newborn question 1053

Look at the total number of wet and poopy diapers in a 24-hour period. If baby is producing plenty of output, then baby is eating enough. If not: sometimes a newborn has to be woken regularly to eat, to make sure baby eats enough. Usually that's not a problem and you can let baby follow his-her own schedule if you want.

You only need 6 hours of sleep?? Aren't you lucky.

I liked one book that said not to think in terms of how much sleep you're getting, but how much rest. Getting up in the middle of the night is tiring. Nursing baby in a lying-down position can be almost as restful as sleeping.

If baby has days and nights reversed: it's usually a lot easier to shift a human to later and later times than to earlier and earlier times. Once you recognize the pattern you can judge how many hours one way or the other baby needs to shift the schedule. You can concentrate on the beginning and end of the time period the baby considers to be nighttime. At the beginning, you can keep baby awake a little longer with a bath or something. At the end of baby's sleep period, you can tiptoe around quietly to help baby sleep a little longer. Eventually when baby has shifted around to a normal schedule, you can make sure to wake baby around the same time every morning to keep the schedule steady.

It can be hard to notice at first that baby has days and nights reversed because they usually do some waking at night and some sleeping during the day anyway. It's just that there's more sleeping during the time of day baby considers to be night.

If you notice you have a baby who sleeps a lot during the morning, it's good to be alert that maybe baby is starting to shift to sleeping later and later. A morning nap is fine, but you might want to encourage a few minutes of being awake first, to avoid baby starting to stay awake too late in the evenings. -- Cathy A *much* better world is possible.