Advice needed please re middle of the night feed

[Taler]

My 10 wk old DD feeds at 7am every morning. We are trying to encourage her to go through the night and as yet this has not been achieved. Her middle of the night feed is usually at 3am but recently has gone through to 4am.

Myself and my DH agreed the cut off should be 5am (as if we fed her after this time then she wouldn't take anything at the 7am feed). Tonight though she went through to 5:10am and I decided to feed her (as quite frankly didn't think she'd last a whole 2 hours and was pretty sure that water wouldn't satisfy her that long.

I have her a slightly smaller feed (4oz as opposed to 5oz) and this seems to have satisfied her enough for now. I'm sure she'll go through to 7am now but my concern is that come 7am she won't take anywhere near the 5ox she would usually have, meaning all her feed times will probably be thrown out for the day.

What do you other mums do who have set feed times?

DOn't give water!
Especially not to a baby that small and in WINTER!
A hot hot summer, then maybe some sips, and that is sips not 5oz!

10w is so tiny,so so tiny!

OP - I did routines, and with both DCs there was an akward few weeks between 9 - 12 weeks when they were pushing their night feed later and later until it was dropped.

I would give a full feed at 5am (although she might not have it all), then another half feed at 7am. (or 7:30am) Eventually, the 5am will go later and later until it becomes more like breakfast (both my DCs can't get through to 7am though, both have been 6am starts, but once you introduce solids, that's fine, you do 6am milk then 8am breakfast porriage).

I also wouldn't recommend you give water in the night, unless you are using a thicken formula, HV do only have limited training and your baby shouldn't need water as well as formula milk in the night before 6 months.

I would discuss this with another hv. The current one is giving you dangerous advice.

Your HV is wrong.

You sound as if you like to feel in control - read the NHS guidelines and get onto Kellymom for advice - more info is what you need.

But my main piece of advice would be to remember that your DD is absolutely TINY and really, getting gung-ho about any form of 'we are DEFINITELY' going to be doing it THIS way' runs the risk of failing to see the bigger picture - that her needs will be changing all the time, that what will eventually come to be her natural 'routine' is only now taking shape.

Advice now is to feed on demand. Tested, evidence-driven advice, with medical and developmental factors taken into consideration. Generally, you would do well to heed it.

She should probably be reported and hopefully retrained if she's going about giving this advice to new parents. :(

That was meaning your HV taler.

3-5oz of water per day is far too much for a 10week old baby - all they need is milk. I had a sort of routine at that age but it was more like feed 3 hourly as 4 hours is a long time between feeds and i dont wait that long for food or drink. Also the more you feed them in the day the more likely it is that they will sleep a bit longer at night.

If your lo feeds at 5am ish, then I would offer a top up feed between 7.30 and 8am and then let the feeds follow on from there. If your baby is hungry before 4 hours has passed then feed them rather than offering water. And of course formula is a food and a drink as it is mostly made up of water.

Why would you want to give water at all?

you have 4 hour gaps between feeds for a 10 week old baby? That is a very long time for such a young baby. DD settled into a 3 hour gap routine of her own accord at around 16 weeks, and she was on that until I started weaning her at 6 months. But before that she was fed as and when she needed.

I really do think you need to get a second opinion - talk to your GP. It really does sound like your HV is giving you very out of date info (and for what it's worth my HV wasn't much cop).

Do some reading up on the subject - get some up-to-date baby books. Babies do not need water unless it is very very hot (which obviously it isn't now, unless you're in Australia).

PS - the baby crying next door might have colic.

If you're offering water because in your eyes a feed isn't due, even if you then offer a feed because the water hasn't satisfied the baby, then you are replacing a feed with water, albeit a small amount at a time. As someone else has said 5 oz of water over a day is equivalent to a feed.

Always, always offer formula first. No water at all.

It's not your fault you've been given bad advice but thankfully people here are giving you the correct advice so now you can put it right.

You'll find your baby probably sleeps longer if you just feed formula all the time and get rid of the water completely.

Actually OP, if you want to do strict routines, you'd do well to read Gina Ford's book, and read the whole thing, because a) she doesn't expect a 10 week old to go 4 hours in the day and b) isn't keen on tonnes of water or leaving babies without feeds. But you can't just skim the chapters and read just the routine timings section, you could do with reading why she's spaced them like that so you can tweek it to suit your baby.

