Your newborn, week 5
Week 5 with your newborn: placeholder title
Placeholder: a short summary of week 5 with your baby — feeding, sleep, your recovery and the checks that happen this week.
Placeholder: newborn week overviews can be added as a content collection, in the same way as the pregnancy weeks.
Checks and key dates this week
- Register the birthWithin 42 days in England and Wales
Day by day this week
- Day 29 with your newborn (day 309)Week five can bring a quiet shift. Not a dramatic turning point, but a sense that you are beginning to look beyond the next feed.
- Day 30 with your newborn (day 310)Your body may look and feel different. Softer, tender, leaking, healing, tired, strong, unfamiliar — maybe all at once.
- Day 31 with your newborn (day 311)Some babies begin offering early social smiles around this stage, though timing varies. When it comes, it can feel like sunlight after weeks of giving everything.
- Day 32 with your newborn (day 312)Parenting was never meant to be done in isolation. If this has felt lonely, that says something about modern life — not about your ability to cope.
- Day 33 with your newborn (day 313)Many babies are more unsettled in the evening. It can make the end of the day feel like a hill you climb again and again.
- Day 34 with your newborn (day 314)You may not realise it, but you are becoming fluent in your baby: the cry that means hungry, the face before a poo, the restless body that needs sleep.
- Day 35 with your newborn (day 315)Five weeks in, you may be starting to recognise your own competence. Not every day, not all the time — but enough to know you are not where you started.
This is general information based on NHS guidance, not medical advice. Talk to your midwife, health visitor or GP about anything that worries you. If your baby has a high temperature, isn't feeding or is unusually sleepy, or you're worried about your own bleeding, pain or mood, get advice straight away from NHS 111 or your GP. In an emergency, call 999.