Babies from the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy – in this order – are the cryiest, according to the study carried out by the University of Warwick and the University of Kingston (United Kingdom). The research carried out a systematic review and a meta-analysis with the aim of knowing the mean duration of crying and the prevalence of colic in children from various countries during the first three months of life.
To do this, the experts searched bibliographic databases to identify observational studies (published up to December 2015) that included general population samples of children 1 to 13 weeks of age and measured crying in 24-hour behavior diaries. Thus, they found 28 valid studies for research with a total of 8,690 babies from the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Denmark and Japan.
The studies were grouped according to the age of the babies and examined whether the time they cried changed according to the weeks of life, the country or the type of feeding.
How much do babies cry?
117 minutes at approximately 1-2 weeks of age
118 minutes at approximately 3-4 weeks of age
133 minutes at approximately 5-6 weeks of age
68 minutes at approximately 10-12 weeks of age
The cryiest babies: in the UK, Canada and Italy
The least crying babies: in Denmark, Germany and Japan
In summary: Babies cry an average of 2 hours a day during their first two weeks of life, reaching the maximum at 6 weeks, when they cry 2 hours and 15 minutes a day, to reduce to 1 hour and 10 minutes when the baby is born 12 weeks of life.
In addition, the study concludes that colic is more common during the first 6 weeks of life and decreases in the following 6 weeks.
The study could only have reliable data from 9 countries , all of them developed nations, so the conclusions of the study are limited due to the size of the sample.
The study has been published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
