Whilst you may think the baby is in enormous pain by the amount of their crying, most common symptoms cause more discomfort than pain. Because they can't talk or express themselves in any other way, all their frustration also comes out as crying. This does not equate with strong and endless pain. Here the greatest remedies are love, patience and breast milk. The widespread use of paracetamol these days, packaged and flavoured for babies, I find extremely alarming, along with the advice parents are being given that use of this drug from the first week of birth is quite OK. There is now a well documented increase in the use of analgesics (in general, and most particularly paracetamol) by adults and children in the last 10 years. Its frequent and increasing use from such an early age leads one to hypothesise that the over-use and abuse of painkillers in the adult population may well have it its origins back in childhood. I believe that in this regard mothers have an important role to play in teaching their children (babies even) that illnesses accompanied by discomfort do not necessarily require the routine use of pain killers, just as the pains of labour do not.
   It is quite common for a baby to seem fine during the day with their symptoms returning in the evening and night - when everybody is not distracted by the daytime activities, when you are tired, when your baby is tired, and when the household is much more focussed on wanting peace and quiet. In such cases, I would advise that if the discomforts seem to disappear in the morning, then the illness is either mild and does not therefore require medical treatment, or else the night time problem is actually behavioural. In these situations the key is to use the morning period for the greatest energy expression (wakefulness, play, interaction) and then make the afternoon, evening and night times of greater sleep and solitude. Such a program always helps restore the body's reserves of energy and shortens any period of illness.
   Deciphering the cries of particularly your first baby can be very difficult due to the newness of it all. I remember falling into patterns of (undue) concern over the health of my first son and reaching for the usual pharmaceutical solutions. But over the years I have learned a lot more about babies, about patience, about trust, and most valuably about how to listen to my intuition that most of what babies go through are simply minor illnesses needing nothing more than what a mother already has on hand and within herself.

Managing Sick Babies (Over 8 months)
   As a child gets older, the easier it is to understand their symptoms and the less worried both of you need be about anything untoward. They also have the experience of knowing that illness will sooner or later pass. At this age you can also better explain this to them, even those who can't yet talk. Older children of course have a stronger body to fight off invasion, and you have at your disposal a wider range of substances (other than mother's milk) to choose from to help them get better (i.e. healthy solid foods).
   However, being older, particularly for those who are teething and mobile, can increase the frequency of particular symptoms like excess mucus (teething, new foods), gum and sinus inflammation (teething, new foods), skin rashes (new foods), vomiting or diarrhoea (new foods or stuff a baby comes across on the floor like pet food, food scraps, dirt, insects etc).
   When an older baby or toddler is obviously sick, be wary of making a diagnosis based on leading questions such as - "Do you have a headache?" Most children will answer yes even if what they actually have is a toothache! It is better to ask them - "Can you show me where it hurts?", "Is the pain on the inside or the outside", and then always use your powers of observation to confirm anything they tell you. In children, often any area between the hips and the neck is referred to as the "tummy" so you must be careful with what you understand to be a "tummy ache". Calling the genitals by their proper names will help greatly in diagnosing lower body problems rather than everything being referred to as "my bottom".
   Whenever my children begin to manifest the first signs of illness such as chronic tiredness, grizzling, poor appetite, disturbed sleep or excessive mucus, I interpret this as an imbalance of their energy and always act early-on rather than later to restore that energy. Restoring energy balance is far easier when energy levels are higher, therefore the earlier that energy management is employed, the easier the body can fight off its antagonist before the energy plummets further and total rest becomes necessary. This involves two things - reducing all unnecessary inputs and outputs.
   Reducing unnecessary outputs means saving energy which means an increase in day resting and night sleep. It means keeping away from taxing people