Moms: Could you always tell from your baby's cry when he or she was hungry from all of the other variations of crying?

Yes. And when she was tired, hungry, uncomfortable. And yes, I can tell what other babies are crying from, too. And nothing pisses me off more than a kid wailing in the store because he or she is tired and Mom threatening the child with nap time if he or she doesn’t stop. I just want to slap them.

I can’t really tell you what it is exactly that I hear. It’s just a pitch or…something. I guess the same way you can tell the difference between an adult crying out of fear, or out of sadness, you know?

Yes, though I’m not sure how to explain how you can tell. It’s just something you pick up, like the difference between “a” and “e.” It’s not even that all kids make the exact same sound. It’s just that different needs have different effects on the body. A tired child can’t control their cry in the same way a child who is merely wet can. A wet child is experiencing a different type of discomfort than a hungry child (closer to annoyance than desperation). I’m not saying context cues aren’t helpful, or that we’re always 100% correct (there’s a lot of room for confirmation bias here), but the same is true of how we understand ordinary language.

P.S. If you ever wanted to understand Lovecraft’s inspiration for the monsters in his horror stories, listen to the cry of a child who is hungry, wet, and tired. The call of Cthulhu, indeed.

A tired child sounds so helpless, while a hungry child sounds angry. And a child who just had two killer whales swim pas him sounds terrified!. It’s hard to even listen to that cry of “MAMA”.

I must have been a terrible mother. I usually had to use the process of intuition and elimination to figure out what they were needing.

Well, that’s what we used too…intuition. It just came with experience.

I was never blessed to have my own children; however, since I babysat for free, I did take care of a lot of my friends’ babies. Within the first night or two, I could differentiate each particular baby’s cry. NO two were the same & it was individualized for each baby. Trying to think back, I’d say hunger was the hardest to pinpoint with pain & wet diaper to be the easiest.

Not having children, my pets are now my babies & I still have an ear for what they need just from the sound of their voice. Fortunately, wet diaper is no longer part of the problem!!!

I’m not a mom, but I’m usually pretty good at being able to tell if a baby is in pain or hungry or just wants to be carried and walked around.

Priscilla Dunstan wrote a book about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstan_Baby_Language

Here is her interview on Oprah from years ago. I recommend it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PgkZf6jVdVg

You can make a pretty good guess based on the sound and when it was last fed. Sometimes it is a process of elimination (if that’s the right word).

Yes