The Stages of Crying

I've always heard that a mother will learn to interpret her babies cries. Juliette is 2 years old now, and I think I've finally figured it out. As far as I can tell, there are 3 kinds of crying:

1. The "I'm bored" or "My diaper is dirty" or "I'm hungry" cry- not too loud, not very piercing, you can almost hear the words in the wails. Very easy to soothe by addressing the problem or distracting her from her boredom. This is the characteristic cry of an infant (unless your baby is colicky, in which case you have my sympathies).

2. The fake "pay attention to me" or "I'm not getting my way lets try a different tactic" cry. Might be noisy, but doesn't involve any tears. In fact, no real facial or bodily involvement at all.

3. The full fledged "I'm hurt or scared or miserable" tugs-at-your-heartstrings cry.

This third kind of cry can be further subdivided into several stages.
Stage 1: Not crying. Happy.
Stage 2: Not too loud, more of a warm up then an actual cry. If you catch it at this stage, you might be able to stop it before it becomes a full blown episode.
Stage 3: Louder, piercing cries. Tears rolling down the cheeks. May be punctuated by occasional cries for "Maaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh-meeeeeeeeee". Soothing this cry involves a regression back to stage 2 before we get to stage 1 again. However, if you don't respond right away (because, for example, you were sound asleep and in your groggy state don't realize the urgency of the situation) it will progress on to:
Stage 4: Crying so hard that no noise is coming out. Just an occasional gasp for breath before the mouth opens wide, eyes squeeze shut, and the loudest longest most piercing wail comes out of the tiny little body. There is no going backwards from here. Stage 4 always progresses to Stage 5.
Stage 5: No longer crying, almost seems like stage 1 except for the snot that is still running out of the nose and the occasional hiccup/gasp that shakes her whole body. This stage lasts a relatively long time. The most important thing to know at this stage is that you must let it run its course. If you try to force things to progress back to stage 1, or- heaven forbid, think things are OK and try to put the child down or even leave the room- you will instead end up at stage 3.

Note: you don't always start at stage 1 and progress through all the stages. If the child falls down and scrapes a knee you might immediately find yourself at stage 3 or 4. If your 2 year old is teething, you might find it impossible to move out of stage 3.

Warning: Prolonged episodes of stage 3 or stage 4 crying may drive mother into tears herself, but that is a whole different kind of crying- characterized by stress, guilt, frustration and exhaustion.

Anyway, once you better understand the Stages of Crying, it makes it a little bit easier to deal with them.