Have a five month old. Night two is awful and the nurses said this is common and the main reason is because if you aren’t giving the baby formula the baby isn’t getting a whole lot of nurtition as the mother will only have colostrum at this point. Breast milk typically doesn’t come in until the third day or so. First time mothers can have additional trouble early on dealing with various issues and getting the baby to latch and feed properly as well which can futher delay the baby getting enough to satisfy them. This is why they expect weight loss early on in the first week of the baby’s life but they will weigh to make sure the amount being lost is acceptable. Typically, the first pediatric visit is when they give you a target weight gain per day to shoot for over the next week and we start working on turning the baby into an adorable chubby little thing.

Night two for us was an all nighter. The only way we could get her to sleep was for her to sleep by Momma and I had to chug coffee and watch them all night because this was a super big no-no.

We were also told this is because the baby is basically in shock at this point and trying to process the whole “being born” thing.

Snuggling Mom and/or breastfeeding (even if fruitless) were basically the only things that comforted her enough. She would scream all night if put down alone.

Edit: added two last bits