How Much Crying Is Normal for a Baby? What the Research Shows

Explanation

"Is this normal?" is one of the hardest questions to answer about a crying baby, precisely because crying is the one thing every baby does that has no other channel, it is the whole communication system for the first months of life. A 2017 meta-analysis is the largest attempt to actually measure what "normal" looks like, week by week.

Supporting evidence

Wolke, Bilgin and Samara pooled data from 28 diary studies (33 samples, 8,690 infants total) that had parents record fussing and crying in real time across the first three months.

Age	Average daily fuss/cry time
1–2 weeks	117–133 minutes
3–4 weeks	117–133 minutes
5–6 weeks	117–133 minutes
8–9 weeks	falling
10–12 weeks	68 minutes

Colic prevalence, using a modified version of the standard clinical definition (crying more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week):

Age	Colic prevalence
First 6 weeks	17%–25%
8–9 weeks	11%
10–12 weeks	0.6%

Wolke, Bilgin & Samara, The Journal of Pediatrics, 2017

What the numbers mean

Two things in this data run against common assumptions. First, the total is essentially flat, not rising, across the first six weeks: crying does not have a dramatic peak week that then falls away, it holds at a stable, high level and then drops in the two months after. Second, the drop by 10 to 12 weeks is large: nearly double the total minutes falls to close to half, and colic prevalence falls by more than 95% relative to its peak.

That means the single most useful piece of context for a parent of a 5-week-old is not a comparison with other 5-week-olds, the range at that age is wide and the average itself is high, but the fact that this level is close to the peak of a curve that reliably comes down, not a new steady state.

What parents can observe

• Total daily crying and fussing time, logged rather than estimated, this is exactly the kind of total that is easy to over- or under-remember by the end of a long day.
• The trend across weeks, since the meaningful signal in this data is the trajectory (falling by 10–12 weeks) rather than any single day's total.
• What is different from usual, which is a more useful question at any age than "is this normal", a change in pitch, duration, or consolability from a baby's own pattern is more informative than a population average.

What may explain a pattern

The research above describes the typical curve, not its causes for a given baby, the same review notes wide variability between infants and between measurement methods. A crying total that is high but stable, and that responds to a baby's usual soothing methods, is consistent with this range. A change from a baby's own established pattern is the more useful thing to flag than the absolute total.

What parents can do

Track daily crying and fussing time if it is a source of worry, a log across a week is far more useful than any single hard day, both for your own sense of the trend and for a conversation with a clinician. Expect the total to be high and fairly flat through around six weeks, and expect it to fall substantially by 10 to 12 weeks; if it is not following that trajectory, or a baby is inconsolable in a way that is new, that is worth raising directly rather than waiting it out.