Why does my baby cry every evening?

There must be something else we can do

That was not really a question. It was two exhausted parents saying: surely the answer cannot be that we simply listen to our baby cry every evening.

There was no magic fix. There were things that softened it, and there was the fact that it eventually ended. Neither felt very comforting while it was happening.

Once we saw the pattern, it felt less random

The crying arrived at roughly the same part of the day. Movement helped more than stillness: walking, carrying, the pram and sometimes a drive. White noise and a darker room also took some of the edge off.

We stopped cycling through five new remedies in ten minutes. An overstimulated baby did not need two panicked parents adding more stimulation.

Hand over before you are finished

The most useful thing we learned was to swap before either of us reached breaking point. That decision belongs in the afternoon, not after an hour of crying.

If you feel yourself losing control, put your baby safely on their back in the cot, leave the room for a few minutes and call someone. A crying baby in a safe cot is safer than a baby being held by somebody who has nothing left.