11 week old bottle fed baby advice please

[preggersshock]

Does anyone have any experience with bottle feeding babies & how to manage evening routine? We have a great feeding routine however it's effecting bath time, dd1 feeds at 6.30, 10.30, 2.30, 6.30 & 10.30 however bath time is at 6 & she HATES it, probably because she is hungry, waiting for bottle time. If I was breast feeding then I could drop an extra feed in before bath to calm things down but if I give her a bottle at 5 I won't be able to take it off her to give 1/2 feed, she'll get to distressed. Any advice appreciated.

Well, I ised to feed at 7,10,1,4 & 7 so every three hours.

Could you move to a 3hr routine? It is less time to wait between feeds and sort of.tanks them up for the night too.

Another idea would be to bath her after her afternoon nap? Then jimjams on and quiet play / stories til.bedtime.milk?

Or only put a half portion of.milk in the bottle to start with before bath?

I was thinking 3 hour routine too but didn't want to overdo it, reassuring to hear you suggest it - thanks :-)

why is bath time at 6pm? can you change it?
it is not necessary to:

a., bath baby everyday! you can top and tail at the same time as last nappy change of the day

b., to bath in the evening! yes it is a nice routine, but if it interferes with feeding you can give her a bath any other time (morning, lunchtime or afternoon). try and see if it works!

in fact I used to have a bath in the morning after dropping kids off at school and wash DS4 at the same time. lovely!

Ooh I always did and still do.a bed time bath. I find top.and tailing a right fart on.

Dd was in her three hour milk routine til 6months and starting solids. At night, we would wake her at 10.30/11pm for a bottle then she would wake us at around 3am (this stopped around the 10wk mark).

I used to feed DS on a similar routine 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, I usually just squeezed the bath in before the 6pm feed, so got DS in the bath at 5.30pm and gave him a bottle as soon as he was dried up and dressed. Sometimes I would do a bath in the morning instead. I think it's best to play around with the bath time and see if doing it earlier helps?

Bath times are much easier as time goes by, especially once they're sitting up as they can then sit in the bath and hold onto toys :)

Try a 3 hour gap between feeds. My dd started doing this and it worked really well. As others have suggested, don't bath every night and bath her after an afternoon nap or even first thing in the morning. Ny dd is 14 wo now and I do bath time as and when I can fit it in!!

Try feeding her on demand. Babies don't fit into neat little routines, 4 hours between each feed is quite a long time.

She's happy at 4 hours, don't worry all I am not such a bad mother that I would let her go hungry! If she needed it more often she'd be getting it. She's very happy & content knowing where she stands with her milk times. She demand fed until she was about 6 weeks and was anxious and frustrated a lot of the time, now we have a good routine she is 100% happier! HV is happy with her & weight is on track so no concerns with how much & how often.

I always though bath time should be part if bedtime routine, think suggestions to change bath time make most sense, also think a sneaky small extra feed in the afternoon will work as well :-)

yes, stick to feeding routine, I wouldn't change that significantly for now - but she'll have a growth spurt soon enough and you'll probably have to jiggle with the timings again...

preggers it is the usual thing for kids as it does make them sleepy, gives them a signal that it's time for bed etc - also as they get older they can get very dirty and a scrub down before bed is a must!

but a small baby has no sense of time as such (or they would sleep through the night instead of during the day!!!!!!) so I don't think it matters much

see what works best

I like the consistancy of a bath at bedtime. I can count on one hand the number of.nights dd hasnt had a bedtime bath and she is 1.1

In fact, we had guests roublnd this evening and right on cue at 6.15 she was pulling at her sleeves and shouting for me to undress her (presumbly for her bath - though it is possible she has voyeuristic tendancies!)

gold I agree, it's good to implement a routine and babies & children do respond well to feed/bath/bed, but I personally hate bathing small babies, so I choose to avoid what is a highly stressful situation for me when time is short and I'm already getting tired and impatient.

also when you have other children (9 months old DD have 5 older brothers) who go to school there's homework to do, sport clubs, music lessons, choir practice, playdates and many other things that must be done in the evening, so I'm just saying it's a good idea to be flexible as there no hard and fast rules!

once they can safely sit I actually prefer them having an evening bath together, but my toddler loves having a shower with daddy in the morning, and the oldest prefers to do it on his own anyway, go figure.....

At 11 weeks my twins were on 4 hourly feeding but I would bath them a bit earlier than you start - I used to start about 530 so all done by 6 and they would have their bottle then
At about 16 weeks my DS started to get ezcema and we were told by the GP to reduce to 3-4 baths a week, which we did and had no effect on whether they settled at bedtime or not. Now at 14 months we bath them every other night and they go to sleep at 7pm regardless

So brief update! We are on 3 hourly and after 4pm feed, three times a week, it's day three and it seems to be working a treaty:-) Thanks for all the advice!