The baby wakes up and immediately cries. What to do if the baby wakes up and cries

Good sleep is just as important for a baby as good nutrition and care. But what if the baby wakes up crying? Every moment like this is stressful for parents. Many begin to get nervous and do not quite the right things. However, first of all, it is necessary to find the cause and eliminate it.

Baby crying: immediately after sleep and after it

Crying for an infant is a natural process, because that is how he expresses his desire, discontent, pain. When a baby cries before going to bed, many parents try to rock him faster. Perhaps the little one simply does not want to sleep and, with the help of crying, requires attention. And if adults can serve themselves, then the baby is not. Well, he can't sleep without his needs being met.

Do not panic when the baby cries before going to bed. Yes, even after sleep, there may be several reasons for this, and as practice has shown, most of them are not worth worrying about. Let's see why a baby might cry.

The newborn does not sleep well and often cries, which means that he lacks parental attention. Babies also dream. And if adults clearly understand the boundary between sleep and waking, then for a child this can be stressful, because for them this process is sharp and sudden and he gets scared and screams.

The reason for the cry may also be a fright because the little one has woken up, but the mother is not. Even a baby can be offended, but after a few minutes he calms down, because his mother is nearby and will not leave. As Dr. Komarovsky says, the child's psyche is a fine structure, and an adult cannot always understand it.

Physiological factors

The baby cries when he wakes up - the reason for this may be physiology:

• a strong desire to eat;
• the need to relieve the need, and even in a diaper it is unpleasant;
• due to an uncomfortable posture, some part of the body is numb;
• teeth erupt;
• problems with the intestines, which the baby has not yet fully adapted;
• neuralgia;
• painful urination;
• dermatitis that itches;
• other diseases.

Do not ignore long periods when a newborn baby does not sleep at night and cries.

You need to visit a doctor who will examine him for neuralgic or cardiological pathologies. Frequent tantrums need to be carefully examined, even if everything is in order with health, such a safety net will not hurt. Up to the age of 3, tearfulness in children is natural, so parents just need to gain strength and patience and get through it.

Other reasons

The peanut cries in a dream and then wakes up, the reason, perhaps, in unsatisfactory climatic conditions. He can be hot, cold, stuffy, everything, like in adults, but he cannot solve this problem himself, and therefore requires crying to eliminate discomfort. Perhaps his awakening was triggered by a sharp sound or a bright light. Not a comfortable position makes him spin, and then wake up. There can be many reasons, you just need to look closely, find them and eliminate them.

Relationship between sleep and crying

Crying a lot and a lot is bad for mental state, as well as physiological. The rest of the child should be calm and strong so that he grows well and has time to rest before daytime fun. What do psychologists say about the relationship between sleep and crying?

Before sleep

Why does a child cry a lot before going to bed? With satisfied physiological needs and the absence of diseases, the cause must be sought in psychology. Whining before going to bed is an expression of the baby's dissatisfaction with the sleep schedule, lack of attention and unwillingness to let go of the mother from herself. Most often, when mom lies down next to her, the little one turns and falls asleep. But without a mother, he sleeps badly, so he can moan in his sleep or whimpering will accompany the entire shallow rest of the child.

After sleep

It is better to wake up with a smile, but this is not always the case with children. A child crying after waking up most often longs for the satisfaction of his needs. This is the same hunger, thirst, cold or hot, wet and more. In this case, natural instincts are responsible for his cry, which good parents are not ignored.

But if the baby wakes up at night every hour and cries heart-rendingly, then this is a problem of physiology.

Something hurts him, which means you need to call a doctor. After all, parents will not be able to do without a normal rest for a long time, and the health of the little one is always a priority.

No need to think that night and evening are critical times for weeping. The needs of children at this age are not yet tied to the time of day, and they demand them as soon as they want something. In most cases, healthy babies will not just scream and ruin their vacation and parenting. But if something hurts them, then they will arch and cry until the problem is eliminated or the strength runs out.

Important! It is forbidden to treat an infant without consulting a doctor.

Attention to the child allows you to predict a number of problems that can cause restless sleep. The gums are swollen, the temperature begins to rise, which means that a new tooth will appear soon. The child is in pain and he will begin to toss and turn before and after sleep, and even sob. Work ahead of the curve, lubricate the gums with anesthetic gel. From other problems of the same tummy, temperature and dental delights, you need to get advice from a pediatrician who will tell you how to help a child in such a situation.