Remember, this is a transition phase, it might feel like forever, but it's not, it's just your baby can go longer than from 10-11pm - 4am but not all the way until morning, it's only going to be a few more weeks, it might feel like a lifetime at the time, but by 6 months your DC shouldn't need milk in the night (if they are getting enough in the day, you probably will have to feed more frequently than 4 hourly to get enough calories in during the daytime).

routines are fine, but they have to fit what your DC needs, not what you need.

5am wake up doesn't last forever, trust me! But if your LO needs milk at 5am, give milk at 5am, just less at 7 and everything will bumble along again.

also, If I remember rightly, this (or around this age) is prime time for cluster feeding - where the baby will suddenly want to feed on and off for whole evenings - I clearly remember feeding DD like this from 7pm to 3am. Please please do not ignore your baby's cues as and when this happens - it is totally normal and to be expected.

I just wanted to add OP, that please do not feel like people are ganging up on you here or saying that you shouldn't have a routine or a feeding schedule. They are not, just that the routine/schedule will not work to the letter and will need to be adapted to suit your baby at that particular point in time.

If i was you id forget trying to get baby to sleep through at 10 weeks old, but it does look like she is making good progress on getting there on her own if already going 6 hours. But trying to miss the 3-4am feed altogether if she doesn't wake at a suitable time means that she will be getting nothing for 8 hours and at that age its not recommended.

Again, offering water may fill her up until feed time but if you do that then she will be missing out on nutrients from milk that her body needs to grow and develop and you also may make a rod for your own back and end up with a miserable hungry baby as there then isn't enough time in the day (or space in her tummy) to make up the deficit.

my DD's feed times are 7,11,3,7,11,3. We don't wake her though for the 3am feed (as a baby will never go through the night if you continue to wake them for food), we let her wake us when she wants a feed.

By that logic, you should feed her when she wakes at 5am (or at 6am or whenever she wakes).

And please, please don't give her water.

I am not anti routine, I had a routine and tried to encourage DD to stick to it. But if she was hungry at "non routine" times the most I would try is 5-10 minutes of distraction, then I would feed her.

I am bfing ds2 so it may be slightly different but he was sleeping 7 hours in the night and not putting on weight. He is 9 weeks an nearly falling off the chart. I have to set my alarm to feed him.
Ds1 was bottle fed. We could feed him sometimes while he was asleep and dropping a feed happened naturally. He was fed on demand and had his own routine which generally followed a set time.
I agree that you could give a full feed at 5 and then offer another at 7.30. If her feeds are off by an hour it's ok as long as she is feeding regularly. And I agree, just milk no water.

Giving your baby water will inhibit her absorbing nutrition from the formula and trigger a false full feeling.

She can also get water intoxification which is very serious. The signs of this are drowsiness, low temperature, irritability and swollen face.

All the water your baby needs she will get from her formula.

Please, please do stop giving her water, it really is not necessary and is dangerous.

minipie- why would you want to "disctract" a hungry baby?

Because I don't want to be feeding tiny feeds every hour stroke. Not once my baby is older and physically able to have bigger feeds less often. If I can gently and without any crying persuade them to have bigger feeds less often, and in general have some sort of a loose routine, there are advantages both for me and for them (as it means I can plan to do things with them between feeds, they can have longer naps between feeds, etc).

minipie-but that happens naturally as babies grow and develop. perhaps not fast enough for your liking, but as a baby matures so does the spacing between feeds.
And sometimes babies like to snack- don't you ever have days like that? I know i do- I sometimes miss out lunch altogether and have several small snacks over a period of a couple of hours.
Babies are no different. They are human- not machines.

Some babies space out their feeds as they get older, some don't and if fed completely on demand would "snack" every day.

I don't really see the harm in encouraging them to space out their feeds with 5-10 mins of distraction and no distress? What's the harm?

As I said, if the distraction doesn't work then I'd feed them. Obviously.

OP what do you think about not giving water?

minipie- why 5 to 10 minutes? If you are not delaying feeds by an hour or two I can't see why 5 minutess makes any difference.

All babies end up spacing their feeds further apart - life gets very busy for LOs- too much fun to think about food until they are hungry.

I will speak to my GP to see what he says.

If I shouldn't be giving her water then OF COURSE I will stop.

But why would I have doubted the word of my HV?! And surely they know more than a GP? A HV specialises on babies/children! A GP is a 'general' practitioner

Many HVs give bad advice- there is no ongoing requirement for training in many areas, so if a HV trained some time ago they may be giving out of date advice.
Try getting breastfeeding support from a HV- it's a minefield!