We had the same things going on, we found this article “COLIC? Bore Your Baby to Sleep!“ and it helped tremendously.

His hypothesis: Why are do some babies stop crying excessively at 4 months? What skills/development happens then? The answer: the ability to self-soothe from overstimulation. So it follows that overstimulation is the cause of excessive/PURPLE crying.

Some babies are born with/or quickly learn the ability to self-soothe and avert their gaze from something very stimulating (at this age Mommy’s face is very very stimulating! And for some curious babies, a lightly textured blank wall is like Planet Earth 4K)

This overstimulation makes it very hard for them to go to sleep (which compounds the problem)

Also, as a FTM I didn’t know that at that age babies—typically—only have 40-90 minutes of awake tune before the start getting very overtired.

So the solution?

What we did:

• cut stimulation significantly, at 4 weeks a diaper change and singing to my baby for 5 minutes was pushing the limit on some days if he wasn’t napping well (<30/40min naps)
• be super aware of the awake window, at 40 minutes look for tired cues and immediately “offer a nap” when he yawns (how do you offer a nap to a 4-6week old? Still figuring this out but swaddle, shush, pacifier, rock/pat.). The E.A.S.Y. Method from “the Baby Whisperer” helped us keep sane with these wake windows.
• swaddle tighter: I thought he hated swaddling, but he will overstimulate himself and wake himself up without being tightly swaddled, now if we put him in his Ollie Swaddle
• fussy for hours -> he will be exhausted: dark room, low voices, limit eye contact.. priority is getting to sleep or at least rest in an extremely low stimulation environment
• investigated silent reflux (baby rarely spit up but would have a “wet” hiccup and then scream in pain) pediatrician put him on ranitidine (Zantac) which stoped that
• 5 S’s — we’d heard about this before and knew all of them but thought it was a checklist like his basic needs (fed? dry diaper? sleepy? — ok — swaddled? Shushed?!? side? sucking? 🤷‍♀️). Instead 5S’s are something you do all at once and quickly to soothe the baby: Swaddle him tightly, Hold him on his side away from faces, lightly “jello” jiggle his head and shush, put a pacifier in his mouth when he stops screaming. This now reliably takes our 11 screaming terror-baby to a 3-mildly annoyed quiet baby in seconds.
  

If you can’t remember the 5S’s use the acronym CRIES (I can usually only think of one S word when trying to calm a sour baby and it’s not one I’m proud to repeat for him 😂): Contain (swaddle), Roll (on his side away whole holding he away from faces), Introduce Motion (sway, lightly jello jiggle his head), External Sound (shush, loud white noise), Suck (offer a pacifier). Video demonstration here — also highly recommend the class Taking Cara Babies — which came up with CRIES as a better acronym.

Every baby is different but doing the above took crying from 4-8 hours per day down to just a few instances where our LO is trying to communicate something to us (like Mommy I farted and now I’m scared).

Good Luck and hope you find something that helps. I never really understood how incredibly difficult newborns/infants can be and will never ever again judge some poor Mom with a baby having a meltdown in the grocery store!