Anyone tried scheduled as opposed to demand breastfeeding?

[jasper]

It seems most current experts on breastfeeding support demand feeding.
I consider myself to have been something of a failure on the breastfeeding front with my first two. The details are unimportant, but briefly, they would both suck for hours on end, I never once had the sensation of fullness in the breasts, never felt my milk " come in", never leaked...And this was with the most wonderful support from midwives and breastfeeding counsellors...Anyway I lasted about six weeks with number one, less with number two.This has made me wonder if perhaps demand feeding might work out where demand feeding had failed for certain mothers, eg. me.
I recently read Gina Ford's book with interest. She suggests scheduled feeding ( I think three hourly at first). I really do not want to open up the whole breastfeeding debate as I am sure demand feeding is best in some way, but having failed twice I really would like to hear from anyone who has succeded with scheduled breastfeeds where demand feeding failed.
Please don't suggest ways of making demand feeding work!

[jasper]

sorry, that middle line should read "This has made me wonder if perhaps scheduled feeding might work out where demand feeding had failed"...etc.

[bloss]

Message withdrawn

[Pupuce]

Jasper, can I suggest the following things :

1. As you have the book... read GF's chaper on bf again (because I find reading her once isn't enough myself !) - see why she suggest expressing and so on. I would like to point out as Bloss has said that she suggest to leave babies to cry from hunger and in my experience with 2 on GF, my babies cried very little and not from hunger as I was feeding them slightly before they became hungry enough to cry.... DD actually doesn't cry which I find a bliss and particularely amazing... she keeps smiling ! Was your daughter that easy as well ?
   
2. I am not a vitamin taker myself but with this baby I have decided to take lactating women vitamin supplement (from Solgar in my case) + ensure that you drink and eat enough and properly (as they always say) + sleep enough. I have 1 cousin and a SIL who had both very little milk and bot were anaemic (lack of iron).... maybe you want to ensure that isn't your case. One continued until her baby was 6 months but I know she found it hard especially the first 6 weeks.
   
3. If you decide to express the small quantities that GF recommends I would suggest you get yourself a decent pump. There is a thread on this on the site but I can suggest renting one (if you're interested I can give you a number to ring) or buy a medela hand held electric (quite noisy but I have been using it everyday with both kids), these are available at Boots or via www.jojomamanbebe.co.uk - If you have not had an easy time, why make it harder with a manual pump?

[Enid]

Just to say Jasper that if you do decide to follow GF, its worth buying her new book Contented Baby, Confident Child as well, as she covers a lot of new ground for bfeeding and sleeping in the first year. My local library has it so I'm sure yours could get it for you if you didn't want to pay out for it, I think its about 8 pounds.

[Crunchie]

I didn't use GF routines, but I found that I gently pushed my daughter to semi-scheduled feeding within days! I din't shove a boob in her mouth the minute she whinged and tryed to distract her, or made sure it wasn't other reasons. If she yelled after 3 hrs I fed her. This way she fell very quickly into a routine I think it was less than a month and she fed at approx 6am (then we both slept until 9 or 10 am (DH got up with the toddler to leave us in peace), once when we got up (9 or 10am), once around lunchtime 12 - 1pm, once midafternoon after a nap 3 - 4pm. Once while I did supper for the toddler about 6pm and then again before bed around 8 - 9pm. She woke about midnight ish, and about 3am ish and then back to the 6am. WIthin weeks it was 4 hrly and she had dropped the midnight feed. I started waking her before I went to bed, and she lasted until 4 or 5 am.

Go for it, any feeding schedule has to be comfortablewith you all.

[sml]

Jasper, a midwife once advised me not to do scheduled breastfeeding. She said this is because breastmilk is so much more easily digested than formula, so the baby gets hungrier again more quickly, and seems less happy on the routine than bottle fed babies, so the mother starts feeling she can't keep her baby happy, and is more likely to give up breastfeeding for formula.

Having said this, I imagine that most routines are based round formula feeds, ie they assume that at a certain weight your baby should be on a four hourly routine etc. Maybe if you are breastfeeding you should adapt the routine to your own circumstances, and maybe have a shorter period between feeds. I'd certainly be suspicious of a routine that didn't distinguish between breast milk and formula for young babies.

