OBJECTIVES: Infant crying judged to be excessive can trigger premature termination of breastfeeding, over-feeding, parental distress/depression, poor parent-child relationships, issues with long-term child development, and may lead to infant abuse. Mothers reporting >20min of inconsolable cry/day also report possible depression (OR= 4.0). Historically, over-reporting of baby’s cry/fuss by parents and tedious work of listening to lengthy recordings for assessment has been an issue experienced by clinicians and researchers. In our pilot study, we aimed to study the parental perception of the baby's crying/fussing episodes via electronic diaries (e-diaries) compared to software-analyzed baby's vocal recordings.

METHODS: Healthy full-term infants from a singleton pregnancy and ≤15 weeks of age were recruited (n=14). For 14-days, in 24-hour blocks, through e-diaries, parents reported number and duration of their infant’s cry/fuss episodes and whether the baby was consolable during each. Simultaneously, the baby’s vocalizations were recorded using a cry/fuss recorder and analyzed by a complex algorithmic software. A comparison between parental e-diaries and recordings of the baby's cry/fuss was made.

RESULTS: From 11 infants, 1 to 4 months age, ~4000 hours of simultaneous recordings and e-diaries were analyzed; 9 (82%) reported greater daily average cry/fuss min/day through e-diaries than recorder. The total average aggregate of cry/fuss from the recording versus e-diaries was 38.28 min/day and 51.79 min/day, respectively. On average, parents reported >2x min/day of crying than identified by the recorder (31.76 vs. 13.56, p<0.0001); however, the recorder had showed greater min/day of fussing than reported by parent but was insignificant (p>0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicates that average min/day of parental perception of crying is 2x higher than reported by the recordings. Perception of baby’s crying may be influenced by parental factors such as stress, lifestyle, and familial issues. Larger validating studies, possibly with augmented ePRO, are suggested; consequently, guiding training/therapy for parental mental health.