22 Sept 2026
Should I Be Worried About My Baby’s Crying?
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Why it can be so difficult to know what “a lot” really means, and why seeing crying over time may help
It is a question many parents ask themselves during their baby's first months:
Is what is happening with my baby something I should be concerned about?
And answering that can start with some surprisingly difficult questions.
How much has my baby actually been crying? Has it changed? When did that change start? Is there a pattern? What has the last week really looked like?
When you're caring for a new baby, especially on broken sleep, keeping track of everything that happened over the last few hours, days and weeks isn't easy.
When crying is recorded over a longer period, it becomes possible to look back and see how the pattern has changed.
Has the amount of recorded crying been increasing or decreasing? Does it tend to cluster at particular times of day? Was last night part of something that has been developing over several days, or was it simply one particularly difficult evening?
Age matters too.
Research shows that crying changes during the first months of life and varies considerably between individual babies. So a number such as “your baby cried for X minutes today” has limited meaning on its own.
The baby's own pattern over time provides one kind of context. Research involving babies of a similar age can provide another.
Neither can tell you, by itself, whether a baby is well or unwell.
In the UK, keeping a crying record is already part of the advice
This is one of the reasons we are bringing Oodi to the UK.
NHS guidance for parents concerned about crying already suggests keeping a record of how often and when a baby cries, because it may help a health visitor or GP identify possible patterns.
The UK is also home to ICON, Babies Cry, You Can Cope, which was developed around an important reality: infant crying is normal, but coping with it can sometimes be extremely difficult for parents and carers.
So we started asking a slightly different question:
If keeping a record can be useful, could technology make that easier?
And just as importantly: could it do so without giving exhausted parents another thing to worry about?
See your baby’s crying more clearly
That question became Oodi.
Oodi is a new Finnish app designed to help parents keep a simple record of their baby's crying and see how it changes over time. Parents can record crying manually or choose automatic cry detection. Oodi then turns those recorded events into a visual history. As more days are recorded, parents can look back across time rather than trying to reconstruct individual days from memory. They can see when crying was recorded, how it was distributed through the day and how their baby's own recorded pattern has changed.
Oodi can also place daily recorded crying alongside published research involving babies of a similar age. That comparison is context, not a diagnosis. It isn't there to label a baby as "normal" or "abnormal". Babies vary enormously, and crying alone cannot answer that question. Instead, Oodi is designed to help parents explore two things:
How has my baby's crying changed over time?
And how does what we've recorded compare with crying reported in research involving babies of a similar age?
There's a third thing too. Alongside crying, Oodi also lets parents note how they themselves are coping day to day. This part of Oodi is still simple and early, but we think a parent's own experience matters just as much as the recorded crying itself, and it's something we're paying close attention to in what we're testing this autumn.
The aim is to give parents a clearer picture to look back on, and, if they are concerned, something clearer to refer to when speaking with a healthcare professional.
For Oodi, the job is deliberately focused:
Keep track. See change over time. Add context.
The parent remains the parent.
Now we’re testing whether it helps
We have spent time listening to parents and healthcare professionals, but there is a limit to what interviews and early testing can tell us.
This autumn, Oodi is also beginning a small real-world pilot with Finnish child health services.
We want to explore whether having a clearer record of crying over time is genuinely useful to parents and in conversations with healthcare professionals.
And we are interested in both sides of the answer.
Does it help parents make sense of what has been happening? Does it make crying easier to describe? Is the information useful in a healthcare conversation?
Or does tracking sometimes create more worry than clarity?
We don't yet know. That's why we're testing it.
Oodi will officially launch in the UK at The Baby Show Olympia London this October.
Between us, we bring decades of experience in user experience, technology, product development and international business, including previously developing and taking baby technology from Finland to international markets.
Oodi is what we're building with everything that experience has taught us.
And we'd love parents at The Baby Show to challenge our thinking too.
Would seeing your baby's crying over time have helped you?
What would you have wanted to know?
And when does useful information become simply too much information?
Come and tell us.
Oodi launches at The Baby Show Olympia London, 23–25 October 2026. Meet founders Satu Niemelä and Erasmus van Niekerk at Stand NK20 in the New Kids on the Block section.
