How often should a newborn eat?

Newborns generally feed very frequently, often around 8 to 12 times in 24 hours. Follow the specific feeding instructions from your pediatrician until feeding and weight gain are well established.

Should I wake my newborn to feed?

Often, yes, especially during the first days. Some newborns are too sleepy to wake reliably for every feeding. Your pediatrician can tell you when it is appropriate to stop waking based on feeding and weight gain.

How do I know whether breastfeeding is working?

Look for active sucking and swallowing, increasing wet and dirty diapers, and appropriate weight gain. If feeding is painful, consistently difficult, or you are unsure whether the baby is getting enough, ask for help.

If my baby gets a bottle, should I pump?

If that bottle is replacing breastfeeding or the baby is not transferring milk effectively at the breast, milk expression is often important for maintaining supply. The exact plan depends on why bottles are being used and how feeding is going.

Do newborns need a schedule?

No. During the first weeks, feeding, safe sleep, and getting to know your baby's patterns matter more than a strict schedule.

Is it normal for my newborn to want to eat all evening?

Yes. Frequent or clustered feeding is common in the newborn period, including during the evening.

The First Few Days Home With a Newborn: What to Expect

Coming home from the hospital with a newborn can feel surprisingly abrupt.

For the first day or two, someone is checking on you constantly. Nurses come in, vitals are taken, diapers are counted, feeding gets discussed, and there is usually someone nearby if you have a question.

Then you go home.

Even parents who took newborn and breastfeeding classes can suddenly feel unsure. When should the baby eat again? Should you wake them? How do you know breastfeeding is actually working? Why did the baby sleep all afternoon and now refuse to settle?

The first few days are not about getting into a perfect routine. Most of your attention will go toward feeding, sleep, recovery, and figuring out what is normal for your baby.

Feeding usually takes the most attention

Breastfeeding often feels very different with your own baby than it did in class.

A baby may latch well at one feed and struggle at the next. They can stay at the breast for a long time without taking much milk, or fall asleep after a few minutes and need help waking up again.

I would not judge a feeding by the clock. A forty-minute breastfeeding session is not automatically an effective one.

You want to see active sucking and swallowing, increasing wet and dirty diapers, and appropriate weight gain. If feeding hurts, the latch is consistently difficult, or you are not sure the baby is actually taking milk, get help early.

One thing I hear fairly often is that parents leave the hospital with several pieces of breastfeeding advice that do not quite fit together. One nurse shows them one position, another suggests something different, and a lactation consultant may help with one feed. Then the next feed happens hours later when nobody is standing beside them.

A lactation consultation can be extremely useful, especially when there is pain, poor milk transfer, weight loss, or another feeding concern. The limitation is simply that breastfeeding happens over and over throughout the day and night. What worked at 11 AM may be much harder to reproduce at 2 AM with a sleepy baby and an exhausted parent.

This is where ongoing hands-on support can be valuable. Someone experienced can watch several feeds, help with positioning and latch again, notice when the baby is mostly dozing instead of eating, and help make the feeding plan workable at home.

A sleepy newborn may still need to eat

This catches a lot of new parents off guard.

Your baby can look completely peaceful and still need to be woken for a feed. In the first days, some newborns are very sleepy and do not reliably wake up and demand food.

You may need to change a diaper, remove a layer, rub the baby's back, or gently wake them enough to feed. Sometimes they still drift off after a few sucks and you have to try again.

Follow the feeding instructions from your discharge team and pediatrician until feeding and weight gain are well established.

There is an important difference between a normally sleepy newborn and a baby who is becoming unusually difficult to wake. If your baby repeatedly cannot manage feeds, seems limp or listless, is increasingly hard to wake, or looks more yellow, call the pediatrician.

If feeding isn't working yet

The latch may need work. Positioning can feel awkward. Milk supply is still changing, and the baby is learning how to feed effectively.

If breastfeeding is not going well, continuing the same unsuccessful feed for hours is usually not the answer. You may need more lactation help, hand expression or pumping, or temporary supplementation while you keep working on breastfeeding.

Needing a bottle does not mean breastfeeding has failed.

What matters is that the baby is fed and that milk supply is protected while you work out what is making breastfeeding difficult.

If a bottle is replacing a breastfeed, or the baby is spending time at the breast without transferring much milk, think about milk removal too. In the early weeks, supply is very responsive to how often and how effectively milk is removed.

If the baby regularly takes a bottle in place of nursing, pumping or hand expression around that time is often part of protecting supply.

You do not need to create a large oversupply. You are trying to build enough milk for the baby, with some flexibility if needed.

