Crying

Anything but "Good for Their Lungs"

“Crying is very bad for infants because it decreases lung capacity, increases intracranial pressure, reestablishes some fetal circulatory patterns and starts stress reactions within the body (Anderson 1999).”

 http://www.bio.davidson.edu/biology/midorcas/animalphysiology/websites/2001/Vogel/kangaroocareBENEFITSmasr.htm

“Crying isn't ‘good for baby's lungs.’ One of the most ridiculous pieces of medical folklore is the dictum: ‘Let baby cry, it's good for his lungs.’ In the late 1970's, research showed that babies who were left to cry had heart rates that reached worrisome levels, and lowered oxygen levels in their blood. When these infants' cries were soothed, their cardiovascular system rapidly returned to normal, showing how quickly babies recognize the status of well being on a physiologic level. When a baby's cries are not soothed, he remains in physiologic as well as psychological distress.”

 http://www.askdrsears.com/html/5/t051200.asp#T051204

The early stress resulting from separation causes changes in infant brains that makes future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives, say Commons and Miller.

‘Parents should recognize that having their babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently,’ Commons said. ‘It changes the nervous system so they're overly sensitive to future trauma.’”

 http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/ChildrenNeedTou.html

Sometimes crying is misconstrued as an idealized expression of anger or manipulation. Yet, such distressed crying in a young infant might better be described as a fear response. A fear invoked by the uncomfortable feeling of being soiled, the rumbling of stomach pains, or the vulnerability of being alone in the dark. 

Fear of predators and death is an emotion deeply seated within our evolutionary biological makeup. In our earliest days, families and tribes huddled closely together in the dark to help soothe this fear. The idea of "safety in numbers" held true, because a larger group of humans would fair better warding off predators than a small group or sole individual would.

Today, we as parents may know that an infant is safe alone in its crib. However, the biology of an infant's brain is initially encoded with innate fear responses, which are easily prompted often in early life.

When the infant is in a state of helpless fear and panic the amygdala kicks in and sends messages to the brain to prepare the body for "flight or fight." An infant can neither fight nor flee. If the panic isn't subdued by intervention from a nurturing adult, the flood of chemicals and hormones may rage through the brain, specifically targeting the amygdala and hippocamus, for an unhealthy length of time. 

What occurs within the infant brain during long durations of crying?

Psychohistorian Lloyd deMause explains that, "Traumas which are inescapable because of helplessness can severely damage the hippocampus, killing neurons (causing lesions). This damage is caused by the release of a cascade of cortisol, adrenaline and other stress hormones during traumatization that not only damage brain cells and impair memory but also set in motion a long-lasting disregulation of the brain's biochemistry." ⁵  An abundance of repeated surges of these chemicals and hormones to the brain is also believed to cause the amygdala to become desensitized to the fear-response and normal levels of serotonin to be reduced.

For example, animals that are traumatized when they are young grow up to be cowardly bullies, with less vasopressin, which regulates aggression, and low levels of serotonin, which is commonly known as a calming neurotransmitter. Low serotonin is the most important marker for violence in animals and humans, and has been correlated with high rates of homicide, suicide, arson, antisocial disorders, self-mutilation, and other disorders of aggression. ⁶

Since recent imaging scans of brains in living human subjects show that the amygdala is the central site of fear conditioning, it is believed that this conditioning also plays a primary role in such anxiety disorders as phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar and panic disorder.⁸

Given that such extensive brain development occurs during the first years of life, it is plausible to consider that repeated trauma caused by these brain altering chemical surges during numerous and/or extended periods of unattended crying, unresolved separation anxieties and other fear-response situations, may predispose an individual to later-life impairments in emotional and social functioning.”

http://babyparenting.about.com/library/weekly/aa040100c.htm

“Circulating throughout the bloodstream of every person, even tiny babies, is an adrenal hormone called "cortisol." Produced by the adrenal glands, this hormone helps major systems of the body function normally. The body needs just the right amount of cortisol at the right times. Too much or too little, and the body is not in tune, sort of like an engine trying to run with the wrong mix of gasoline and air. Adrenal hormones are also known as stress hormones. Levels rise quickly to help a person react to a threat. Although stress hormones are needed in times of danger, if they remain too high for too long, the body becomes overstressed and certain systems, such as the immune system, can't function as well. Experiments on both human infants and infant experimental animals showed these fascinating results about attachment research. :

• Prolonged cortisol elevations may diminish growth.
• Prolonged cortisol elevations may suppress the immune system.” 

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/T131000.asp

“Fascinating biological changes take place in a mother's body in response to her infant's cry. Upon hearing her baby cry, the blood flow to a mother's breasts increases, accompanied by a biological urge to "pick up and nurse." The act of breastfeeding itself causes a surge in prolactin , a hormone that we feel forms the biological basis of the term "mother's intuition." Oxytocin, the hormone that causes a mother's milk to letdown, brings feelings of relaxation and pleasure; a pleasant release from the tension built up by the baby's cry. These feelings help you love your baby.

Researchers Sylvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth performed studies in the 1970's that should have put the spoiling theory on the shelf to spoil forever. (It is interesting that up to that time and even to this day, the infant development writers that preached the cry-it-out advice were nearly always male. It took female researchers to begin to set things straight.) These researchers studied two groups of mother-infant pairs. Group 1 mothers gave a prompt and nurturant response to their infant's cries. Group 2 mothers were more restrained in their response. They found that children in Group 1 whose mothers had given an early and more nurturant response were less likely to use crying as a means of communication at one year of age. These children seemed more securely attached to their mothers and had developed better communicative skills, becoming less whiny and manipulative.

More studies were done to shoot down the spoiling theory, showing that babies whose cries were not promptly responded to begin to cry more, longer, and in a more disturbing way. In one study comparing two groups of crying babies, one group of infants received an immediate, nurturant response to their cries, while the other group was left to cry-it-out. The babies whose cries were sensitively attended to cried seventy percent less. The babies in the cry-it-out group, on the other hand, did not decrease their crying. In essence, crying research has shown that babies whose cries were listened and responded to learned to ‘cry better’; the infants who were the product of a more restrained style of parenting learned to ‘cry harder.’”

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/5/t051200.asp#T051204