1 Week Old Baby: Your Baby's Development and Your Recovery This Week

Congratulations, your baby is finally here. The first week is mostly about sleeping and feeding. Newborns sleep 16 to 18 hours a day and want to feed every 2 to 3 hours, so don't expect a routine yet. Average weight is 2.5 to 3.5 kg and length around 50 cm. Rest when the baby rests. Really, every nap counts.

A few things to keep an eye on this week, and for the next couple of weeks:

• Put your baby on the back to sleep, on a firm flat mattress. No pillows, no bumpers, no soft bedding, no toys in the crib. This is the single most important thing you can do to lower the risk of sudden infant death (SIDS).

• This is jaundice, and it usually shows up around day 3 to day 7. Mild yellow is common and clears up on its own, but if the yellow is spreading, your baby is very sleepy, or feeding badly, call your doctor the same day.

• Keep it clean and dry. It will fall off on its own in 1 to 3 weeks. Call the doctor if the skin around it turns red, smells bad, or has any pus.

• By day 5, you should be changing at least 6 wet diapers a day. If it's fewer, or the soft spot on top of the head looks sunken, or your baby is very limp and hard to wake up, go to the doctor.

• Ask your doctor about starting vitamin D drops (usually 400 IU a day). Breastmilk doesn't carry enough of it on its own.

• A steady squint past 4 months, eyes that do not track moving things, a white reflection in flash photos, or pupils that do not react to light, get an eye check.

In this first week, feeding, sleeping, and being held are your baby's full-time jobs, and being the safe place is yours. The gentlest 1 month old baby milestones begin here, in these soft, jumbled days that belong entirely to the two of you.

The first week postpartum is intense, your body is healing from one of the biggest things it has ever done. Be kind to yourself. The "bouncing back" stories you have heard are mostly fiction.

Your body in week 1: lochia (vaginal bleeding heavier than a period and lasting up to 6 weeks), after-pains as the uterus shrinks back, perineal soreness or a healing C-section scar, night sweats, breast engorgement on day 3–5 when milk comes in, and a wave of emotion as hormones shift. All of this is normal.

What helps right now

• Sleep whenever your baby sleeps, not laundry, not phone, sleep.
• Eat warm, soft, iron-rich foods. Khichdi with ghee, dal-rice, ajwain water, methi water, panjeeri or gond ke laddu. The Indian postpartum tradition of warm food is real medicine for the recovering body.
• Drink fluids constantly, milk, jeera water, soup. Breastfeeding mums need an extra glass with every feed.
• Accept help. If your mother, mother-in-law or sister is staying for jaapa, let them. The 40-day rest period exists for good reason.

Call your doctor right away if

• You are soaking through a maternity pad in under an hour, or passing clots bigger than a lemon.
• Fever above 38 °C (100.4 °F).
• A leg that is swollen, red, painful or warm to touch, possible blood clot.
• Severe headache, blurred vision, or sudden swelling, possible late pre-eclampsia.
• C-section scar that is red, leaking, or opening.

A note on feelings

• Some weepiness in the first 2 weeks is "baby blues" and passes. If sadness, anxiety or scary thoughts keep getting heavier, that is postpartum depression, treatable, common, not a personal failing. Tell your gynae or a trusted family member.

Your body has just finished something monumental, and the only fitting response is gentleness. Let the warm food come, let the helpers help, and let sleep win every argument; this is postpartum recovery done with wisdom instead of hurry.