“Let Her Cry” or “Rescue Me From These Tears?”

To explain my title, one is a Hootie and the Blowfish song. The other one I have no idea, but doesn’t it sound like it could be lyrics to some cheesy rock ballad? Maybe it is. I’ll have to Google that later.

But the title has a purpose, a theme if you will, to our first dilemma as parents of a three-week old who has begun to catch on that, if she cries, Mommy and Daddy immediately approach and try to do something about it.

What that’s resulted in is us attempting to fulfill her wants as well as her needs. The first couple weeks, she was on a pretty consistent three hour feeding schedule, but now she’ll occasionally cry for a bottle at the two-and-a-half hour mark. At least, I’m guessing she’s crying for that. She latches on for dear life and subsequently downs the bottle at a pace that would have humbled me even back in my college glory days.

Then again, I was never really good at chugging. Perhaps that explains my affinity toward hoity-toity sipping-type drinks.

Be that as it may, I’m trying to look at this scientifically: If she consumes the same amount of formula at the same intervals and moves around a similar amount of times every day, shouldn’t she digest at the same pace and thus be hungry around the same time every day too? Isn’t that how it works for most human beings? Or are babies exempt from this theory?

Anyhow, my theory is that although she may want to have the formula earlier (I don’t know why – it looks absolutely disgusting but hey, different strokes for different folks), she doesn’t need it. And she’s not going to starve if we politely decline her request at the two-and-a-half hour mark as opposed to three. Or need to be changed any more often (since, you know, the whole digesting at the same pace hypothesis I posed earlier).

Is that heartless? Or understandable? I absolutely despise hearing her cry and love when I’m able to do something as simple as feed her to put her at ease, but, over the past couple days, we’ve found ourselves being kept up later and waking up more, thus turning the two of us into walking zombies the following day.

I think we’ve been too quick to jump the gun the moment we hear a whimper, leading to a lot of holding her to prevent said whimper from returning.  But that has proven to be really freaking exhausting.

And yes, I understand that "needing to be held" is an expression that does, indeed, have the word "need" in it, I believe it does evolve into a "want" after a certain point.

One of Missy’s sisters suggested letting her cry longer. And that make sense as the clear-cut way to restore routine as well as our sanity.

But I also realize it will be easier said than done, the moment I see those cute little lips quiver and try to restrain myself from getting up.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering: ) https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=frgbld&gs_nf=1&tok=kv2FTGFyFAtHykTp5SfpMQ&pq=%E2%80%9Crescue%20you%20me%20from%20these%20tears%3F%E2%80%9D&cp=28&gs_id=3b&xhr=t&q=%22Rescue%20me%20from%20these%20tears%22&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=%22Rescue+me+from+these+tears%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=21ba5269d78bca91&biw=1249&bih=548