Triple feeding can be useful in certain situations, but it is demanding. Breastfeed, pump, give a bottle, clean everything, then start again. If you are sent home with that plan, ask what you are working toward and when it can be reassessed. A feeding plan also has to be possible to live with.

You do not need a newborn schedule

This is not the time to worry about wake windows or getting the baby onto a routine.

Newborn days are irregular. A feed may take a long time and the baby may fall asleep immediately afterward. Later they may want to eat again much sooner than you expected.

Evenings can be especially confusing. A baby who slept most of the afternoon may suddenly want to feed repeatedly, wake every time you put them down, or seem much harder to settle.

Cluster feeding is common in the early days and weeks. Newborns also do not yet have a mature day-night rhythm, so the first nights at home may feel nothing like the daytime.

For now, feeding, changing, a little awake time, and sleep are enough. There is plenty of time for schedules later.

Sometimes the bassinet feels very different

Some newborns settle beautifully in someone's arms and become wide awake as soon as they are placed in the bassinet.

Part of that is simply the change. They have gone from constant warmth and contact to a flat, still sleep space.

I also sometimes see babies who seem uncomfortable because they are simply not dressed warmly enough for the room.

The answer is not to add blankets or padding to the crib. Dress the baby appropriately instead. A common safe-sleep guideline is no more than one extra layer compared with what an adult would comfortably wear in the same room. A properly fitted wearable blanket can also be used.

Check the baby's chest or back rather than hands and feet when you are trying to judge temperature. Avoid going too far in the other direction too. Sweating, flushed skin, or a hot chest can mean the baby is overdressed.

For every sleep, place the baby on their back on their own firm, flat sleep surface without loose blankets, pillows, positioners, or soft objects.

If your baby is napping in your arms or on your chest, stay fully awake. If you are getting sleepy, move the baby to their safe sleep space. Falling asleep with a newborn on a couch or chair is especially dangerous.

Having help in those first days can change the experience

If you have a postpartum doula arranged, having them come soon after you get home can be very useful.

There is a surprising amount to figure out at once. Feeding, pumping, bottles, diapering, settling, safe sleep, newborn noises, and deciding whether something is normal or worth a call to the pediatrician.

A postpartum doula with good breastfeeding education can also provide something that is difficult to get from a single appointment: continuity. They can be there for one feed and then see what happens three hours later. They can help you try the latch again, adjust positioning, manage pumping and bottles, and notice when something is changing.

That does not replace an IBCLC or pediatrician when you need clinical feeding help. It fills a different gap.

It also helps to have someone there when the next feed looks completely different from the last one.

Know what deserves a call

Most newborn behavior is strange-looking but completely normal. Newborns grunt, squeak, twitch, breathe irregularly at times, sleep a lot, and sometimes seem to change their habits from one feed to the next.

But a very young baby who is increasingly hard to wake, feeding poorly, having trouble breathing, unusually limp or unresponsive, feverish, repeatedly vomiting, or becoming more jaundiced needs medical attention.

Keep the first pediatric follow-up appointment too. Weight, hydration, feeding, and jaundice are important to check in those first days after discharge.

You do not have to decide by yourself whether something is serious enough to ask about. With a newborn, calling when something seems off is reasonable.

Give yourself a little time to learn the baby

The first week involves a lot of second-guessing. Feeding may be harder than the class made it look. You might change the baby's clothes twice because you cannot decide whether they are too warm, or spend far too long figuring out a swaddle or bottle nipple.

A few days later, many of those things already feel easier.

For now, keep the priorities fairly simple. Make sure the baby is feeding well enough, protect milk supply if feeding is not effective, follow safe sleep guidelines, go to the newborn follow-up, and get help early when you need it.

And take care of yourself too. Try not to give up every bit of your own sleep in the name of doing everything perfectly. Rest when you can, accept help, keep food and water nearby, and let the first days be small and quiet.

Especially for the mother, birth is a lot for the body. Recovery is part of the work too.

You do not need to be productive right now. Nest. Stay close to home if that feels good. Learn the baby, recover, and let the rest wait.

You will learn the rest by living with your baby.

Quoting these notes

You're welcome to quote these observations in an article, newsletter, or post. That's what they're here for.

I only ask for credit: please name me, Margo Yudanova, and link back to the original page at margonova.com/blog/first-few-days-home-with-newborn.

If you're writing something and want a comment, clarification, or a detail I haven't covered here, write to me at info@margonova.com.

Expecting a baby, or in the thick of the newborn weeks? I work overnights in San Francisco and Bay Area homes as a postpartum night doula.

The First Few Days Home With a Newborn