Your new bundle of joy has made its way from your uterus into the world and you can now hold your baby in your arms, cuddle it and be amazed at the fact that your baby is finally here.
In the first 24 hours your baby will sleep a lot. Will be difficult to rouse and even if the baby awakens and you feed the baby the baby will fall asleep in a few minutes. This phase is also called a recovery phase. The baby has made the transition from the womb to the outside world and is over whelmed by all he sees. This tires and exhausts him and hence the baby goes thru a recovery phase. Most new parents will be pleasantly surprised to find their new born sleeping so well.
Day two the baby will be more wakeful. He has completed recovery sleep and now is getting accustomed to his new world. He feels over whelmed and anxious hence can tend to cry much more. The only thing that seems to comfort him is being in his mother’s arms because he can hear her voice and her heart beat.
Slowly the baby settles into a routine. In the first two weeks you can expect that your new born will cry for about 2 hours every day. This is intermittent and spread over the whole day.
Between two to six weeks crying peaks and your baby may cry for almost six hours every day. This is fairly normal. This is also the time that colic peaks and most babies will cry more during the evening hours or in the second half of the day.
The first couple of weeks stools will also be erratic and your baby may pass a stool after every feed or after urinating, but this settles down by the time the baby is a month old and will eventually pass stools 3-4 times a day only.
At birth the stool has a blackish colour and this is called meconium. As the baby starts taking the colostrum the stools become greenish by day two and three and as the milk transitions the stools will become a mustard yellow. New born babies who are exclusively breast fed will have loose runny stools with a granular consistency. The baby may pass multiple stools a day or may not pass stools for multiple days. If the baby is exclusively breast fed then this is normal. Additionally you must ensure that the baby is feeding well, and seems comfortable and relaxed.
For the first 8 weeks your baby will probably feed every 2-3 hours and this cycle will continue in the night as well. The new born stomach is very small and needs to eat frequently. Also the baby would be used to being more awake at night and would sleep during the day as this is the cycle that the baby followed in the womb. It will take a while to change this around and for the baby to adapt to life outside the womb.