again, making sure he knows that food is there. The same basic principle applies for tiredness. Have you ever been so exhausted that you can’t wind down enough to get to sleep? It happens to adults, and the same thing can happen to babies. What else a baby needs is clean diapers. Fortunately this need of your baby’s is easy both to detect and to solve!

One need of babies that is different from the needs of older children and adults is their need to be held. For babies, especially newborns, what a baby needs is a lot of physical contact and closeness. What a baby needs is to see you, feel your presence, smell you, and hear you. In fact, the more you have close contact with your baby and meet this need, both when he is crying and when he is not, the less likely he will be to cry in the future. Another interesting fact is that most mothers, both left-handed and right-handed ones, instinctively hold babies on the left side of their body, over their heart. This is because what a baby needs is to hear your voice and even your heartbeat to know that you are there.

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