‘This is the remedy for a crying baby on the beach’

Image: Mark Groeneveld

Baby cry. After nails on a chalkboard and nighttime snores at foghorn volume, this is one of the most annoying noises ever, if you ask me. As much as I love my kids, as soon as my youngest goes on like a siren for more than five minutes, I’m completely overstimulated. And if I’m to believe those internet lists of ‘most annoying sounds in the world’, I’m definitely not the only one who suffers from this.

“Surrounded by strangers and angry looks, I break out in a sweat”

Yet I also know that babies don’t give you tinnitus light for fun, of course. After all, they can’t express themselves any other way, so I can certainly muster the patience to quiet my adorable but always noisy baby. Mostly then, because when I’m surrounded by strangers and the angry looks look in my direction in no time, I break out in a sweat.

Read also – A day at the beach with your baby? This is how you prepare >

Crying babies

At such moments I think back, strangely enough, to the time when, as a ten-year-old girl, I went to the beach of Hoek van Holland with my parents on a summer day. While rocking, an unknown woman with a hysterically crying baby in her arms walked past our towels. There was no way she could quiet her child, and as young as I was, I can still accurately picture that helpless look in her eyes.

I heard people sighing around me, but my father walked over to her. “Cramps?” he asked. The woman looked up in surprise and then said she had no idea why her baby was so upset. “Otherwise, why not sit with him by the water”, my father suggested. “It calms babies down.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than she sprinted towards the sea, and less than fifteen minutes later she walked over to my father with her sleeping son in her arms to thank him. His tip had indeed worked.

Advice

I will never forget this simple moment on the beach. I have followed my father’s advice several times (sitting by the water is indeed the cure for a crying baby), but more importantly: I saw then that it is nice to get help when you are a mother with your hands in her hair .

So, dear people, should you soon see a parent overwrought with a crying baby on a hot summer day, and the sound makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? At least squeeze out a friendly smile. It makes everyone’s beach day a lot more fun.

Would you like to read more beautiful and recognizable stories from fellow moms? Subscribe now and be the first to receive Kek Mama on your doormat every month.