Want to play thread 'chicken', neenstwinz?

Is this the last post?

For anyone who was hoping this conversation would die - I am sorry!

If anyone wants to carry on this conversation I have started a new thread

here

Yeah, Anna, all those chemical are bad - even the chemicals in shampoos etc (parabens) and storing food in plastic containers is A Bad Thing (tho i do it - try to use glass tho as much as poss). The nutritionist Patrick Holford (Optimum Nutrition Bible) is big on the this issue.

Maria, so glad you are seeing better sleep and feeding. Giant, I agree that in the early days putting the baby to the breast lots is a good thing to stimulate supply and get the baby used to sucking, and that after a while the baby should naturally stretch out more between feeds. Not sure what I would do if it didn't - if my babies cried, I put them to the breast. They also naturally had a 2.5 to 3-hour feeding cycle. It was just now and then I would feed them between those times. My SIL (the one mentioned in the OP) only fed her DS every three hours and he cried a lot of the time in between then. She just put it down to tiredness and wind when I would have just fed the poor thing. So i think it is hard to say babies should be made to stretch out between feeds if the result is a very unhappy baby. But I suppose, like CC, eventually a baby fed every three hours will turn into a baby who only needs to be fed every three hours, so it is about short-term pain for long-term gain (it takes more than three days tho from what I saw of SIL - it took more like five months!)

I am very dubious about that SIDS research and dummy use . But then, as someone who always breastfed her baby to sleep and always co-slept, there really was no place for a dummy in our lives.

I went to a very scary seminar recently where dummies (and bottle teats) were demonised because of the petro-chemical content of the rubber. Yet another reason to avoid.

oh and Maria am so pleased things are improving - sorry for the exhaustion as well. If its any comfort I think it depends on the woman re exhaustion and milk supply - I havent been affected by it, all that has happened is that i have become even more exhausted. After my dds birth I was in the ITU and had a very long recovery period - have been given a year. The bfing means that my body will just take much longer to recover and am even more tired than I would have been - my body is effectively prioritising the bf over my recovery - am still producing loads of milk but to my detriment if you see what I mean.

In my cackfisted way am trying to tell you not to worry about your milk supply - it sounds really good.

oh and your last comment about rushing to do sleep training raised a question with me - would most people who do sleep training will already be feeding their baby in more of a routine during the day dont you think because of the way in which the two things go together - as 'demand' feeding and cosleeping (often) go together.

I think I will probably get flamed for this but hey ho - this really makes me think that we dont understand demand feeding properly - or cue-led feeding as I prefer.

I often see babies being put to the breast every time they cry - and I know starlight was an advocate of this but sometimes I really think that they are tired or bored or whatever and then they become snackers and this can interfere with the way that their sleep and eating patterns would have developed. Do people get told to put baby to the breast all the time because it is the simplest advice that would cover most people whereas the more flexible approach of feeding every few hours with a decent gap but feeding more frequently when there is a growth spurt is much more complicated and actually harder to do?

Obviously this doesnt apply to tiny babies because they need to be put to the breast often to stimulate supply.

What I think is crystallizing in my own mind is that baby being put to the breast and cosleeping is the best thing for younger babies but the best thing changes (for most) as they get older and they can be helped by stretching to two then three hours a feed.

Am sure it helps to feed after a sleep rather than before as well.

Anna - I think you're right about dummy use - it should only be a last resort - though the guidelines have changed on this havent they in terms of SIDS?

Maria - with the benefit of hindsight, do you now think that using a dummy interfered with your and your son's understanding of the natural sleep-feed mechanism?

Hi again everyone,

Unbelievable but nice that this thread has gone on so much... 992 posts, wow!

Just to say, that I also have lots of doubts about many of the things that Kellymom says. Also, I have even more doubts about this idea of 'storage capacity' (being different for different women). I seriously doubt that's true, and I've never read it before, in the many books about parenting/breastfeeding I've seen (I'm a bit of a bookworm). I'd love to see more links about this storage capacity think, if you have them, because to be honest I seriously doubt the validity of the theory. I also agree with those who wondered why we should take everything written on kellymom so seriously.

Things with us are going better. Our boy went for 5 and even 6 and a half hour stretches in the night last week . He was also noticeably less cranky. I did loads of expressing in the day, & made a huge effort to get him to feed more in the day, & it has kind of paid off. We still have a long way to go as he still prefers snacking rather than eating full meals, but I'm hopeful that we'll see a big improvement soon. I also have loads of doubts, the more I think of it, about the theory I believed in so far, that they need to eat little & often. I'm seeing an improvement in my milk supply just by encouraging bigger meals in the day, and also expressing a couple of times a day. Not sure how I could see an improvement in my milk supply just by feeding loads in the night (as I had been doing) because you have to take into account the tiredness also... I'm so exhausted- even now, with the expressing & constant effort to feed it's no picnic- and I'm SURE exhaustion cannot help milk supply.

Anyway. The useful thing that I've learnt from all this is that
1) my boy was clearly able to sleep longer stretches, he just hadn't learnt how to, & was obviously needing to feed in the night, which is why he woke up constantly
2) he clearly has much less of an issue with his dummy than we thought. Which goes to show: we were about to consider sleep training for the dummy, and now we've realized he had sleeping/feeding issues and not dummy issues...

I suppose this is a good lesson for those who would rush to do sleep training without considering more basic issues first... Issues that may actually be CAUSED from feeding on demand (which is what I did until now).

No, blueshoes, I am not directing that at you, because you later explained that you are not breastfeeding your two year old at night, and that your earlier comment about not being able to listen to your baby cry of hunger was not re your 2 yr old.

As I thought was clear to all, a misunderstanding because your answered the question: "are you still night-feeding a 5 yr old and a 2 yr old?" with "just the 2 year old".