After sleep, you need to distract the baby from tears. Children's mobiles, nursery rhymes with mom and watching something interesting do well with this. The mood will become better, and the child is already doing well, which means there are no reasons for tears.

Babies can cry all the time, although this is a rare occurrence. And you should not compare the crying of a 5-year-old baby and a newborn, because for the latter this is a more frequent occurrence. After 4-5 years, children are able to ask and satisfy their basic needs on their own. And in the baby, the parents are responsible for this. He wants his mother to always be there, but this is not always the case.

Mom, as a part of society, may have her own needs and responsibilities, which means that even a mother’s delay for an hour can cause serious hysteria. Growing up, the children begin to understand that their mother will return and will not leave him, and there will be no tears. Therefore, just live through these moments, and your child will stop throwing tantrums and whimpering.

The opinion of Dr. Komarovsky

The famous doctor advises to correctly form a schedule for waking up and falling asleep. If we are talking about daytime sleep, then some babies do not want to sleep from birth, and after, at night they sleep soundly and without tears. Therefore, you do not need to put a baby to bed who does not want it. When a baby confuses day and night, special attention should be paid to climate and comfort. To overcome this, you will need to give up all household chores and entertain the child during the day, preventing him from falling asleep. And in the evening he will sleep without hind legs. Don't give in to provocations like tantrums, crying, whimpers and moans.

If the problem of tears is an intestinal problem, then in addition to special means from colic you need to do a light massage of the abdomen. The gases will come out and the pain will go away, soothing the child. When even this does not help, it is worth calling a doctor.

All this will pass when the baby's body is fully formed and adapts, and he himself will be able to evaluate and understand some psychological aspects. It is much easier to become already in the third year of life, but this is only if the child is completely healthy. When he is more, the situation is completely different, and without therapy, tears and pain cannot be removed.

It is always troublesome with small children, but after they grow up, they do not become smaller. After all, these are new problems, needs and manifestations of character. For them, their parents are guides to a new and dangerous world, so only patience and love will help them get through it all.

The crying of a child is always a signal for parents that the baby needs attention or that something hurts him. With children who can already talk, finding out the reason for crying is much easier than with children who cannot yet explain what is wrong. Of particular concern to young mothers is the crying of children immediately after they wake up. About why a child may cry after sleep and how to calm him down, we will tell further.

Why does the baby cry when he wakes up?

Children up to a year

There are many reasons why babies cry:

• hunger;
• wet diapers or diapers;
• lack of attention;
• pain.

A small child may not eat the norm put to him or sleep longer than usual. In such cases, in a dream, a feeling of hunger begins to torment him, and, being already hungry, he wakes up. Usually such crying begins with whimpers, then they intensify, the child begins to turn his head in search of a breast or a bottle, and if he does not find them, then the whimper quickly develops into an angry cry. To calm a crying baby, you need to feed him.

A child may wake up and cry a lot if he peed or pooped in a dream. Wet diapers or diapers in this case unpleasantly pinch the skin, become cold and cause discomfort, from which the child wakes up. With his weeping, he demands the return of comfortable conditions. As soon as the diapers are changed and the baby's skin is clear, he will calm down.

A child who is overly surrounded by attention also cries when he wakes up. This crying is very easy to distinguish from other manifestations of dissatisfaction with the baby. Initially, crying lasts for several seconds with breaks to wait for someone to come or not. If no one comes up, then after two or three attempts to attract attention, the child begins to cry sharply. It is important for parents to track these moments, and if crying is one-time, you can approach the child right away, and if momentary attention has become the norm for him, this must be weaned off, otherwise there will be no peace for the parents themselves.

The child wakes up and cries abruptly when it hurts. Crying is strong, it may be accompanied by grimaces on the face of the child and increased tone muscles. The baby can bend its legs and spin a lot. Crying with pain very often begins, while the baby is still sleeping. In this case, parents need to eliminate the pain itself. Most often, pain in babies is caused by colic, teething, or a beginning disease.

Children after a year

An older child may cry after a daytime or nighttime nap when he wants to go to the toilet. This is especially true for children who are already familiar with the potty. If it was the desire to go to the toilet that caused the crying, the child can go to the potty and continue his dream further.

