Free guide · Scarlet Beast En español →

Crying baby: when the crying won’t stop

For anyone looking after a baby who will not stop crying: a parent, a partner, a grandparent, a sitter, at any hour. This page passes on, by name, what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Library of Medicine say: what the crying may mean and what to check, colic and when it ends, things to try, what to do when you reach your limit, why a baby must never be shaken, when to call the doctor, and safe sleep when you are this tired. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need tonight.

Looking after a baby or child? The pages on this site for a baby or child, on one list.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse or child-care expert has reviewed it. Changed on October 10, 2026. When this guide was published on October 9, most of it passed on four articles of a medical encyclopedia that is licensed text; its publisher’s notice does not allow that reuse, including by AI. We had decided not to use such articles and then did. That was our mistake. Every line from them is out. What the page passes on now, read on October 9 and 10, 2026. Five pages of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): About Abusive Head Trauma (reviewed May 16, 2024; English only), Positive Parenting Tips: Infants (reviewed February 20, 2026; read in English and Spanish), Milestones by 2 Months (reviewed May 16, 2026; read in English and Spanish), Signs Your Child Is Hungry or Full (reviewed March 11, 2026; English only) and Providing Care for Babies to Sleep Safely (reviewed September 17, 2024; English only). Two pages of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), each read in English and Spanish: the Colic section of What are some of the basics of infant health? (last reviewed September 7, 2021, so it is not new) and Safe to Sleep: Ways to Reduce Baby’s Risk. And the Summary, only the Summary, of the National Library of Medicine’s health topic page Common Infant and Newborn Problems, read in English and Spanish. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own, including every line that names 911: none of these pages names it. What is gone because no page we may pass on says it: how many hours a day babies usually cry, and a number of hours that would mean colic; a list of reasons a baby cries; the steps for going over a baby’s body, clothing and diaper; a week-by-week course of colic (NICHD gives when it usually starts and when it will likely improve); how long a bottle feeding should take, and foods to stop while breastfeeding; a longer list of things to try; how short a shaking can injure, what it does inside the skull, a list of signs in a shaken baby, and first-aid steps; the lists of signs for contacting a provider at once, with their time limits; and, for sleep, a line on covering a baby, a number of weeks before a pacifier, and a flat rule about sharing a bed. For those, ask your baby’s provider; a missing list is not reassurance, and if something frightens you, call. What we left out or did not read: every medicine and every kind of drops; every figure on how many babies die (they are on the CDC’s and NICHD’s pages); the other sections of NICHD’s infant health page; the parts of the CDC’s parenting and milestone pages that are not about crying, feeding or safety; the pages the National Library of Medicine’s topic page links to; any temperature that counts as a fever (our fever guide has what the federal pages say); the steps of infant CPR; the Period of PURPLE Crying program the CDC links to; what the sleep pages say about vaccines, prenatal care, alcohol and drugs; the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline’s own pages (what we say about it is what the CDC’s page says); and Childhelp’s own pages (they were read for our child abuse guide; giving its number here is ours). We called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.