to be concerned about baby's feeding habits?

[StarBooks]

Baby was born on Monday. She sleeps all day, doesn't really feed in the day (maybe once or twice) and is then awake all night every hour to feed from about 9 onwards. I like the idea of baby led feeding and if I try and encourage her when she's not hungry she won't take it.

Is this normal? I have no idea and no idea what I'm doing. Feeling a bit useless!

totally normal, it can take up to 2 weeks for baby to stop being nocturnal. try to have lots of light and background noise in the day and quiet and calm at night to help adjust. hormones in milk at night encourage milk production too.

Yes but it completely sucks with them being nocturnal. Mine started sleeping all night finally (as in straight back to sleep between feeds not obviously straight through without feeding) at 10 weeks. Up until that point he basically slept most of the day and was up the night.

Completely normal... is baby breast or bottle fed?
Cluster feeding at night is normal,
But do try to persist with day time feeding, strip baby down if she falls asleep to try wake her up a bit.
My little boy was jaundice and made him extra sleepy, so he wasn’t feeding very much, he dropped a massive amount of weight so I had to supplement him with EBM I borrowed a hospital pump for 2 weeks which was a god send... well done your doing fab xx

@Di11y I'm not really doing any sort of expression of milk as he's ebf. Worried that only feeding twice during the day is going to have a negative affect on my milk production! Going to see a breastfeeding specialist next week but in the mean time it's nice to know I'm doing the right thing :)

Thank you!

*she's

Is she ebf or formula fed? If the latter how much is she having? How many wet and dirty nappies is she having? Is her soft spot on her head looking normal, or is it sunken?

Please don't feel useless, it's hard to tell if they're getting enough, especially if you're breastfeeding. I say that as someone who's third child has just come out of hospital having lost 15% of their birth weight by day 4. I was feeding round the clock and she would just fall asleep and not be remotely interested in feeding. Midwives had checked her on day 3 and said she was thriving. That's not meant to frighten you, just reassure you that it can be hard to tell and you shouldn't feel useless. You're asking all the right questions and it's a massive learning curve.

Thanks @Gizzygizmo - she's both! She was small when she was born so we had to bottle feed as she lost too much weight. I'm tying to re-establish breast feeding. It's tough!

Congratulations on your new baby!

Unfortunately babies don't know the difference between night and day, so you just have to go with them at the beginning! As long as she's having wet nappies then I'm sure you're doing a great job! Have some and and relax! Though it's easier said than done I know!

Borrow a hospital grade pump if you can to get your supply going, I got mine from the maternity ward
I agree it’s so so so hard, I spent the first few weeks crying with sore cracked bleeding nips, baby had tongue tie cut at a week old. It was hell... but 10 months on I’m still going... you got this

I was told to feed baby, then pump and to do that every 3 hours... it was so exhausting, and done that for 2 weeks... but it worked a treat and he regained his weight but also took to breastfeeding like a trooper xx

@Gizzygizmo I'm in the same place at the moment - expressing to try and top up but am also formula feeding. It's hard work.

You need to express at least 10 times in 24 hours and try doing compressions when expressing, it increases your milk by up to 50%. Have a look at this video from Stanford uni, m.youtube.com/watch?v=_btCMw5WYas&index=2&list=PLwhVFuNPBugEtJPEFlnJd8cALY4OucNFY&t=0s, it was recommended to me by the infant feeding team at our local hospital and is very helpful.

Hi OP. If you've had issues with supply it is recommended to feed as often as possible. It might be best you abandon baby led feeding and start feeding more during the day, at least every three hours. Every 90 mins would be better right now. I've been in a similar (but much, much worse) situation so spoken to a number of LCs and read the entire internet on this (or at least it felt like it )

It sounds like you're really trying to do the best thing right now so I'm sure you'll crack this. It just takes some work to begin with. Good luck and congrats on baby!x

Prolactin (the hormone that makes milk) is highest at night so it's great that your little one is feeding so much at night! Even if it isn't so great for you!

mavericksnoopy - it’s so hard, before he was born i had the impression you pop baby on boob and away you go how so wrong I was lol, no one ever told me how truly exhausting it could be. But persistence pays off.
If you have the right support you can EBF succuesfully, luckily I had my midwife for 4 weeks due to his weight and she was amazing, as was my partner especially having a c section

I would try to wake baby during the day to get more feeds in, if your DD is small long sleeps aren't recommended.

Congratulations on your baby! I agree that it would be a good idea to feed the baby much more during the day. It’s hard I know when they are sleepy. I used to do a nappy change to help wake them up and then keep their legs out of the babygrow. I was also advised to wipe the baby’s face with cotton wool dipped in cold water. I felt mean doing this but it did help,

I was advised not to let my two sleep longer than four hours without a feed.

