hi sawyersmomma,
welcome to bw and congrats on your newborn!
i am popping your post over to the general sleep forum to get you more advice over there. in terms of waking up - the thing is with a young baby, they tend to only do one or two quite long stretches over the course of 24 hours. so if you don't wake him after roughly 3 hours' cycle during the day, you might end up doing shorter cycles at night and longer ones during the day. not ideal for most of us. this being said you do not need to be terribly vigilant about it - if there is a particular nap where you feel like he really needs to catch up on sleep, etc - i would let him sleep.
as for gas, i have a newborn too and we are going through the same thing. it is so tiring!! after every night feed i wind and bicycle his legs and rub his tummy in clockwise circles. i also try to burp him until his body is totally limp (just by rubbing though, not patting his back which is too stimulating). this being said, we too have an hour or so without fail where he is really struggling in the middle of the night. it will pass though!! i had it with my first son too, even worse - by sometime between 12 and 16 weeks it should be gone and his digestion should hopefully straighten itself out. x