If you fed your first two babies for up to six weeks, it doesn't sound as though you were a failure on the breastfeeding front at all! Especially if it was tough going. And you never know, a third baby might have completely different habits.

[Pupuce]

SML - what you write may make sense but I have successfully breastfed 2 children (once still being breastfed) for many months and they were both on routines. The trick is not to make the intervals too long. In GF's case for a baby of less than 1 month, she actually makes you breasfeed 9 times a day ! So they don't usually starve !!! She has the same schedule for both bf and bottle fed and if she writes it like that I suspect it's because she has helped mothers achieve it whether using bottle or breast.
She does however recommend her routine only if the baby gains 6 to 8 oz a week - so "problem" babies should not be on her routines.

[Pupuce]

... forgot to add. GF's stuff is mainly around breastfeeding - and she writes a lot in her book on how to achieve successful and fulfilling breastfeeding.

[honeybunny]

Jasper, I too failed to ever feel "engorged" with milk and never experienced the emotional hormonal rollercoaster of milk "coming in" with my first. Throughout bf I was never particularly confident that I ever had enough milk to satisfy my son. Unlike you it wasn't the hours of feeding that I found frustrating, it was the fact that ds wouldn't feed for longer than 5-10minutes. I decided to follow GF's routine, after seeing the success my SIL had with following the routines for her dd. I would second Pupuce (and Enid-get GF book No2 aswell, it has great tips on how to increase your milk productivity) re the expressing. Hand pumping was giving me RSI practically so I invested in an electric pump from the NCT catalogue, it was fab. Felt like a cow at milking time and gave my dh and mum a giggle but it got buckets of milk off. I ended up giving him this from a bottle as he was so intent on looking around during feeds, incase he missed something, and the bottle allowed him to look and me to see just how much he was having. Not the perfect solution perhaps but as far as the scheduling went, it allowed me to fill up sufficiently between feeds, and ds had his bottle top up of expressed milk at 6pm when my supply was at its lowest. I managed to keep going until 20weeks but then dried up despite the expressing. The GP/HV put it down to my rapid post pregnancy weight loss (nearly 2stone in 10 days and another 1stone over the next few weeks, leaving me 1stone lighter than at conception and pigging out on huge meals just to try and maintain things) I also tried fennel tea, thought to encourage milk production (ds is now addicted to the taste of aniseed, and would suck a tube of bonjela dry given half a chance!) and did think about taking milk thistle, but got put off by a mag article that discouraged bf mums from taking it. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on whether it is good to take as I'm expecting No2 soon and would take it if it helps with milk production. Any other milk productivity tips would also be gratefully received as I would love to bf for longer this time around. The anaemia that Pupuce suggested for reducing milk volumes may well have been true in my case as I bled heavily after my c-section, although my next door neighbour needed transfusing because she lost so much blood post delivery and she never seemed to have milk probs. Having said that, her dd still doesnt sleep through the night at 6+months, and wakes for 2feeds following a demand feed type approach, where my ds slept through 10pm-7am by 14weeks, with the scheduled feeding.
I guess there are pros and cons which ever path you follow. But I know I found it frustrating that whoever I asked for help over increasing milk volume suggested demand feeding 24hours a day,"the more he sucks, the more you'll produce" and I couldn't persuade ds to do that, ever! Besides, when the supply was dry, ds would scream his head off from frustration, he certainly never had the patience to suck away until more came through.

[Enid]

I also followed GFs bfeeding schedule but omitted the expressing part. Wouldn't say I am an expert by any means but I don't think it matters how often you breastfeed but how long each feed lasts. If they concentrate and really drain the breast (takes about 25 mins??) they get the hindmilk which is the rich stuff. I felt my 'letdown' reflex after about 15/20 mins of my daughter feeding. I believe that this is the key, and the more hindmilk they get the more milk you produce. Perhaps Eulalia would know more??? I would have thought that the hungrier they are the more likely they are to feed for longer, and if you demand feed the baby might tend to 'graze' and never get down to the hindmilk.

