Parenting

The Inner Response of a Mother to Her Child’s Cry

How mothers know what’s wrong with their babies

Photo of the author with her baby.

As a mother of four children, I know the meaning of my child’s cry based on my own internal feeling or reaction towards that cry. Thanks to this God-given power, I was able to save my six-year-old from suffocating in the trunk of his father’s Mercedes.

Amidst the noise of his cousins crying out to me, I could hear a very silent cry for help, which if I had ignored, my child wouldn’t be alive today. It always gives me shivers thinking about it.

Many children have been saved thanks to this natural phenomenon. Some call it a mother’s instinct, but I believe it goes deeper than that. It doesn’t matter if a child is a day old or eight years old, whether it’s a loud cry or a silent one, whether close or far, a mother always has an innate response to her child’s cry.

Many children have been saved by their mother’s instinct. (Photo: Garrett Jackson)

My mother tells of how I could have died the night I was born, if not for this power installed in mothers. I was sleeping in a different ward upstairs from where my mother was, that was how the hospital was structured. Amidst the cry of a dozen babies, my mother says one particular cry made her restless as she lay there in pain and bleeding after a painful delivery. She managed to drag herself up the stairs to my ward, only to find me drenched in blood. My umbilical cord was broken, and no nurse was there. I wouldn’t have lived to tell this story.

It doesn’t matter if a child is a day old or eight years old, whether it’s a loud cry or a silent one, whether close or far, a mother always has an innate response to her child’s cry.

In Ghana where I come from, mothers can tell their babies are crying when they feel their milk let down and it’s a belief that is widely used. This milk letting down can never be felt by anyone except the mother.

As a mother, do not ignore this inner feeling or any other motherly instincts. It doesn’t matter whether your children are young or old, they might need you.

Don’t take the bond you share with your child lightly, it is a gift and strength given to you for your journey as a mother.