Should I wake my baby to change a wet nappy?

She’s peed, but she’s asleep

That was the three-in-the-morning version of the question. We'd already asked the daytime version — how often do you change a nappy if it's clean — and got a sensible answer we then had to test against an actual sleeping baby.

There's a second version of this we asked too: she'd pooed but she'd just eaten and was asleep. What's the longest she can sit in it? And then, honestly: I'm not sure she pooed at all.

What we settled into

We changed poo nappies quickly because poo can irritate the skin. That was worth the disruption.

A wet nappy could usually wait until the next feed if Ari was comfortable and her skin looked fine. Modern nappies hold a lot, and waking a sleeping newborn for a slightly damp one often creates more trouble than it solves.

And a genuinely clean, dry nappy doesn't need changing to a schedule at all. We'd assumed there was a clock rule. There isn't.

Except when there isn't a choice

Any sign of soreness or nappy rash, and wet gets changed quickly too. Same if it's leaking, or so full it's swollen, or she's clearly uncomfortable.

She was born early, and we'd been given routines in the NICU that didn't always match what we read afterwards. Where those two disagreed, we went with what her doctor or nurse had told us.

They're also your intake monitor

This was the part we nearly missed. In the early weeks the wet nappies are how you know she's getting enough milk, so it's worth noticing them rather than changing on autopilot.

We were counting hers anyway because we were counting everything. But it's the one number that costs you nothing to collect and tells a midwife something real.