Can't make it to the show? You can learn more and join Oodi's UK early access at https://oodi.tech/
It is a question many parents ask themselves during their baby's first months:
Is what is happening with my baby something I should be concerned about?
And answering that can start with some surprisingly difficult questions.
How much has my baby actually been crying? Has it changed? When did that change start? Is there a pattern? What has the last week really looked like?
When you're caring for a new baby, especially on broken sleep, keeping track of everything that happened over the last few hours, days and weeks isn't easy.
When crying is recorded over a longer period, it becomes possible to look back and see how the pattern has changed.
Has the amount of recorded crying been increasing or decreasing? Does it tend to cluster at particular times of day? Was last night part of something that has been developing over several days, or was it simply one particularly difficult evening?
Age matters too.
Research shows that crying changes during the first months of life and varies considerably between individual babies. So a number such as “your baby cried for X minutes today” has limited meaning on its own.
The baby's own pattern over time provides one kind of context. Research involving babies of a similar age can provide another.
Neither can tell you, by itself, whether a baby is well or unwell.
In the UK, keeping a crying record is already part of the advice
This is one of the reasons we are bringing Oodi to the UK.
NHS guidance for parents concerned about crying already suggests keeping a record of how often and when a baby cries, because it may help a health visitor or GP identify possible patterns.
The UK is also home to ICON, Babies Cry, You Can Cope, which was developed around an important reality: infant crying is normal, but coping with it can sometimes be extremely difficult for parents and carers.
So we started asking a slightly different question:
If keeping a record can be useful, could technology make that easier?
And just as importantly: could it do so without giving exhausted parents another thing to worry about?
See your baby’s crying more clearly
That question became Oodi.
Oodi is a new Finnish app designed to help parents keep a simple record of their baby's crying and see how it changes over time. Parents can record crying manually or choose automatic cry detection. Oodi then turns those recorded events into a visual history. As more days are recorded, parents can look back across time rather than trying to reconstruct individual days from memory. They can see when crying was recorded, how it was distributed through the day and how their baby's own recorded pattern has changed.
Oodi can also place daily recorded crying alongside published research involving babies of a similar age. That comparison is context, not a diagnosis. It isn't there to label a baby as "normal" or "abnormal". Babies vary enormously, and crying alone cannot answer that question. Instead, Oodi is designed to help parents explore two things:
How has my baby's crying changed over time?
And how does what we've recorded compare with crying reported in research involving babies of a similar age?
There's a third thing too. Alongside crying, Oodi also lets parents note how they themselves are coping day to day. This part of Oodi is still simple and early, but we think a parent's own experience matters just as much as the recorded crying itself, and it's something we're paying close attention to in what we're testing this autumn.
The aim is to give parents a clearer picture to look back on, and, if they are concerned, something clearer to refer to when speaking with a healthcare professional.
For Oodi, the job is deliberately focused:
Keep track. See change over time. Add context.
The parent remains the parent.
Now we’re testing whether it helps
We have spent time listening to parents and healthcare professionals, but there is a limit to what interviews and early testing can tell us.
This autumn, Oodi is also beginning a small real-world pilot with Finnish child health services.
We want to explore whether having a clearer record of crying over time is genuinely useful to parents and in conversations with healthcare professionals.
And we are interested in both sides of the answer.
Does it help parents make sense of what has been happening? Does it make crying easier to describe? Is the information useful in a healthcare conversation?
Or does tracking sometimes create more worry than clarity?
We don't yet know. That's why we're testing it.
Oodi will officially launch in the UK at The Baby Show Olympia London this October.
Between us, we bring decades of experience in user experience, technology, product development and international business, including previously developing and taking baby technology from Finland to international markets.
Oodi is what we're building with everything that experience has taught us.
And we'd love parents at The Baby Show to challenge our thinking too.
Would seeing your baby's crying over time have helped you?
What would you have wanted to know?
And when does useful information become simply too much information?
Come and tell us.
Oodi launches at The Baby Show Olympia London, 23–25 October 2026. Meet founders Satu Niemelä and Erasmus van Niekerk at Stand NK20 in the New Kids on the Block section.
Can't make it to the show? You can learn more and join Oodi's UK early access at https://oodi.tech/