Every parent of a newborn learns the same strange lesson within a few weeks of coming home from hospital: the day has a trapdoor in it, and it opens at about 5pm.
The morning baby was fine. The lunchtime baby fed and slept. Then somewhere between school pickup and dinner, a switch flips, and you are holding a red-faced, rigid little person who does not want to feed, does not want to sleep, does not want to be put down and does not want to be held either. Meanwhile the bigger kids are hungry, the afternoon has turned into that loud pre-dinner scramble every household knows, and whichever adult has the baby has usually had the baby since 6am.
Parents call this stretch the witching hour, which is optimistic, because it is rarely one hour.
What is actually going on
The witching hour is a well-worn pattern in babies under about four months: a stretch of evening unsettledness, usually starting between 4.30pm and 6pm, that shows up in the first few weeks, peaks around six to eight weeks, and fades by three to four months. It is not caused by anything you did that day, which is worth saying twice, because by week three most parents have run a full forensic audit of their own routine trying to find the trigger.
A few things pile up at the end of a baby’s day. Their nervous system has been taking in light, noise, faces and handling since dawn, and newborns have a small tank for all of it. Missed or patchy day naps compound into an overtired baby who fights sleep hardest exactly when they need it most. Evening cluster feeding, normal in itself, means shorter, fussier, gulpier feeds. And all those gulpy feeds add up to the quiet villain of the evening shift: wind that has been building in a little tummy since breakfast.
There is a longer explanation of the pattern, and why it ends when it does, in this guide to the witching hour.
Run the evening like a shift, not a crisis
The single biggest change most families can make is to stop treating 5pm as a surprise. It is coming tomorrow at the same time it came today, so plan for it the way you would plan for anything else that happens daily.
A workable evening plan for the colic months looks something like this:
- By 2pm, protect the afternoon nap. A decent early-afternoon sleep is the best insurance you can buy against a horror evening. Guard it, even if it means the pram, the carrier or the car.
- By 4pm, dinner is decided. Not cooked, necessarily, just decided. Leftovers, a slow cooker, something the older kids can mostly serve themselves. Nobody should be attempting a new recipe during the witching hour.
- From 4.30pm, turn the house down. Lights lower, television down, visitors gone, handling slow. You are trying to take stimulation off your baby’s plate for the rest of the day, not entertain them through the fuss.
- From 5pm, one adult owns the baby. If there are two of you, work shifts and swap on a schedule, before the holder is at the end of their rope rather than after. If it is just you, wear the baby and lower the bar for everything else. Toast is dinner. The washing can stay where it is.
The wind part is the part you can actually fix
You cannot switch off an overloaded nervous system, but you can do something about a windy tummy, and for a lot of babies that is the difference between a rough hour and a rough night.
Watch for the signals during the evening fuss: knees pulling up, back arching, straining and squirming, grizzling that ramps up during or just after feeds. If that looks familiar, slow the feeds down, burp partway through as well as at the end, and work in some gentle tummy massage or bicycle legs between feeds. There is a full set of techniques in this rundown of ways to relieve trapped wind in babies, and most of them take less than a minute, which is about the length of your baby’s patience at 6pm.
When nothing on the list is working, movement is the last reliable lever: the carrier and a lap of the block, a rhythmic rock, a warm bath. Evening is a lovely time of day to walk a fussy baby along the water if you have it near you, and locals know it. You will pass other parents doing exactly the same thing.
When it is more than the witching hour
The witching hour lives in the evening and it eases as the weeks pass. If your baby is crying inconsolably at all hours, seems to be in pain, is not feeding or gaining well, has a fever, or your gut says something is wrong, see your GP or child health nurse. You are the expert on your baby, and getting them checked is never an overreaction.
It has an end date
Around three months, almost without ceremony, the trapdoor stops opening. Babies get better at handling wind, sleep and the general business of being new, and one evening you will realise you cooked an actual dinner and ate it warm.
Until then, hold the line: nap protected, dinner decided, lights down, shifts shared. You are doing better than 5pm makes you feel.
This article is of a general nature and FYI only, because it doesn’t take into account your personal health requirements or existing medical conditions. That means it’s not personalised health advice and shouldn’t be relied upon as if it is. Before making a health-related decision, you should work out if the info is appropriate for your situation and get professional medical advice.
