A nighttime feed is simply your baby waking for needed nutrition during the night. Depending on the age of your little one, it is entirely appropriate for them to be waking for these feeds. So if your baby really is hungry, they usually won't go back to sleep very easily until they've been fed. Most infants can sleep for 6–8 hours without a feed by the age of 6 months. Hunger pangs in their tiny stomachs will usually wake them up, even from a deep slumber.

Once they are 9 months old, most infants can sleep for 11–12 hours without a feed. Whether you should wake a sleeping newborn for feedings depends on the baby's age, weight and overall health. Most newborns lose weight in the first few days after birth. Until your newborn regains this lost weight which is usually within one to two weeks after birth, it's important to feed him or her frequently.

The amount of sleep an infant gets at any one stretch of time is mostly ruled by hunger. Newborns will wake up and want to be fed about every three to four hours at first. Do not let your newborn sleep longer than five hours at a time in the first five to six weeks. Most pediatricians recommend that you wake up your baby if they are due for a daytime or nighttime feed. Babies shouldn't go without feeding for more than 4 hours. So while most of the time your baby will let you know when they are ready to eat, it's okay to wake them up if they snooze past the 4-hour mark.

Your baby will ask to be fed as usual as soon as his stomach feels empty again. Your baby may be constipated and appear less hungry than usual, however once this passes everything will go back to normal. If they nod off after five or ten minutes of crying, that's a pretty reliable sign that they were just looking for some help getting back to sleep and not actually in need of a feed.

How do you tell if baby is hungry?

Check how he's sucking. If he latches on well and takes long, drawn out pulls, then he's likely hungry and actually eating. But if his sucking motion is shorter and shallower, then he's probably sucking for comfort.  If you wait until your baby is screaming and crying to try to feed him, you'll both become endlessly frustrated. Your baby will become hungrier while feeding him becomes more difficult.

Sometimes it might seem like your baby is hungry and asking to eat, but there's actually another reason that your baby is giving you the hunger vibe. It's easy to confuse hunger with the urge to suck. Sucking is a reflex in the first 6 months of a baby's life that helps them relax and self-soothe. Using a pacifier can cause a baby's hunger cues to be missed because any kind of sucking, including non-nutritive sucking, can pacify a baby.

Your brain recognizes hunger as a priority and will stay alert until the need is met, or until you're exhausted enough that the need to sleep overrides the need to eat. As a rule of thumb, a truly hungry baby will rarely choose sleeping over eating.

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