Cry Babies and Birth Traumatized Babies

by John A. Speyrer




"Every institution is a womb, every boundary is a potential cervix
and every change is a little birth."
--- David Wasdell

From Australia comes a news story which tells us to beware of excessive crying in babies. The story tells us that such behavior foretells future mental health problems.

Researcher, Dr. Mary Brown, (Melbourne University) studied the present and future of 75 babies who were hospitalized for severe crying. 80% cried over 3 hours a day and no medical tests revealed the source of their bawling.

The typical advice was that the babies would grow out of the crying -- and they did, Dr. Brown reported. However, others became mentally ill.

When the children were between 5 and 8, one in five had "a clinically significant mental health disorder, including behavioural problems and depression." and "Just over a quarter of them had a separation anxiety disorder by the time they went to school."

And here is where the remembering body emphatically reveals its source:

"Two children were so depressed they said they wanted to die."(my emphasis).

Dr. Brown says further research is needed. Don't all researchers say that?

This is from Australia which has already made significant contributions to the examination of the relationship between birth trauma, suicidality and child abuse. The other studies were not acted upon so why should this or future studies get a better reception?

Hey, you guys down under, quit the studies, and apply the knowledge which two of your compatriots, Dr. Graham Farrant, psychiatrist, and Dr. John Spensley, paediatrician, have already contributed towards an understanding why some babies cry so much. They knew about it decades ago. Explaining that one of their symptoms can turn into "separation anxiety" won't help all those newly traumatized babies when they begin school.

Even though those children might not be crying as much by the time they enter the first grade, Dr. Arthur Janov writes that the pain of the original trauma has to go somewhere. Dr. Aletha J. Solter writes that the adolescent will have given up his pacifier by the time he graduates from high school. That's not their points. That's not what they're talking about. Their points being that symptoms come and go and defenses rise and fall. The points are that, in one form or another, birth trauma has incredible staying power and that the pacifier can give way to the cigarette.

I still can remember a lot of crying and fear from me on that day in the first grade way back in 1937. Indeed, on that day, my mother had to remain in the classroom with me. After the other mothers had left, my mother stayed around as I continued to need her presence and reassurance.

I personally know that Dr. Graham Farrant understood that "Kids . . . who had a traumatic birth will find it difficult to go to school." It really resonated with me when I heard Graham say that on a WXYT radio talk show, in Detroit, Michigan, in July of 1987.

The Australian news story never mentions how some babies may have had such severe birth trauma that they become totally dissociated from their pain. These babies hardly ever cry because their trauma was so overwhelming that instead, they simply split from their painful reality.

Blessed be the babies that cry a lot that they may thereby resolve a modicum of their birth traumas. Amen. The ones that don't cry might actually be sicker than the others. Yet, they are considered "good babies." They don't disturb anyone; all they want to do is die.
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