Another reason for crying can be nightmares. At the same time, the child himself is very excited, and crying can begin even at the time of sleep. To calm the baby, mom needs to hug him.

Quite often, parents are faced with a situation where a child wakes up at night with a tantrum and begins to cry a lot for no apparent reason. Pediatricians reassure and say that such a phenomenon occurs all the time. It is especially common if the baby is still very small (up to a year). To know how to behave as parents, we advise you to find out the key reason for crying. Do not immediately go to the pharmacy for children's sedatives and even more so to raise your voice to the child.

The main causes of baby crying at night

So why does the baby cry when he wakes up? In fact, there are a lot of reasons and most of them do not pose a danger to the baby. As a rule, night crying is associated with the following factors:

1. Not fully formed nervous system. It can suddenly move from a calm state to an active one. For this reason, children may wake up in the middle of the night.
2. It is not uncommon for a child to often wake up at night due to frightening or unpleasant dreams. In addition, he is afraid of losing his mother and being left alone. This, above all, concerns very young children who still have a very strong mental connection with their mother.
3. If a child wakes up at night and cries, it is quite possible that the reason should be sought in his physiological needs. He may be hungry or feel the need to go to the bathroom.
4. Like adults, children often experience discomfort from uncomfortable sleeping positions. For this reason, they become numb in a certain part of the body, and they wake up screaming or crying.
5. In addition, babies may wake up due to unpleasant or pain during teething. Therefore, we advise you to look at the gums of the child. In this case, they will be inflamed and swollen.

If your child wakes up crying with a certain regularity and is difficult to put back to sleep, we advise you to contact your pediatrician. He, in turn, can refer the baby to a cardiologist and a neurologist. And even if the examination does not reveal anything, but you can play it safe and be calm.

Physiological and neurological causes

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why a child wakes up at night. It is impossible to exclude neurological factors - deviations and disorders. Rarely, but still it happens that after the examination such dangerous pathologies are revealed:

• excessive intracranial pressure;
• blood clots;
• accumulation of fluid in the brain and so on.

These and many other disturbances are usually accompanied by tantrums, screaming and crying either during or immediately after sleep. Only pediatric neurologist capable of accurately diagnosing and selecting the optimal medications taking into account the individual characteristics of the child.

Neurological reasons include the inability of the baby to cope with excessive emotional stress. Throughout the day, he receives a lot of new information that the fragile children's brain is trying to process and structure. As a result, the child has a nervous shock. Moreover, the cause of such a shock can be both a negative and a positive episode. Think about what might excite the child

It is possible that the reason lies on the surface:

Don't forget that more often than not, a baby wakes up and cries for obvious reasons. IN childhood the nervous system as well as the psyche are still developing. They are very sensitive to external factors. Therefore, parents should protect the baby from negative information and dose their emotions.

When the baby grows up and begins to perceive himself as a person separate from his mother, the first fears appear. They can also be the reason why the baby cries when he wakes up. In this case, we advise you to fall asleep with the baby so that he feels safe.

A little less often, but still it happens that sleep is disturbed by increased meteorological sensitivity of the crumbs. A child wakes up crying in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, rain, full moon, and so on. At the same time, in such children, blood pressure will change dramatically.

How to help?

If the baby cries in his sleep and does not wake up, or cries and then wakes up, we recommend that you pay attention to the following tips. They will help improve the quality of your children's nightly sleep so that they fall asleep healthy, evenly and deeply. So what to do:

And, of course, do not panic if you notice that your children wake up from time to time during a night's sleep. This is an absolutely normal phenomenon that more than one generation of parents has faced and will face in the future.

Walk with the baby in the fresh air more often, always put him to bed and feed him at the same time. This will ensure a quick fall asleep and completely eliminate the night screams and cries.

Why does the child wake up and cry? This question is often asked by parents of both the youngest children and older children. In fact, this is a very common problem. Someone addresses her to a doctor, and someone prefers to deal with the cause on their own. All children cry. This is absolutely normal. In practice, more often children cry when they wake up at night, but this also happens during the day. It is very difficult to establish exactly what caused crying, especially if the child screams in hysterics. As a rule, parents who have experienced hysterical crying are advised to simply survive this difficult period. But there are situations when eliminating the causes is quite a feasible task.

