Breastfeeding - when do the gaps between feeds get longer - at end of tether!!

[peggotty]

My ds is 4.5 weeks old - I know, I know he is still tiny etc but I need to have some kind of light at the end of the tunnel with regards to when his feeding pattern will settle down a bit?! At moment, it is all over the place, anything from every hour to 3.5 hours at the very most (rarely). I am bloody exhausted. I have seen messages on here from people saying 6 weeks, some saying 3 months and some never seem to go longer than 2 hours between feeds. tbh I don't think I can go on indefinately with only a couple of hours sleep at night. PLease someone tell me he will eventually sleep longer at night. I am so desperate that Gina Ford is beckoning (ok, maybe not .... yet )

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

Hi Peggotty

From my experience, ds fed every two hours during the day until he was about 4 months old (but the feeds got shorter as he got more experienced). However he started to sleep through the night at 14 weeks. Leading up to sleeping through, he first dropped his 1am feed, then the 4am feed.

I always fed him on demand and he had a 10.30pm dreamfeed, which may have helped him sleep through, ie he was tanking up during the day to help him last the night.

TBH the books and people can say what they like, but it all depends on what your ds is able to do. This might not be the answer you would like to hear, but things will get bet, I just can't tell you when.

FWIW once I got past the 6 week mark, it was a revelation. Feeding became easier for both of us, and feeds became quicker. I was no longer bf'ing cos it was the best thing for both us - I was enjoying it.

Hang on in there, you can do it - I know you can xx

[peggotty]

Hi Iliketomoveit - thanks for replying to me moaning again - you're so kind! I think I'm doing everything you're 'supposed to' with bf-ing in order to be successful - feeding on demand, co-sleeping when necessary, trying to feed him lying down (that gets a bit messy tbh) - none of these thing come naturally to me iykwim, my dd was ff and pretty quickly settled into a sort of routine and was sleeping up to 5 or 6 hours at night at about 9 weeks. I know i shouldn't and can't compare but even a regular 4 hours at night would be a godsend. I realise i should have just titled this thread 'how long is a piece of string' because that's the answer to how long before his feeding settles down, isn't it?

[Scoobi6]

Hi peggotty, my dd fed every two hours during the day as well, similar to Iliketomoveit's ds and got the feeds down to 5 mins or so by a few months old. She would cluster feed like mad in the evenings, on the breast more than she was off it - but she started to sleep through very early. 6 hours at 6 weeks old, 11 hours at 12 weeks old. The cluster feeding did the job and I never bothered with a dream feed or anything. Just fed on demand.

They are all different, but it WILL get better - no idea how long it will take tho!

[StealthPolarBear]

My DS fed every hour or hour and a half until he was about six months apart from at night. His nights very quickly settled down and he went 4/5/6 hours at a time. I think from quite a young age (6 or 8 weeks maybe) he tended to wake twice in the night, then from maybe 16ish weeks, on a good night he would only wake once. So hopefully soon youy LO will sleep better at night than during the day.

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

If you want to retain some sanity, don't even compare ff'ing your daughter with bf'ing your son. Even taking away the method of feeding, they are two different people and behave differently.

My sister told me this analogy and it got me through many a hard time:

'sometimes you just need a drink, sometimes you want a snack or a snack and drink. Othertimes you have eaten a three course meal, but you still manage to stuff that last After Eight in. If adults wrote down how often they eat and drink something, very rarely would they go two hours without eating or drinking. Your breastmilk is everything to your baby, a drink, a snack and a meal.'

[peggotty]

Absolutely Iliketomoveit I really can't compare the two, that way madness lies, but I'm still doing it!!

I know that ds' feeding takes lots of different forms, the analogy is a good way of putting it. He cluster feeds in the morning and then he maybe get about 3 hours of sleep in the afternoon (as long as we're out and about i.e he's ina moving pram or the sling) and then he cluster feeds in the evening and he gets 3 hours tops again from 10 til 1am, although that seems to have reduced to 2 hours now. I thought cluster feeding was supposed to precede longer periods of sleep!?

[LardyMardyDaisyBoo]

pegotty, it sounds like you're doing a fab job

like you i FF my first and BF my second, so had no comparison after about 5 weeks when I stopped BFing DS. They were such different babies though that even the ealry weeks of BFing DS bore no comparison to the early weeks of DD

From my recent experience, my now 8mo old DD settled down after her six week growth spurt, and started to sleep for about four or five hours at night. From my own personal experience, I was putting her down at sevenish and then waking her for a feed at 11. She would then be awake again at 1am. One night I fell asleep and she didbn't haver the 11pm feed......she slept through till 3am and continued to do so from then on. That was about 9 weeks.

But, saying that, they are all different.

Hang on in there though; although it seems like foreveer at the moment, it does pass and things settle down and get so much easier!

