I have heard the saying, “Never wake a sleeping baby.” Should I let my newborn sleep as long as they want?
Ah, you’ve stumbled upon one of the old sleep myths about babies. The fact is, sometimes you should wake a baby! An example would be to feed her or improve her overall sleep.
Let me clarify that I’m talking about newborns or very young babies, though it may apply to older babies and toddlers, too, but for different reasons, like keeping routines.
For a young baby, we don’t want to be seduced into letting our infants sleep long hours in the middle of the day. It is seductive when you are tired and un-showered and haven’t checked your email or returned phone calls in days to let your newborn sleep 4 or 5 hours straight from, say, 10 am to 3 pm. But please resist this temptation so you can make sure they don’t miss daytime feedings. Babies will get their daily caloric needs met during the night if they don’t get it by day. And since the first sleep to consolidate for young babies is a long stretch at night of about 4-5 hours, we want to promote that by keeping daytime feeds on track.
The early weeks are the time to establish good feeding habits during the day and to save those long stretches of sleep for nighttime. Early on, your baby should eat at least every 3 hours during the day (between 6 am and 10 pm) and hopefully move to a longer stretch during the night.
The myth holds true, however, once the baby is gaining weight nicely. Then, at night, let them sleep! Your pediatrician will likely tell you there’s no need to wake your baby to feed once they’ve surpassed birth weight.