Why does a newborn wake up every night? Crying for a baby is the only way to inform the world about himself, to attract the attention of his mother, to show that something is bothering him.

At first, it is very difficult to understand the shades of baby crying and understand what caused it, but over time, watching the baby, parents quickly learn to recognize what he wants.

The main reasons for crying babies come down to meeting their physiological needs, namely:

• the baby was just hungry. Children are usually very hungry when they wake up. The cry is growing on the rise, the baby smacks his lips, opens his mouth in search of breasts;
• the baby needs to change a diaper or a wet diaper. Children react extremely violently to discomfort with skin irritation or diaper rash;
• the child wakes up and cries because he calls his mother. Waking up and not finding her nearby, he worries, attracts attention to himself.

Why does a child cry loudly when he wakes up? The newborn had just slept full, contented, when suddenly a piercing, sharp cry is heard again. The kid twists his arms and legs, his face turns red. It means he's in pain.

Pain may be related to the following factors:

Colic is the most common reason that a child wakes up at night and cries.

To make it easier for the baby, put him more often on his tummy, keep him upright for some time after feeding, follow the correct attachment when breastfeeding, choose anti-colic bottles when artificially feeding.

The child often wakes up at night and cries when the breastfeeding. The older he is, the more pronounced it is.

According to doctors, children's crying up to a year when waking up can be a variant of the norm, the so-called physiological night crying. The kid can wake himself up with arms and legs every hour.

Wrong belief that a tired child will fall asleep faster. Newborns can overwork, walk around. Therefore, it is so important to observe the sleep and wakefulness regimen in the first weeks of life. When the regime is established, the question “why the child wakes up” may disappear by itself.

It is worth looking for other reasons when children constantly cry a lot, without waking up, crying almost every hour. This is true for older children as well.

Why does my child often wake up at night? For all of the above reasons. And with rare exceptions, they are applicable to older children. In addition, neurological problems cannot be ruled out.

These include:

• increased intracranial pressure;
• accumulation of fluid in the brain;
• blood clots.

With such violations, the child wakes up at night with a tantrum. In such situations, consultation with a competent neurologist is required, drug therapy is prescribed to relieve symptoms.

Neurology refers to the inability of children to cope with excessive emotional stress, both negative and positive. An imperfect nervous system already processes great amount information received per day. Any significant event in the life of a child can lead to a shock, night awakenings every hour with tantrums.

Children's psyche and nervous system are formed over a long period of time.

In the process of growing up, the baby gradually begins to perceive himself separately from his mother, this gives rise to the first childhood fears. If not enough attention and care is given during this period, this will leave a mark on the child's psyche.

Children are able to feel the emotional state of their parents, including scandals, conflicts. From all this, the baby wakes up and screams, experiencing all the emotions again in a dream, he may have nightmares. The task of parents is to protect him as much as possible from negativity or too violent emotions.

Pediatricians cannot accurately explain the phenomenon when a child cries in a dream and does not wake up, and they do not recommend anything specific. Somnologists take it quite calmly. Due to imperfect nervous system such cases are regular, even considered the norm.

Children and adults sleep differently. If an adult has several phases from light sleep to deep sleep, then in children the change in sleep phases is blurred. The baby seems to have begun to wake up, opens his eyes, can sit or stand up, start crying sharply, but at the same time, the parents notice that he is still under the influence of sleep. True, he does not sleep, but he does not know what is happening to him, so it does not make sense to immediately calm him down and put him to bed. Usually 20 minutes after the baby or baby has cried, she will either wake up and fall asleep again, or go to bed as if she had not woken up.

These "night scenes" often happen in the first 3-4 hours of a baby's sleep when they are at their strongest. Children are prone to them already closer to 3 years.

Parents' opinions on how to deal with such a situation are opposite:

• some tend not to interfere, they advise just to wait until the baby falls asleep again. Most specialists agree with them;
• others, on the contrary, believe that it is better to immediately wake up the child, put him back to sleep, even if this happens every hour.

Some doctors consider cases when children cry in their sleep without waking up as a kind of sleepwalking, but there is no substantiated evidence for this yet.

It is possible that the baby is crying, but does not wake up, because he had a terrible dream. The developing children's psyche still does not allow them to distinguish dreams from reality, causing fear, crying with a scream. Subject to nightmares or even remember them in the morning, children older than 3 years. The causes of bad dreams can be psychological, then you need to contact a psychologist, or they can simply be the result of a rich childhood fantasy. In any case, if the child wakes up at night from bad dream, he needs to be helped to overcome fear, play along or convince him that you know how to solve the problem.

