As I lay in my hospital bed, a confusing chart stared me down. I was a first-time mom and the maternity ward nurses had left me with a white board, a dry-erase marker and a wailing newborn. I was told to nurse him every two hours, and to record the time of each feed, as well as the details of every diaper change. Instead of following my baby?s natural hunger signs, I was obsessed with this odd schedule that made me too anxious to sleep. Instead of watching my son for hunger cues, I was watching the clock.
 ?A healthy baby will tell you when he?s hungry,? says paediatrician Rob Everett, the medical lead for paediatrics and mother and baby care at BC Women?s Hospital and Health Centre in Vancouver. Whether your little one is breastfed or bottle-fed, parents should follow a newborn?s lead. ?The goal is to try and pick up on signs that the baby wants to feed before he gets hungry and starts crying, because then it?s actually much more difficult to get him to feed.? Baby hunger signs
Infants actually display hunger in three different states of wakefulness (but they don?t necessarily happen in a sequential or chronological order). There?s the transition state: the simple act of waking. Then there?s the ?quiet alert? state, when they give early hunger signs, followed by the ?active alert? state, when they are basically yelling at you, in the form of crying.
In the ?quiet alert? state, infants become more physically active, stretching and stirring. You may notice your baby open ...