How much do newborn babies sleep?

[vess]

How much do newborns normally sleep? My dd is 10 days old and seems to want to sleep all the time. She does wake up for her feeds, and would also stay awake for about half an hour to an hour at a time a few times a day...everything seems fine with her, it's just that ds seemed to need a lot less when he was a baby and I started wondering what theaverage sleep patern is.
Interested to hear your experiences.

[colditzmum]

mine slept almost constantly. Only woke up a bit at 8 weeks old!

[fruitful]

From the NCT website -

Researchers have discovered that at the age of one week, a baby needs, on average, eight hours sleep during the day, and eight-and-a-half at night. By four weeks, they will need six-and-three-quarter hours during the day and eight-and-three-quarters at night.
However, there are wide variations between one baby's need for sleep and another's. Some newborn babies sleep for as much as 21 hours during the day, while others need only eight hours' sleep. In terms of your baby's well being, it doesn't matter where on this range they come, nor does it matter if their sleep is erratic. In the first few months, a healthy baby will take as much sleep as they need, when they need it.