Week 1
Your baby has arrived. The average newborn weighs about 3.3 kg (7 lb 4 oz) and measures about 50 cm (19.5 in), though healthy babies vary widely, and what matters from now on is that your baby follows their own curve on the growth chart. Most babies lose up to 7 to 10 % of their birth weight in the first few days, which is expected. This week your baby is learning to feed, breathe and stay warm outside the womb. You are recovering from birth, often on very little sleep. The focus is simple: feeding, watching diapers, a few important checks, and getting home safely. Everything else can wait.
Day 1 · Birth day
Getting through the first day and night
Part One covers labour and birth, and its chapter "The first hours after birth" explains skin-to-skin contact and the first feed. This entry is about the hours that follow.
Many babies are wide awake for an hour or two after birth, then fall into a long, deep sleep. It is common for a newborn to feed only a few times in the first 24 hours and to seem more interested in sleeping. Offer a feed whenever your baby stirs, roots or brings a hand to their mouth, and at least every three hours. Skin-to-skin contact helps them wake and feed.
Your body needs care too. Try to pass urine within about six hours of the birth, even if it stings. Expect heavy, red bleeding and cramps that come in waves, especially while feeding. Eat, drink, and get help the first time you stand, as you may feel faint.
Tonight, let your baby sleep on their back in their own bassinet or cot, right beside your bed. If you feel yourself dozing while holding your baby, hand them to someone or put them down.
Get help right away if your baby's lips or face look blue or grey, they are struggling to breathe or grunting with each breath, or they are floppy and hard to wake. Call for help too if you soak a pad in an hour or feel faint or short of breath.
Try this: Ask whoever is with you to take one task off your hands tonight, whether that is changing diapers or fetching water, so you can rest between feeds.
Day 2 · 0 weeks 1 day old
Small feeds, often, are exactly right
For the first few days, a breastfed baby drinks colostrum: thick, yellowish early milk that comes in small amounts and is packed with antibodies and nutrients. It looks like very little, and it is enough.
Your baby's stomach is tiny. On the first day it holds roughly a teaspoon, about 5 to 7 mL, around the size of a cherry. By day 3 it holds about 25 mL, the size of a walnut, and by the end of the first week roughly 45 to 60 mL. This is why newborns feed so often, whether breast milk or formula. Most feed 8 to 12 times or more in 24 hours, often bunching feeds together in the evening and on this second night.
Watch your baby rather than the clock. Early hunger cues include stirring, turning the head and opening the mouth (rooting), lip smacking, and sucking on hands or fists. Crying is a late cue, and a crying baby may need calming before they can latch or take a bottle.
Until your baby is back to birth weight, wake them to feed if three hours have passed since the start of the last feed. Undressing them to the diaper can help a sleepy baby rouse.
Call your baby's doctor or nurse if your baby is too sleepy to wake for feeds, or, after the first day, feeds fewer than 6 times in 24 hours. Try this: Next time your baby stirs, watch for the first rooting or hand-to-mouth movement and offer a feed then, before crying starts.
Figure 5. Your newborn's stomach: roughly how much fits at one feed in the first month.
Day 3 · 0 weeks 2 days old
A deep latch makes feeding comfortable
If you are breastfeeding, the latch, how your baby takes the breast into their mouth, makes the biggest difference to comfort and milk flow.
Get comfortable first, with your back supported. Hold your baby close, tummy to your body, with their head and body in a straight line. Start with their nose level with your nipple. Let their head tilt back slightly, and wait for a wide-open mouth, like a yawn. Then bring your baby to the breast, chin first, rather than leaning over to them. A good latch takes in a large mouthful, with more of the darker skin showing above the top lip than below. Lips turn outward, the chin presses into the breast, and you hear or see slow, rhythmic sucking and swallowing.
Some tenderness when your baby first latches is common this week. Pain that lasts through the feed, or a nipple that looks flattened, pinched or white afterward, usually means the latch is shallow. Slide a clean finger into the corner of your baby's mouth to break the suction, then try again. For sore nipples, rubbing a little breast milk on them after feeds and letting them air dry can help. Cracks or bleeding are a sign to get hands-on help from a midwife, nurse or lactation consultant soon, rather than pushing through. If you are formula feeding, day 8 walks you through preparing bottles safely.
Try this: Ask a midwife, nurse or lactation consultant to watch a whole feed today and tell you what is working.
Day 4 · 0 weeks 3 days old
The checks and the car seat before home
In the first days, your baby is offered a few screening tests for rare conditions that are easier to treat when found early. A result that needs follow-up does not always mean something is wrong.
