It feels so nice to give a bottle to a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to put a fresh diaper on a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to swaddle a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to sing to a crying baby, and she stops crying. It builds confidence in my ability to understand what my baby is communicating and to respond appropriately, which I know (or think) I did because the crying stopped. Other times, I can feed, change, swaddle, sing, or try anything else I can think of, and the crying just continues, driving nails into my brain until I want to scream, “What the fuss!”

My rational mind knows that sometimes a baby is just fussy, it doesn’t make me a bad parent if I can’t get her to stop, it might be growing pains I can’t do anything about or just some mysterious bad mood, but there’s not much room for the rational stuff when a baby is crying inconsolably. The rational mind can make it seem not so bad later on, when the crying is finally done, but in the middle of it, my instinctive mind is in charge, no matter what sunshine that idiot Rational Mind is sure to blow up my ass later on. Instinct says crying means something is wrong and if I can’t fix it, it’s my fault, and even if it’s not my fault, I can’t just ignore it and go about my business any more than I could just ignore my hair being on fire until it went out on its own.

We are very lucky, and I reflect on and appreciate that fact quite a bit actually, when neither baby is on a crying jag. It could be much, much worse, like if our usually sweet-tempered girls cried inconsolably most of the time, or had persistent physical problems that kept them in constant pain, instead of the healthy, usually consolable babies we got. Most cries end with that nice feeling I described at the beginning, but when they don’t — egad. And when they both get going, or one has finally stopped and the other starts — double egad. (Or if you want to be even more accurate — egad squared.)