Also my letdown reflex would never come if I wasn't relaxed, so I always liked to feed somewhere quiet and cosy.

And I can't underestimate that you have to eat lots more while you are feeding. I think scheduled feeding makes that easier as you can sort of plan when to eat. Its very very important to eat 3 big meals a day plus snacks in between. So stuff yourself for the first 6 weeks! Good luck.

[sml]

Pupuce - I'm sure you're right about giving more frequent feeds. This midwife was just warning me about a potential trap. I read a couple of suggested timetables, and they both seemed to think after the first few weeks, baby should be on four hourly feeds, and I certainly felt that wasn't right for my babies. They would have got much too hungry! Am happy to hear that GF is more realistic. But I am surprised if there isn't a distinction between breast/bottle, considering the different impact of both. On the rare occasions when one of my babies had a bottle, it knocked them out!

[tiktok]

Yes, it's possible to bf on a schedule, as these posts show. But in the early days the research shows that following the baby's cues is more likely to stimulate the milk production adequately, and keep the baby happy. This is pure physiology.

Feeding for hours and hours is not normal . A lot of babies have the occasional feedathon, but I mean every day, feeding, feeding, feeding with the baby never coming off full and drunk. This is ineffective feeding not demand feeding! It's often amended by attention to positioning and attachment, to allow the baby to remove the milk better.

GF is wrong to imply that all babies will get to hindmilk after X minutes. This is very variable. Best to watch the baby, not the clock, anyway. In any case, there is no massive cut off point at which the milk changes in the feed....it's more gradual. There may be several let downs per feed, and many women do not feel them ever! Many women are not full between feeds, especially if the feeds are frequent. This has no bearing on overall production at all.

The effect of diet and rest and weight loss is not as great as you'd think, though of course individual women may react in individual ways.

If it's important for how someone wants to do things, then a sort of flexible scheduled feeding can work ok with a baby who is gaining weight and is happy enough...but it really is not a good idea to start off this way. Just ask any breastfeeding counsellor who takes calls from mothers distressed and confused (and short of milk, sometimes) who have been desperately trying to follow the book.

[Pupuce]

Tiktok... I agree with your point on GF being wrong to say how long it takes to BF because DS took always MUCH longer and both breasts.... but she is right to suggest 20 minutes each side because before I read her book I use to breastfeed 45 minutes each side and was in agony ! So one day I just did 20 minutes (clock in hand)... both sides.... my son was perfectly happy with that. The difference in milk quantities that he was getting between 20 and 45 minutes was probably VERY small if any at all. In that sense I found her useful but DD won't eat more than 7 minutes one side and that's it... so if I had read GF just with her I would have found it either bizarre or not right.

Anyway most breastfeeding experts I have come across suggest that we shouldn't feed for more than 20 minutes per side (I have even heard 10) as babies get 80% of the milk within the first 5 minutes and 95% after 10.

I agree that the first 2 weeks should be on demand and that is what GF recommends. Her routine start at 2 weeks old and with 9 feeds a day....

[Enid]

tiktok, I don't think GF ever does suggest how long it takes for babies to get to the hindmilk, that was just my experience.

[honeybunny]

Tiktok, you've just repeated my very grumble. All the advise I ever had from my HV was to demand feed. "The more they feed, the more they will stimulate milk production" was repeated more times than I care to mention, and had me in tears of frustration, wanting to punch her lights out, because to me it just sounded like she was spouting the current NHS guidelines and not listening to a word I'd said on the matter. Believe me, I tried demand feeding for 2-4 weeks, and it couldn't have been worse advise for me. Infact I would have given up long before 20weeks. It was purely by scheduling feeds that my body was able to produce enough of a collection of milk to allow ds to feed on, that helped me in the end. Throughout the "demand feeding period" ds would cry constantly from 4/5pm til at times midnight, but usually 9pm as he tried in vain to get anything from my breasts. I had nothing and he was hungry. It was only after I started scheduling his feeds, that he became happier and I actually had something left in the early evening to give him.
I'm sure plenty of women have benefitted from "demand feeding" advise, but certainly not everyone. Gripe over!

