“There are very few circumstances where I'd recommend waking a sleeping baby to change their diaper,” says Mochoruk. Unless your baby has an open sore or serious diaper rash that requires monitoring, let them sleep, she says.
“It might sound like they pooped, but it could just be gas and not worth waking them up to find a clean diaper,” Dr. Candice W. Jones, MD FAAP, a board-certified pediatrician tells Romper. That's why you might want to wait a minute so that the air can clear — literally.
What are the rules? In general, newborn babies need to be changed every 2-3 hours. With poopy diapers, it's pretty straightforward.
You don't need to wake your baby up to change their nappy at night. But when they wake up for a feed, take the opportunity to change them. Otherwise your baby may wake up again later because they're uncomfortable.
Unless you can't be interrupted (like when you're driving), you should change the diaper "reasonably fast," meaning within ten minutes or so during the daytime.
Change Poopy Diapers Immediately
While it is ok to leave a slightly wet diaper on overnight, poopy diapers must be changed immediately. Not changing soiled diapers can cause infections. While changing soiled diapers at night, do not interact or play with the baby as you would do during the day.
It depends on many variables. If it's a poopy diaper, change immediately, otherwise there will be a rash. If the baby already has a rash, change immediately. If the baby is especially rash prone, change immediately.
That means the pooping, which happens soon after eating, can happen before sleeping. At night, however, you do not have the benefit of some wake time before baby goes back to sleep. You want baby to eat and go right back to bed. It can be very normal for a baby to poop while asleep.
Although diaper rashes aren't always caused by not changing a diaper quickly enough, a baby who sits in a soiled diaper for too long will end up with a severe diaper rash. Baby Center noted that the combination of urine and bacteria in their poop can irritate their skin causing a diaper rash if not taken care of.
It's likely your baby may have a bowel movement during the first few nights of the sleep training process because he/she will be awake more often during the night. It's best to prepare for this by using extra diaper cream the first few nights/naps to keep the skin protected.
As long as your baby is growing, many pediatricians tell you that you don't need to wake a sleeping baby after a couple weeks old, or at least once they bounced back to their initial birth weight. But, in those early days, many a baby have been woken for a feed during the day and night. Bring on the baby weight!
Bottle-fed babies
Newborn: every 2 to 3 hours. At 2 months: every 3 to 4 hours. At 4 to 6 months: every 4 to 5 hours. At 6+ months: every 4 to 5 hours.
Reason #1: To Feed a Newborn
In those early days, it's very important that they are gaining back their birth weight and gaining weight appropriately. Seek your pediatrician's guidance on how often your newborn should be fed; when they can begin stretching out their feedings; and you can stop waking your baby to eat.
You can bath your baby at any time of the day. It's a good idea to pick a time when you're relaxed and you won't be interrupted. And it's best to avoid bathing your baby when baby is hungry or straight after a feed. If bathing relaxes your baby, you can use it as a way to settle your baby for sleep in the evening.
At 4 to 6 weeks, you will likely notice a decline in nighttime pooping, though it won't completely cease at this point. Some babies take 2 or 3 months or even longer to stop doing so!
Once babies start eating solid foods, around age 6 months, regardless if they're breastfed or formula-fed, their stools will become more solid and formed. As long as they aren't producing hard balls, this is normal and not constipation.
In the first year of your baby's life, you really only need to bathe them once or twice per week. Start with sponge baths until their umbilical stump falls off and then begin bathing them gently in the sink or tub. As they grow, babies may require more frequent baths as they get messier or start having fun in the tub.
Small babies don't require daily baths — three times a week should suffice during their first year (2). Even at birth, the recommendation for when to do the first bath has changed over the years. It has been found that delaying this bath until 24 hours after birth is more beneficial.
After coming out of a warm bath, a baby's body temperature starts to cool, which can help your infant fall asleep more easily.
Wake your baby every 3–4 hours to eat until he or she shows good weight gain, which usually happens within the first couple of weeks. After that, it's OK to let your baby sleep for longer periods of time at night.
The Moro reflex is the cause of your newborn baby to sleep with his arms above his head. This reflex, commonly referred to as the “startle reflex”, disappears by 6 months of age. It occurs when light or noise startles your baby, even if the noise is not enough to fully wake the baby.
Remember that after the newborn stage, your baby's napping should not surpass 3 hours total for a day, on average. Of course, there will be exceptions, but many times if naps get too long during the day, it will impact night sleep, since the amount of total sleep in a day will remain relatively constant.
Newborns should not go more than about 4–5 hours without feeding. Signs that babies are hungry include: moving their heads from side to side.
By four months, most babies begin to show some preferences for longer sleep at night. By six months, many babies can go for five to six hours or more without the need to feed and will begin to "sleep through the night."