Make that Baby Shut Up!

Some people enjoy the sounds of a crying baby, others could care less when they hear one crying, and then there are those who are tempted to say, "Make that Baby Shut Up!" I fall in the shut up baby group. I didn't just become this way overnight. I have always been this way before four sons and after four sons. There is something in listening to a baby's cries that drives me up the wall! I can tolerate a crying baby for about 10 minutes maybe and then after that I am looking around and asking someone, "Why doesn't the parent just take that baby home?"

One Sunday morning, I was seated in church enjoying the minister's message and a baby starts crying. The mother is trying to get the baby to stop. The baby had been passed around by others and still no peace. She had given the baby everything she had to get him/her to stop crying and nothing seemed to work! After disturbing the entire congregation for almost 10 minutes on and off they finally removed the mother and baby from the group. All I could think was this is a tape recorded message and if someone buys the tape just when they are getting his or her breakthrough there will be the crying baby in the background distracting one from focusing on the message. It wasn't like the pastor hadn't dismissed babies and children only prior. It wasn't like he didn't have jumbo screens in another room for parents to watch the service or listen to the message in the bathroom while they dried their wet baby. All the accomodations were there, it's just the parents could careless.

Can someone tell me why is it that babies tend to cry when all is quiet? I can't seem to get away from the crying babies! I try to sit in a place where I don't have to be one of those people staring at the child while the frustrated mother is trying to quiet him or her. I try to avoid standing in a line where there is a baby crying and staring at me over the mother's shoulder as if he or she is saying, "Say something lady and I will keep crying!" I don't know if it's just me, but alot of these mothers just don't seem to care. They continue to shop knowing that it's their son or daughter's nap time. They continue to sit in the church pew with their crying child for a few more minutes after the church leader makes a silly comment referring to the baby's loud cries. One minister said to his congregation while a baby was crying in the audience, "It's only 10%!" Referring to the tithes and offerings he was about to ask for. Everyone who had been disturbed by the baby's cries gently laughed about his remark.

I personally feel like sometimes continuous baby's cries are symbolic of the frustrated mother's woes being spilled out into the public especially in the church setting. To think deeply on this topic, I reason that when the mother just doesn't know how to cry, ask for help (pray) or refuses to cry out her bottled up emotions, her irritable baby cries for her. It's as if the child is saying, "My mother needs help and she isn't helping me!"

I can only imagine babies and children are only going to get worse as the years go by because of so many nonchalant, "take it easy, no big deal, whatever" types of attitude parents! We are a generation of spoiled children who are never satisfied with enough! It has to always be more than enough!

The crying baby is a reflection of a crying mother who is hungry for something but she doesn't know what it is, she is in need of a nap but doesn't know how to take one, she feels sick inside but doesn't know what to take for it, she is a mother who doesn't know how to cry so her baby cries for her!

Written bu Nicholl McGuire
Author, Poet & Freelance Writer
http://www.associatedcontent.com/nichollmcguire