[tiktok]

Sorry, GF is very dogmatic from the word go! I have just checked in the CLBB, and there she is, sayng five minutes a side every three hours, increasing by a few minutes every day until the milk comes in...so it's 15-20 mins (in total? she doesn't say) by day 3-5. She talks about emptying the breast 'totally' which is impossible, and says it may take a sleepy baby 20-25 mins to reach the hindmilk.. She wants babies to be given at least 25 mins on breast one and 5-15 mins on breast two by the end of the week, and if the baby is doing this 'I can be sure' they are getting the right balance of fore and hindmilk. How amazing....even people with x-ray eyes couldn't know that ; ) The routine then changes at 2 weeks.

Pupuce, any bf experts who say the baby gets X per cent of the milk after Y mins, and another amount after another time, and the baby 'shouldn't' feed for longer than a certain amount are just plain wrong. There is a mountain of research to show this varies from baby to baby, sometimes quite dramatically. Anyway, just as we sometimes eat/drink/cuddle for comfort and not because we 'need' to, babies like bf, and if it fits and there is time, and mothers are happy, why not??? We can discount GF's dire warning about never letting a baby suck on an empty breast because this causes painful nipples - breasts don't empty, and even if they did, sucking on them wouldn't cause pain unless the baby was poorly positioned.

Don't get me wrong. If people want to follow GF and it suits them, I'm pleased for them that they have found something they like - but I just don't like dogma about what mothers ought to do, ought never to do, and I dislike non-research based stuff about timings.

[ScummyMummy]

Applause, Tiktok. I think you put that very well.
Please don't think I'm Gina bashing, btw- I'm finally bored of that activity!

[florenceuk]

I have a question re breastfeeding - does your milk supply depend on the time of day or just when they were last emptied? If your baby feeds best at a particular time, do your breasts "know" this, or do they just fill up depending on the interval from the last feed and how much your baby ate? I'd love a reference to a more scientific description of how breastfeeding works. I do wonder about the advice I get from my HV to eat lots esp chocolate, since low maternal nutrition doesn't compromise breastfeeding in developing countries.

Incidentally, I have read that the fat content of human milk (relatively low) suggests we are biologically designed to provide frequent feeds ie several times an hour. But clearly breasts and babies can adapt to a different schedule.

[Enid]

Sorry, its been a long time since I last read GF and my book has been handed on, I didn't realise she actually gave timings! My advice was based purely on my dd's feeding habits and my experience of 'letdown'. I completely agree that it shouldn't be a blanket 'time' issue and that you should be led by the individual baby.

[florenceuk]

Rozzy

I have read though that by 3mths breastfeeding is demand-led (ie how much your baby feeds determines how much you produce) rather than hormone-led (can't remember the scientific term) - so the night feeding thing is not so important by then?

[SueDonim]

TikTok's description of GF's advice on timings is exactly the same advice given to me by the mw when I had my first child, many years ago. By ten days my milk had almost dried up, my baby was losing weight and I had to introduce formula. I had to give up totally when he was 3 weeks. By demand (although I prefer the term 'babyled' ) feeding, I fed my following children for considerably more than a year each.

Scummymummy, I'm bored of GF too and in fact I almost admire her for making a fortune out of describing something many babies do naturally anyway!!

[Pupuce]

Jasper - did you ever think you'd get such a storm going ????

Dr Miriam Stoppard who has published tonnes of books is one that tells you the 80% and 95% story but I have read it somehwere else too.

Tiktok - as others I don't want to get into another Gina battle... Gina gives advice based on her experience and she has as much right to make these suggestions as any other experienced health professional. Maybe we shouldn't be so gollable (spelling?) but we also complain about the advice received from our GP or HV... I remember one mumsnetter who'se boss had Gina as a maternity nurse and swore by her work.

Several of us have used her methods - we could have followed our insitinct (but usually that's how we started and we weren't having much luck) or other books/methods. I think it is important for those who choose to use GF's book to be able to ask questions about it (you can actually quite easily speak to GF - both Bloss and I have) or share experiences. But no one (not even her I guess) would say that she was always right !