The question of whether or not to wake your newborn and keep them on a feeding schedule can make you really anxious.
Your gut is telling you that a sleeping baby is a beautiful thing and why on earth would you disturb that? But the nervous parent part of you is freaking out because someone told you, “The baby needs to eat every two to three hours around the clock.”
So what do you do?
As a nurse and lactation consultant, I tell parents that as long as they have a healthy full-term baby and feeding is going well (baby has at least six wet diapers and four poop diapers a day and is back to birth weight by two weeks), you can let them sleep at night!
Here’s an updated feeding schedule for your newborn:
✅ Step One:
Replace the “Feed your baby every two to three hours around the clock” rule with the new and improved “Feed your baby at least eight times in 24 hours” rule.
Eight good feedings per day is the minimum newborns need in order to gain well.
- A good breastfeeding consists of 20-45 minutes of active sucking and swallowing. Most newborns will breastfeed 8-12 times every 24 hours.
- A good bottle feeding consists of baby taking in about three ounces per feeding. As long as your baby is taking in at least 24 ounces every 24 hours, you’re in good shape.
✅ Step Two:
During the day, if your baby is not asking to be fed every two to three hours, wake them up.
- Watch the clock AND your baby. Babies have a 50-60 minute sleep cycle. This means that about once every hour, your baby is in a very light state of sleep. A baby in this state is much easier to rouse than a baby in deep sleep.
- Babies in light sleep will stir, flutter their eyelids, and make mouth movements. When you see these signs anywhere around the two to three hour mark, pick your baby up, undress them and hold him skin to skin. Given some time, they’ll wake up and start looking for their food. If they fall deeply back asleep, you can just hold them until they're ready or put them back down and try again the next time you see those signs of light sleep.
✅ Step Three:
Many babies will sleep for a four to six hour stretch at night if you let them, and then eat more during their waking hours to make up for anything they missed.
- If you are breastfeeding, your supply will adjust to your baby’s demand. In other words, it will go down at night when they sleep longer and increase during the day when they eats more frequently. Therefore, there’s no need to pump in the middle of the night.
- If you are bottle feeding, you’ll notice your baby eating a bit more in some of their bottles. As long as they're getting in at least 24 ounces in 24 hours, it doesn’t really matter how that is divided up.
So there it is, an updated feeding schedule for your newborn that might give you more sleep.
Give it a try over a few days and see how it’s working for you. If baby continues to grow well and you’re getting more sleep…it sounds like a keeper to me!
If you are worried about your baby not getting enough to eat, contact your pediatrician.
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