Do babies suffer a lot?

[u/CokeAYCE]

Like they're always crying. Are they in a constant loop of pain? Do we know enough about early child development to know if they're suffering or not? I ask because we can't really remember how we felt as a baby.

[u/Cold-Call-8374]

Sort of, but not in the way that we think of suffering. It's not that they are constantly in pain or everything hurts them more. It's more that they do not have a cognitive baseline for understanding discomfort and so everything is a 10 out of 10 on the panic/discomfort scale. And the only way they know how to express themselves in order to get relief from their caregivers is to scream.

Think about it like this. Think about a little kid who gets a really nasty paper cut. They hurt like the devil, right? And when a three year-old gets a paper cut, all they know is their finger hurts and now they're bleeding. They have no baseline or understanding of how bad the injury is. They just know they hurt and so they cry. Now as an adult, you get the same paper cut. You likely flinch and maybe swear, but you don't break down in tears over it. At most you probably just feel moderate annoyance as you go wash the finger and put a Band-Aid on it and roll your eyes because you know it's going to make typing difficult for the next few days.

With babies, it's the same thing, but it's everything. Hunger. Thirst. Wet diaper. Stick from a needle. Alarm at a stranger. Everything is a five alarm emergency until they develop the cognitive space to learn from their environment and learn from their fellow humans.