The main thing is not to panic about this. Children grow up, many problems of this kind go away with age.

How to help not wake up with tears? When a child wakes up crying in the middle of the night or cries with their eyes closed, it makes sense to heed the following tips to improve the quality of children's sleep so that they fall asleep healthy and sleep longer.

The aroma of certain types of plants has a calming and relaxing effect. For example, chamomile, mint, lemon balm. Decoctions of these herbs can be added to water when bathing before going to bed or use an aroma lamp.

Have you met with such a situation when your baby fell asleep in a good mood, slept calmly and peacefully for several hours, and then, for no apparent reason, woke up crying, screaming and tantrums? At such moments, you experience mixed feelings: bewilderment, rejection and fear. What is happening, what to do, how to help the child in these moments, where to run and with whom to consult? The most terrible thoughts are spinning in your head and every time the baby goes to bed, you wait with horror for the moment of his awakening...

Why does a child wake up crying?

If this happens to a very young child, the explanation for this may be hunger, wet diapers, teething, colic and other similar physical inconveniences that the baby may experience when waking up due to his infancy. The situations with isolated cases when a child wakes up crying are also understandable: this is quite possible if he was frightened of something when he woke up and did not see his mother next to him, this is real and if he had a bad dream, or he lay down the pen. But what to do if sobbing and tantrums upon awakening become an everyday event, and the child is no longer a baby?

In fact, there is nothing wrong with that! Such a seemingly strange phenomenon has quite understandable and logical explanations. The fact is that in a sleeping person, outwardly at rest, a variety of physical actions and mental processes take place inside the body. So, during sleep, our cells divide and grow, and the brain works hard: it processes all the information that it received during the day, puts aside the necessary and discards the unnecessary. In addition, the very process of finding a person in a dream has several phases - this is a nap, REM sleep, deep and shallow sleep. Remember how you felt if you ever had to wake up repeatedly at night and fall asleep only in the morning? Or maybe take a nap during the day? Of course, all people are different and we all go to bed at different times and sleep differently. But in any case, sleep at these moments, especially during the day, is more superficial, not deep, when a person’s consciousness is, as it were, in a constant state of transition from sleep to wakefulness, and upon awakening, a person’s consciousness seems to be confused. Then, waking up, a person feels broken, drowsy, lethargic, his thoughts are confused and foggy. He does not understand where he is, what he is doing and what he feels. In medicine, there is even such a thing as "confusion" or "sleepy intoxication." Such behavior of an adult, along with somnambulism (sleepwalking), nightmares, frequent awakenings during sleep, bruxism (teeth grinding), enuresis, is included in the classification of sleep disorders - parasomnias. However, all this is considered a sleep disorder only in adults!

We are talking about children! If the child wakes up crying - this is NORMAL! The fact is that in children, especially when it comes to babies 2-4 years old, in whom the internal processes of cell growth and information processing are in an enhanced mode, and even a weak psyche that has not taken shape due to its immaturity. Confused consciousness is considered a natural process, which gradually decreases with time, that is, with the growing up of the child, and then disappears completely. Also, pay attention to exactly when the baby wakes up crying. It mostly happens during daytime sleep. And most likely before going to bed, the child was very active and restless. The sleep of a small child is affected by the emotions that he received before going to bed. And if they were not entirely positive or exciting his psyche, the child will wake up alarmed and, probably, crying and hysterical.

What to do if the child wakes up crying?

Follow the child's daily routine so that he always goes to bed and wakes up at the same time.

Provide your child with a pleasant and calm atmosphere, at least an hour and a half before bedtime. No family squabbles, active games or emotionally exciting events.
Remember the ritual of falling asleep - this is when every time before going to bed you perform the same actions familiar to the baby: kissing, reading fairy tales, light massage, taking a bath and the like.

Make sure your child wakes up comfortably. If the child wakes up crying, try to ensure that the baby always falls asleep in a familiar and familiar place. Be there when you wake up.

If the baby starts crying - calm him down, talk in a calm, even and loving voice, show him your favorite toys - let him know that everything is fine and everything is the same, he is safe and his mother is next to him.