[gingeme]

Hi ladies. Iliketomoveitmoveit I hope your right about the 6 week mark. My ds is 6 weeks next Thursday and I have been told its when it settles a bit.
I just like you LaidMarsDaisyDo ,love the name by the way, stopped bf my other ds's at about 5 weeksish so dont have any to compare to but realy keeping it up this time and Im kinda enjoying it a bit now. Hes not cluster feeding so much now though it can take anything from 1-2 hours to get him to sleep at night on the breast. Good job theres nothing worth watching on tele realy eh?
Keep at it pegotty and good luck

[MrsMcJnr]

Same boat as you with my 3 week old, reading with interest and empathising! I was given a bit of advice on Thurs and have followed it since then and touch wood it seems to make him sleep a bit longer at night between feeds - between 6pm and 9pm, I don't feed him myself, I express a little after each day time feed and give him that instead then I have loads at 9pm for a bumper feed!

[BellaBear]

peggotty, I could have written your post, including the age of my ds - he was born 18th Jan. Am reading this with interest and hope!

[kaballie]

There are 7 of us in our baby group, all around the 9, 10 month mark. Some still feed every 2 hours during the night but most are now going through the night with no feeds and have ing 3 feeds during the day. This is what my DD is doing and it is blissful! You will get there in the end and sometimes it feels like such a slog, but when you get to the point where you can actually have a life as well as breatsfeed it is so rewarding to think that you have got your babby that far! Until 5 months I fed every 3 hours but DD was a little one. Until she discovered yoghurt!

They're all different, stick with it, it's well worth it.
x

[Gemzooks]

my two pennorth is I would try to introduce a routine. Personally, it saved my sanity! as long as he is getting enough at feeds and isn't desperate, I would pace them every 2-3 hours..

[LittleMissBliss]

Ds is 14 weeks and at around 6 weeks the feeding during the day slowed down. He probably goes around 3 hours now during the day and cluster feeds in the evening. But still doesn't sleep through, around two-three feeds at night.

[peggotty]

ok so maybe a bit better at 6 weeks then..? bellabear my ds was born on 18th jan too!

So far he's gone from his birth weight of 7lb 7oz to 9lb 10oz as of tuesday so i guess he's getting plenty, he put on 2 pounds in 2 weeks! I will hold out for 6 weeks and then maybe more improvement at 3 months! [hopeful emoticon] !!!

[BellaBear]

snap! Ds was 6.12 and last tuesday was 8.3 so I know he is getting plenty. He is shooting up the percentiles. But there is no pattern to any of his behaviour. Sometimes he feeds a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes he sleeps a little sometimes a lot. Sometimes he poos a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes ... (insert cries, wees, is awake etc). Do babies just 'get' night and day eventually?

[lazyhen]

Wow - our babies must have been comparing notes peggotty. My DD (also 4.5 weeks) does EXACTLY the same as yours. I started feeding her today at 4pm and have just put her to bed (9pm) after a few failed attempts. Not even sure she has finished yet. My DH isn't here as he's working and even as I sit here with the monitor in front of me I'm dreading her waking up again. I have no advice whatsoesver as this is my first and I'm feeling really fed up and knackered too. I have in the back of my mind that as she was born 6lb6oz she's still trying (and succeeding) to gain weight, but I am sooooo tempted at times like this to get some formula......

FYI yesterday my DH fed her a weeks worth of EBM in one sitting and that was really satisfying (I can only express about 1/2 oz at a time) but just shows how much she can take (and presumably wants)

I don't know where I'm going with this but I'm feeling your pain!

[lazyhen]

Gemzooks - how do you establish a routine with a BF baby (don't mean to sound thick) but my DD will SCREAM until she gets what she wants so that could be ALOT of screaming.

[Gemzooks]

I did more or less the dreaded gf routine (ignoring all the stupid stuff), and DS just seemed to settle into it OK, he's always been a 'stuffer' and got a big feed every time, didn't scream at all between feeds, except the early evening screaming time which I think was just being unsettled.. but I was lucky, if he had screamed the routine would have probably broken up quite quickly... there are ways to help a routine like making sure they get enough at each feed (sometimes opening the window to wake them up enough to finish the feed!), keeping lights dim at night time etc, even from the early days.. but so much depends on the child and how anal the mother is (very, in my case, I FORCED myself to get up and wake him up at 7 am, don't know if I could do that with a 2nd one).. let us know how you get on!

[lazyhen]

Well I'm going to go to the BF clinic in a minute before I go insane. Maybe getting up at 7 would be a good idea instead of trying to sneak in an extra 2hrs kip... Ah it's so depressing!

[callmeovercautious]

I can't even tell you a pattern that DD had until she was at least 4m. She was and still is a poor sleeper but things did get easier between 6 and 12 weeks. Less windy and the odd night of 4+ hours in one go. then she hit 4 months and started teething.........

Then again my friends lo slept well from about 6weeks and never looked back, a few wakings when teething but not bad. They were getting 12 hours from about 3 months

Both were exclusively BF and on demand. Were born a week apart and we did almost everything together so they had similar stimulation etc. Each Baby is so different to any other so please don't draw comparisions, take hope from the positive stories but don't wind yourself up - I did and it drove me to distraction.

[MrsMcJnr]

There is comfort in sharing the pain though isn't there? it is all so daunting with your first baby and being so tired doesn't help you get perspective does it? babies are an enigma to me, why does my son sleep satisfied through all the day time noise after a feed and then react as if I have given him red bull at night?!