Around six weeks, just when you've started to feel like you might be getting the hang of things, your baby will seemingly forget everything they learned and demand to be fed constantly, sleep terribly, and cry with a conviction that suggests something is very wrong.
Nothing is wrong. This is the six-week growth spurt. It is temporary, it is normal, and it will pass - but it helps enormously to know it's coming.
What's actually happening
Growth spurts are periods of rapid physical and neurological development. Your baby is getting bigger, their brain is making new connections, and their body needs significantly more fuel than it did last week. For breastfed babies, this means feeding more frequently to signal your body to increase supply. For formula-fed babies, it often means wanting more at each feed or feeding more often.
It also coincides with a natural dip in your milk supply that many women experience around six weeks - your body is recalibrating from the initial oversupply of early weeks to a more settled production level. The timing is terrible. Your baby is hungrier, your supply feels lower, and it's very easy to interpret this as "I'm not making enough milk."
In most cases, you are. Your baby is just placing a new order.
What it looks like
It typically lasts 3–7 days. It will feel like forever. It isn't. Here's what to look for:
- Feeding much more frequently than usual - sometimes every hour
- Seeming unsatisfied after feeds they previously finished contentedly
- Fussiness and crying that isn't resolved by feeding, changing, or holding
- Disrupted sleep after a period where things were improving
- Cluster feeding in the evenings, intensified
What actually helps
- Feed on demand, not the clock - during a growth spurt, the schedule goes out the window. This is not a setback. This is your baby doing exactly what they're supposed to do - demanding more, so supply can meet it.
- Eat and drink more yourself - making milk is metabolically demanding. During a growth spurt when you're feeding constantly, your own hydration and calorie intake matters more than usual. This is not the week to worry about anything except keeping yourself fuelled.
- Lower every other bar - the growth spurt week is a survival week. Washing can wait. The house can wait. The thank-you cards from the birth can definitely wait. The one job this week is feeding your baby and keeping yourself upright.
- Tell someone what's happening - the six-week mark is when many support structures fall away (your partner is back at work, the visits have slowed, the assumption is that you're settled now). If you're in the middle of a growth spurt and struggling, say so. You are not more capable than you were at week one. You're just expected to be.
A word about the six-week check
The six-week mark also coincides with your postpartum GP check and often your baby's first immunisations. It's a lot for one week. Be honest with your GP about how you're actually doing - not the version of fine, the real version. This appointment exists for you too, not just the baby.