My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Infant feeding

4 hourly feeds?? How did they do that?

15 replies

PastaandCheese · 30/03/2014 08:31

3 week old DS feeds every two hours. Completely normal. DD was a bit less ferocious in her day with every 3 hours or so.

My mother visited yesterday and claimed my DSis and I were fed 4 hourly from birth, 15 minutes per side.

How on earth did she get us to do that? I have to desire to replicate it. I'm just curious. DS would just scream until I fed him if I left him longer?

I asked my Mum how she got us to do this and she got defensive saying it was the advice she was given (accept that, wasn't judging) and then went off on some tangent about her milk was obviously better than mine (standard with my mother I'm afraid).

Just really curious as to how a 4 hourly routine was achieved. It seems so far from what my DCs have naturally wanted to do.

OP posts:
Report
RandomMess · 30/03/2014 08:33

Depends on the baby but yes it probably involved your poor mum juggling around a screaming baby an awful lot Sad

I had large babies and they would sleep for long stretches if I let them so I used to wake mine during the day every 3-4 hours to feed them because I didn't want to be doing 2 hourly feeds all night!

Report
KatAndKit · 30/03/2014 08:33

That is probably why most women of that generation did not last long with breastfeeding. SShocking advice but it was what people used to get told. I expect many ignored the advice when the screaming started!

Report
3DcAndMe · 30/03/2014 08:34

It's a good while ago, she probably can't remember properly and is guessing it was four hourly!

Report
PastaandCheese · 30/03/2014 08:39

I was born in the 1970's and she did manage to feed me for 6 months.

She must have been very compliant. I'd have just ignored the advice even if I thought it was correct so I could enjoy some peace!

OP posts:
Report
PastaandCheese · 30/03/2014 08:45

Thinking about it MIL fed her children in 70's too and is more sensible than my mother. Going to stay with her this weekend so I shall ask her.

I bet she ignored the advice. She is as soft as butter with my DCs.

OP posts:
Report
LisaMWill · 30/03/2014 08:51

My week old dd3 is feeding every 4 hours with dd1 & dd2 they fed every 1 1/2 to 2 hours, no idea how dd3 is going so long!! It's nice at night time but my boobs r not thankful for it!! I should express really but I'm too lazy to sterilise and pump!

Report
PastaandCheese · 30/03/2014 08:53

Oh yes Lisa totally different if that is what the baby wants. It's just my mother suggested I train DS into this?

OP posts:
Report
lapetitesiren · 30/03/2014 08:56

It was standard advice in the sixties15 minutes a side top up with formula and then put your baby in the pram at the bottom of the garden until time for the next feed!

Report
Parliamo · 30/03/2014 08:58

My babies have all settled to four hour feeds quite quickly and definitely by 3 months. They were big to start with and I have a very fast let down and lots of willing arms to distract a getting hungry baby.

The advice is very different and may well have contributed to women 'failing' with bf, but I don't think current advice is faultless either. It gives the impression that the only solution to babies crying is boob, so if you have a grumpy baby you end up trying to feed all day long and feel like a failure anyway. Milk every two hours is not always the solution, and certainly doesn't make it easy.

The whole the newborn baby will feed for ages is not always true either. My babies certainly didn't, and now my sister has watched me feed a newborn thinks she was put off feeding her 34weeker because he didn't feed for hours so they kept telling her he wasn't feeding properly. It's impossible to know, but if she'd just gone with it she might have been successful in establishing bf as she so desperately wanted to do. (she did 2nd time around)

Report
mrswishywashy · 30/03/2014 09:00

My mother got told off in my health book for picking me up before 4 hours, it mentions spoiling me. I was a truby king baby of the 70s and involved very strict routine and I expect lots of ignoring crying.

Report
mousmous · 30/03/2014 09:04

my grandmother fed her babies around the clock for the first 6 weeks (on bed rest for ten days after birth and then resting at home)
when she returned to work after that in the fields it was a strickt 4 hourly feed with an 8 hour break at night. she was out between feeds, so not there to hear the screaming...

Report
TheresLotsOfFarmyardAnimals · 30/03/2014 09:05

I tried and failed at a strict routine. I didn't realise that it was going to involve a screaminging baby until they fell into routine.

Report
PastaandCheese · 30/03/2014 09:08

Parliamo I think you raise some really valid points. I certainly found out to my cost that waiting until 6 week to give a bottle of expressed milk can create a bottle refuser rather than merely avoiding nipple confusion!

Looking at DS practicing his angry face and DD saying she wants to go to the ice cream farm in her pjs the bottom of the garden option must have been attractive!

OP posts:
Report
munchkinmaster · 30/03/2014 09:10

I think lapetit and mousmous have it. You park the baby out of earshot. As a baby I got parked up on the street below my parents first floor flat or in my grandparents garden across the road. Of course I ' slept' for three hours between feeds.

Also 30 years of hindsight and nostalgia can make anything seem easy.

I am laughing now. Not so much when had new borns. Helpful advice can make you feels awful.

Report
soupmaker · 30/03/2014 15:03

Ah yes. My mother maintains me and my brother went 4 hours between feeds. We were put in a pram and bunged out of earshot!

New mothers spent at least a week in hospital in those days - we are 70s babies - with babies brought to mums for a feed every 4 hours.

I also suspect that a lot of our mothers look back through rose tinted spectacles.

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.