Number of breastfeeds a day. Advice needed please!

[newmummy470]

I exclusively breastfeed my 11 week old baby. All is going well, she latches on fine, empties each breast, I always offer both sides, she has plenty of wet nappies and poo. But she only now feeds 5 times over 24 hours (with a 8-12 hour gap through the night) is this enough???. I read online it should be minimum of 8 to 12 or other websites say less. Which is correct???
She's more than happy after each feed, so assume she's full up.
She was born 7lb 4pz and is on a low percentile, now only weighs 10lb, (she is tall though 60cm)
but she's alert and coming on in every other way she coo and aahs, looks at my eyes and toys, gets excited. health visitors seem to say that she should be putting on a bit more weight but I really don't think she's hungry apart from when I do feed her, which is when she asks.
Any advice. Experience would be much appreciated.

[Toadsrevisited]

It doesn't sound like many feeds compared to DS at that age but then again if all other signs are good, perhaps she is just a content baby and efficient feeder! tiktok is the person on here who is the bf expert I think if you can find her...

[tiktok]

Hi - can understand why you are finding this concerning. Have you had a chance to talk it over with your HV? Properly?

By my reckoning, your baby has gone from just under the 50the centile to under the 9th centile, so she should be checked out. All may be well - plenty of slow growing babies are just fine. OTOH, she may be better off with more milk, and this means offering it pro-actively so you make the first move so to speak. There is nothing wrong with only 5 feeds in 24 hours, though you are right, it is not very often, and the long gap in the night is unusual.

There is no 'right' number of feeds a baby should have at any one time, as long as the baby is gaining weight sufficiently well and developing ok. Some babies really don't 'ask' for as much milk as they actually need for proper growth - they take sufficient to trickle along but not enough to really thrive as they would otherwise do.

No idea if this applies to your baby, but someone should be having a discussion with you about it.
It would be dead easy to get more breastmilk into her, anyway :)

[newmummy470]

Thank you tiktok I will contact my health visitor for a better chat.
At the moment I've only briefly spoke to the HVs that are at the baby weight clinics.
Like you say I could increase number of times I feed her, but never know whether to just follow her demands or whether I should feed her say 2-3 hourly, n through the night.