Baby Confuses Day and Night

One recent study confirmed what many new mothers suspect—that most babies are born with their days and nights mixed up. Babies tend to sleep more during the day and breastfeed more at night. In a study designed to help determine what is normal, Australian nurse midwife Stephanie Benson observed the feeding patterns of 37 healthy, exclusively breastfeeding mothers and babies during their first 60 hours after an unmedicated birth. She found these babies fed least often from 3am-9am, while their frequency of feeding increased during the day. These babies fed most often from 9pm-3am. (Benson 2001).

There are some theories about why babies are born this way. One holds that during pregnancy, babies are lulled to sleep during the day, when their mothers are active and moving, and are alert at night, when their mothers lie still. But no one knows for sure why babies mix up night and day. We only know that it is typical for newborns.

Here in the United States, most mothers arrive home from the hospital on the second day. If this is true for you, this means that during your first night at home, your usual sleep time will probably coincide with your baby’s peak desire to breastfeed.

From Breastfeeding Made Simple, Mohrbacher and Kendall-Tackett 2010