The Six-Week Peak: Why Evenings Are So Hard
If evenings have started to feel genuinely impossible - more crying, harder to soothe, later and later - here's the short version: you're not imagining it, and it's not going to feel like this forever.
Somewhere around five to six weeks, most babies hit the hardest stretch of the entire first year. It has a real name, a predictable shape, and an actual end date.
What's actually happening
Crying and fussiness in babies typically follow a predictable curve: rising from birth, peaking around six weeks, and declining substantially by three to four months.
If this week feels harder than last week - or the week before that felt harder than the one before it - that tracks. You're approaching the peak, or right at it. You are not doing anything wrong, and your baby is not getting worse at being a baby. This is the shape the curve is supposed to take.
The peak is real. So is the fact that it passes.
What to expect, roughly
- Wake window: 45–90 minutes
- Sleep: 14–17 hours across 24h
- Feeds: 8–12x/day, sometimes more during a growth spurt
Growth spurts often cluster again right around this same five-to-six-week window - so on top of the fussiness peak, don't be surprised by a day or two of more frequent feeding too. That's your baby adjusting supply to their next growth phase, not a separate problem stacking on top of the first one.
The one thing worth remembering
Being told "this is temporary" at 2am doesn't make it feel any less endless right now - and that gap between knowing it and feeling it is its own exhausting thing. Both are allowed to be true at once. If this week feels worse than last week, you're not imagining it, and you're not doing anything wrong. The curve is still climbing. It will come back down.
This is one of eight week-by-week chapters in The First Year of Sleep.