How much should my baby be sleeping?

The counting problem

We asked how to calculate how much she was sleeping, and then immediately hit the complication: she wakes up with discomfort partway through, settles, and goes back to sleep. Does that stretch count as one sleep or two?

It counts. Brief wakings inside a longer stretch are normal and they don't reset the clock. If you only count unbroken blocks you'll end up with a total that looks alarming and isn't.

Ari at the beginning was only sleeping between 11 and 13 hours a day. We asked her doctor, and whilst it was on the lower side, she had wet diapers, was alert, and was eating and gaining well, she told us its ok. More hours awake so more work for us, but it was ok.

The range is wide on purpose

Fourteen to seventeen hours in twenty-four is the usual figure for a newborn, and the range is that broad because babies genuinely differ.

We asked whether around fourteen to sixteen hours was all right, and it was. We also asked whether that changed because she was premature and weighed three kilos, and the honest answer is that a premature baby often sleeps more, and that her feeding pattern matters more than her sleep total.

The number is a guide, not a target. You can't make her hit it and you shouldn't try.

What we watched instead

Whether she was alert and responsive when awake. Whether she was feeding well. Whether the nappies were keeping up.

A baby sleeping at the lower end who is bright, feeding and gaining is fine. A baby at the higher end who is hard to wake and missing feeds is not — and that's a different conversation, particularly if she was born early.

The total matters less than those other signs and it's the one everyone counts.