When you are having your first child, a lot is new. The quicker you learn to respond to your baby’s cues, the better. Less crying, more sleep, less stress for you.

Unfortunately, just like you, your baby doesn’t know what’s going on either. So at times, it can feel like you are in a hamster wheel rotating a screaming infant like pizza dough because you can’t figure out what is going on.

In those moments, this visual helped me a lot.

Baby map

From bottom to top, check:

  • Diaper
    Did they pee or poop? Very often, it’s just a messy diaper that is uncomfortable.

  • Belly
    When did they last eat? Might they be hungry? At the very beginning, they eat every two to three hours. Bonus: Sometimes the comfort of breastfeeding can calm them down even if they weren’t hungry.

  • Chest, i.e. do they need to burp
    When babies are very small, they don’t yet know how to pass gas in either direction. Burping them after each feed helps a lot in minimizing the number of times they cry to burp but it did still happen frequently for us.

  • Head
    When they didn’t poop, aren’t hungry, or need to burp, most often they are tired. Over-tiredness never made sense to me but it happens frequently while babies are still learning how to go to sleep.

That’s it. 99% of the time our son cried, going through these four steps fixed it.

There are a million other reasons why your baby might cry. It could be too bright, too loud, something smells weird, they don’t like that new thing. Comfort and attention fixes most of those too.

Quick note: If your baby has been crying for a long time or is obviously hurt, reach out to your pediatrician. They might have a fever or be sick. You got this!