Sleep
Newborn babies have a number of ways of communicating with parents, and crying is one of them. For this they need plenty of sleep. Newborns sleep around 16 hours in every 24, and at first, probably not many of those will be at night. They sleep in two, three or four hour bursts until they are old enough to go for longer between feeds, and can handle a sleep routine. At the beginning, there is no need to implement a routine. Your baby will sleep when he needs to, and this is an important part of his growing process, so try not to be strict with him just yet.

For most new parents, the lack of sleep, and being woken up repeatedly at three, four, and five in the morning will make you irritable, tired and grumpy. Try to catch up on sleep in the day when your baby is napping and persuade your partner, parents or best friend to come and mind your baby occasionally whilst you have a rare morning lie-in. For more information on how grandparents can help out in these early months, read our feature on Grandparents and new babies.

Eat
Apart from sleep, the other main characteristic of a newborn is to eat. Whether you are bottle-feeding or breastfeeding, your baby will probably get hungry around every three hours, depending on his size and appetite.  Newborn babies cannot hold much food in their stomachs, because their stomachs are still very small; this is why they poo constantly. If you think all your baby does is eat, be reassured that in time, his eating patterns will settle down and you won’t always feel like you are doing back-to-back feeding. For more information on this topic, read our feature My baby is always hungry: what should I do?

Cry
Newborn babies have only one way of communicating what they want, and that is to cry, and has new parents around the world literally pulling their hair out trying to work out what their baby needs. Newborns cry between one and three hours a day, but by the time your baby is a few weeks old, you will probably be able to distinguish which cry is a hungry cry and which one means he needs a comforting cuddle - new research has suggested that cuddles in the early days could actually halve tantrums! 

The good thing about newborn babies is that there are only a handful of things, which actually make them cry, so it may be a process of elimination till you work out which it is. If you're finding it hard to decipher what your baby's cries mean, you might find our feature on communicating with and understanding your baby helpful. Even though crying is your baby’s main language, they are able to communicate right from the start by gazing and eye contact and lots of other subtle little signals.

If you have any additional queries about what your newborn will do in those first few weeks, you can ask these in the Guide to Newborn area of the answers page. Alternatively, you can talk to other mums about what their new additions are doing in the Guide to Baby area of our chat forum. You can also join a group or meet other new mums in the People area. Remember to upload a photo of your bundle of joy into our Newborn gallery!

Last Modified: 13/05/2007