Check for medical issues if your baby cries a lot

This page belongs to a collection of short articles and videos in plain language, called When baby cries a lot in the first few months of life. Together, these articles and videos will give you a brief and simple summary of the Possums 5-domain approach to the crying baby. For comprehensive information on this topic, please consider reading The discontented little baby book.

It’s important to have your baby checked by your GP when they cry a lot. About 5% of babies who cry a lot in the first months of life have a medical condition, which we definitely don’t want to miss. The other 95% are well babies, who just cry a lot.

• Although we don’t want to miss a true allergy, crying in itself isn’t caused by an allergy. Neither is fussing with feeds. Repeated fussiness with feeds is more likely to be a conditioned dialling up at the breast or a conditioned dialling up with the bottle.

• Fussing and crying isn’t caused by air swallowing or reflux either, despite what you might hear.

We need to take the fussing and crying in your baby very seriously, but there are other important reasons why babies dial up other than tummy or gut pain (once your GP has given your baby the ‘all clear’).

Acknowledgements

I'm grateful to Professor Sophie Havighurst, Ros June, and Caroline Ma at Mindful, The University of Melbourne, for their feedback on the articles and videos in When baby cries a lot in the first few months of life. They helped me keep the language plain and the concepts as accessible as possible, for this brief and simple version of the Possums 5-domain approach to the crying baby.

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