Congratulations! I bottle fed my baby but she was also nocturnal! She slept amazingly well during the day then had to feed every hour and half through the night. It was verrrry difficult BUT she snapped out of that after maybe 2/3 weeks. She still woke every 3 hours for a bottle but it was much much easier than previous!

You're doing fantastically well!! Especially as you managed to breast feed!

Keep it up and good luck!! 🤗

Thank you everyone! I feel like I'm doing a rubbish job. The parent guilt has started already...

Is it normal for a baby to only feed off one boob? What do I do with the other one?!

Totally normal. Keep offering the other boob. Some ways are:
Start on favourite boob and then switch
Feed in sane position as favoured boob but in the other. I.e. use a rugby hold on less preferred breast
Always start feeds on less preferred

None of this worked for me in the end and at seven months we moved to one boob only . It works for most people though!!

And you're not doing a rubbish job, it's the absolute opposite. You're extremely conscientious and doing everything you can to make this work. You're doing brilliantly xxx

You can also pump the less preferred breast while feeding off the favourite. You've got this

At this age you definitely want to try and make sure she's feeding from at least one side at least every 4 hours. Change her nappy or strip her down to wake her up. And don't panic! Soon she will get there and want to feed aaaaall the time :o

It is extra tough when they have been bottle fed as sucking from the breast is exhausting for them and can use up a lot of their energy. I had to top up DS2 for a while because he just wouldn't feed from me enough to keep his energy up. I was instructed to only let him feed for 10 minutes and then give him the top up which I found ridiculous so what I did instead was I would let him sleep and then wake him up after 4 hours, change nappy, let him feed as much as he wanted and then give a small top up - up to about 30/50ml. I did this with paced feeding. In between the 4 hours, if he was happy to feed from me I'd let him feed as much as he wanted and only offer the top up at the 4 hour point. That seemed to help keep his blood sugars up enough for him to get the hang of feeding. I also found an hour's skin to skin/kangaroo care in the morning helped him fantastically (I probably would have done more but we were in hospital and it kept dislodging his monitor pads and I had to ask the nurses to redo them )

Any spare moment I had during the day when he wasn't feeding and I wasn't showering/sleeping/eating/having visitors I'd try and sneak in a 10 minute pump on each side and keep that. If you were more dedicated than me to pumping you could have a 2/2 schedule where you feed every 4 hours and pump every 4 hours during the day with 2 hours' interval between each.

La Leche League says to get back to full breastfeeding do the three Keeps:

Keep the baby close (as much skin to skin, cuddles, smelling their lovely little head etc as poss)
Keep the baby fed (breastmilk or formula, it's not important)
Keep the milk flowing (feed directly or express, once every 4 hours as a minimum, 10 times in 24h also sounds like a good goal)

Once you've got feeding more established and your baby is less sleepy you can go back to feeding on demand. Think of it as just encouraging a few extra feeds rather than taking away her say so if it helps.

Alternate which side you feed from each time. Express in used side after feed.
If baby empties one side switch to other side.
You're doing fab. Either express or wake to fee more during day.
Look at pics of baby to help when expressing

Sorry I missed out some parts - so I was doing the top up every 4h. After a while I started to learn the signs which meant he was finished actively feeding on the breast but was still hungry and I'd offer a top up then, but if I didn't get those signs I wouldn't always top up especially later when I knew he was taking more from me and not just falling asleep from exhaustion. With paced feeding it's totally on their say so and sometimes he'd only want 10ml which was fine. So within a few days I was able to decide OK - I'll top up at this 4h time point or I'll leave this one as he's OK. And by the time we brought him home he was only having the top up about twice a day, which went quickly down to once. We decided to keep the one as DH had come to enjoy it, but I expect we could have cut it out too, indeed DS2 sometimes sleeps through it and doesn't have one.

I found it confusing at first because new baby BF doesn't always work on the basis of discrete feeds so it was hard to really know how to top up at every feed because sometimes he'd cluster feed for hours. I also didn't want him full of formula, I wanted him to get full from me! So having a bit of a sense of OK, once every 4 hours I need to do a cycle of change, feed, check for top up, regardless of what else was happening really helped.

It was especially hard because I'd breastfed DS1 with no issues and I expected it to be the same so I was thrown out of my depth and I felt a lot of the things I was asked to do (top up up to 80ml, time feeds, have a routine, restrict BF) were counterproductive or unnatural but I didn't quite appreciate until later why it was I was being asked to do them. But regardless of all of it we got through it and you will too.

I'd offer other side before top. Up?
Good luck x