The blood spot test, or heel prick, usually happens between 24 and 72 hours after birth. A few drops of blood on a card are checked for a range of conditions, which vary by place. Feeding your baby during the prick helps. A hearing screen uses a soft earpiece or small sensors while your baby sleeps; a "refer" result is common in the first days, often from fluid in the ear, and just means a repeat test. Many places also do a heart screen, a painless sensor on a hand and foot that measures oxygen levels. If you gave birth at home or left early, ask when these will be done and how you will hear the results. Going home by car means a rear-facing infant car seat, installed following the seat's and the car's manuals. Place your baby with their back flat against the seat and the harness straps at or below their shoulders. Tighten until you cannot pinch any slack at the collarbone. Dress them in ordinary clothes, not a snowsuit, and tuck a blanket over the buckled harness if it is cold. Keep early trips short and take your baby out of the seat once you arrive. Try this: Practise buckling a stuffed toy or rolled towel into the car seat today, so the straps feel familiar before the real trip.
Day 5 · 0 weeks 4 days old
When your milk comes in
Somewhere between day 2 and day 5, your breasts start making much more milk. They feel fuller, heavier and warmer, and the milk turns thinner and whiter. After a caesarean, a long or difficult labour, or with some health conditions, it can take a little longer.
For some the change is gentle. For others the breasts become hard, swollen and sore, called engorgement. It usually eases within a day or two, as your supply settles to match your baby. Feed often, at least 8 to 12 times a day, and do not skip night feeds. If your breast is so firm your baby cannot latch, hand express a little milk first, or press gently around the nipple with your fingertips for a minute to push swelling back. Cold packs wrapped in a cloth between feeds ease the swelling. Ask your pharmacist which pain relievers are suitable while breastfeeding.
If you are not breastfeeding, your milk still comes in. Wear a supportive bra, use cold packs, and avoid expressing more than a tiny amount for comfort, as that signals your body to make more. Fullness usually settles within about a week.
Call your care provider if you have a fever or chills, a red, hot or hard area on your breast, or you feel achy and unwell, as you would with the flu. Weeks 3 to 5 look at blocked ducts and mastitis in more detail.
Try this: Before the next feed, spend one minute softening the skin around your nipple with gentle fingertip pressure, then latch your baby.
Day 6 · 0 weeks 5 days old
A yellow tinge to watch in daylight
Many newborns turn a little yellow in the first week: jaundice. It happens because babies have extra red blood cells that break down after birth, releasing a yellow substance called bilirubin, and a young liver takes a while to clear it. It usually appears on day 2 or 3, peaks around days 3 to 5, and fades over a week or two. It can last longer in breastfed babies, usually harmlessly.
Jaundice starts on the face and moves down the body as levels rise. To check, look at your baby near a window in daylight. Gently press the skin on the forehead, chest or tummy and see whether it looks yellow as it blanches. On darker skin, check the whites of the eyes, the gums and the palms. Frequent feeds help clear it in stools.
Most jaundice is mild. Your baby's nurse or doctor may check the level with a skin meter or a blood test. If it is high, treatment under a special blue light, called phototherapy, works well.
Call your baby's doctor today if the yellow spreads to the tummy, arms or legs, the whites of the eyes turn yellow, your baby is very sleepy or hard to wake for feeds, is feeding poorly, has too few wet diapers, or passes pale, chalky stools or dark yellow urine. Jaundice in the first 24 hours of life always needs to be seen the same day.
Try this: Each morning this week, check your baby's skin by a window and note whether the yellow is spreading or fading.
Day 7 · 0 weeks 6 days old
What the diapers are telling you
You cannot see how much a breastfed baby drinks, but diapers give you a good picture.
For the first day or two, stools are meconium: thick, sticky and greenish black. As feeding picks up, they turn greenish brown around day 3 or 4, then yellow by about day 5. Breastfed stools are mustard yellow, loose and often seedy. Formula-fed stools are usually paler, tan or yellowish, and firmer. Wet diapers build up day by day. A rough guide is one wet diaper on day 1, two on day 2, three on day 3, four on day 4, and six or more heavy wet diapers a day from about day 5. Modern diapers hide wetness well, so feel the weight, or tuck a tissue inside. From about day 4, most breastfed babies also have at least three or four yellow stools a day, each larger than a coin. These numbers go hand in hand with weight. Losing up to about 7 to 10 % of birth weight is normal, and most babies are back to it by 10 to 14 days. Your baby's doctor or nurse will weigh them to check.
Call your baby's doctor if your baby has fewer wet diapers than this guide, urine looks dark or leaves orange, brick-dust spots after day 3, stools are still black after day 4, or your baby seems unusually sleepy or uninterested in feeds.
For your partner: Keep a simple log of feeds and diapers on paper or your phone for the next week, so nobody has to remember at three in the morning.