five little words

Taking care of newborns is immensely easier for us these days because we now understand their language. From the very earliest days of life, there are five words that babies say, or, more accurately, five sounds that babies make. It transcends borders, ethnicities, and languages. Learn to recognize them, and you'll have a much better time figuring out what your baby needs and how to placate it.

I'm a little better at this than Catherine, but she's getting more and more discerning (and, two years ago, she got pretty good at it with Greta), and even 2-year-old Greta herself can hear a couple of those baby words clearly enough to proclaim that she knows what little Clara wants.

 Neh  - Hunger. Could it be that the instinctive motion of using the tongue for feeding is at the root of this sound?

 Heh  - Discomfort. Diaper full, or something itchy, or carseat maladjusted. This one often happens several times in a row and it often ends in a glottal stop, like "He*," where the * is a glottal stop. So it can sometimes sound like "ha, ah-ha, ah-ha..."

 Eh  - Gas. Burp me! Very distinctive glottal sound there.

In the above three sounds, the vowel isn't quite as important as that first consonant. In these next two, the vowel sound is more the key.

 Oh  - Sleepiness. Our kids haven't signalled this one that much because they just close their eyes and sleep. Whew! But even our blessedly easy kids sometimes get tired but can't find a way toward sleep without rocking or a pacifier.

 Errw  -  Poopiness. This one's a little hard to hear, but the facial expressions that often accompany it are a giveaway.

It's so nice to be able to hear what a kid is saying. Anyone who's ever frantically stuffed a pacifier in a baby's mouth when it's actually just uncomfortable, or tried to feed it when it needs burping, feels an overwhelming gratitude toward whoever figured this out and codified it. Many's the time Greta or Clara sounded like they were expressing some thing when I just knew it couldn't be right — " 'Eh?' Whadaya mean by saying 'eh?' I just burped you, you liar." — but when I obeyed what I heard them saying rather than what I thought I knew, the whole thing resolved instantly — "Awwwwwww, I love you, you double-burping trickster!"

Wonderful, isn't it? As far as I'm concerned, this is an incredible addition to the knowledge of humankind, a relief of the miseries of our race, and a lasting contribution from our civilization.

Just about every time I've shared it with someone, they've exclaimed that those sounds seem awfully alike. But our family has a Hannah, an Anna, and a Nana, and no one gets all that confused. Each baby will of course have its own accent for all these things, and it can be a bit tricky, but man oh man is it worth it.