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?

Taler, what do you think of the NHS advice on water that I linked to? Do you agree that it is quite clear about giving water to babies under 6 months?

HVs are not as well trained as you might think.

Id recommend the NHS website for the most up to date stuff.

Agree that HVs can vary wildly. When I discussed doing BLW with DS1 6 years ago, you'd have thought I'd suggested child abuse, now it's mainstream.

Unfortunately, you have discovered that HVs can vary a lot, and not all of their advice is up-to-date. Have you had a look on a website like Baby Centre? Or there are some good books out there - I used one called Your Baby Week by Week, which was a lovely book, with up to date advice - didn't tell you what to do, just made suggestions, and covered breast and formula feeding.

But please do see your GP and tell her what the HV said - she is giving you bad advice.

Just to update all those mums who may be interested - my GP said that it WAS wrong advice I was given and IF for any reason I thought my DD may need a little water it should be 4/5 TEASPOONS!!

I could swing for my HV!!!!!

It always pays to check information from different reliable sources when it comes to things like this.
Over the years and several HVs I have learned to take everything they say with a pinch of salt and do my own research anyway.

When my son was 4 months old my HV wanted me to start giving him double cream and butter to get his weight up. No I don't think so!

Luckily we have the internet so it is easy to find good accurate advice.

I am still shocked!! Im sure I'm not the only new mum who would expect their HV to offer good, accurate and up to date advice!!!

I'm sorry but is there any point in them?????

Good HVs are worrth their weight in gold- unfortunatley they are rare.
At least you know know not always to take HVs advice at face value.
Most of us have found out the hard way too!!

Well done for asking the gp - and thank goodness the gp gave the right advice.

I am very wary of health visitors. Due to experiences I had after having dd with breastfeeding (long story, them pressuring me etc) I decided I wasn't even going to bother seeing them after having ds. They did the standard post natal visits and that was that. He is 19 months now and happy and healthy and hasn't seen a hv since he was 6 weeks old. If I have a problem I now go straight to the gp.

fairylea- don't get me started on breastfeeding support from HVs- now that really is a minefield- they know diddly squat.

HVs vary a lot.

Regarding the routines for your dd, my ds (17wks) spent the first seven weeks of his life in hospital. They fed according to a strict timed routine, gradually spacing them out to every 4 hrs. If any of the babies were crying for food or obviously hungry, they fed them and then adjusted the times of the next feeds. Following on at four hourly intervals.

This was in two separate hospitals, they were following a routine but adjusted the routine according to the babies needs.

Maybe you could try to be a bit more flexible?

Fwiw I don't think it's possible to "encourage" a 10wk old to sleep through. They will do it when they are ready.

But in hospitals a routine is necessary to ensure continuity of care and make things easier for staff who will have many babies to care for.
I don't see that it is needed at home.

Although babies often will fall into a routine of sorts but trying to impose a routine upon them is silly.
Trying to get a baby who is not tired to sleep or keep a sleepy baby awake is pointless.

atthestrokeoftwelve I quite agree!

I was making the point that even in the regimented environment of a hospital, there is flexibility and they do not stick rigidly to 3,7,11,3,6,11

My ds is fed on demand (and at the corrected age of seven weeks he sleeps through for eight hours)

stroke the idea is spacing feeds by 5-10 minutes longer at a time, gradually building up to an hour or whatever.

"life gets very busy for LOs - too much fun to think about till they are hungry" - Actually when dd was in her "distractible feeder" stage I found it made her more snacky, not less. She would only want to feed enough to take the edge off and then would want to play - and then feed again 30 minutes later.

Glad you've spoken to the GP Taler. Sadly not all health professionals are created equal. I was given some very wrong advice by a NICU nurse would you believe.

As an aside, if I'd fed DD on demand she'd have starved. She was prem and very very sleepy, difficult to get to feed for more than a few seconds for her first few weeks out of the hospital. I had to feed her on a schedule and persuade her to take more than she "demanded" as she didn't demand enough to keep her alive. Incredibly stressful and left me rather sceptical about claims that "we just need to follow our babies' cues". Yes often this will be best but not always.

My demand fed babies didn't cry for feeds, there are many signs a demand fed baby gives long before they cry, fist chewing, for one, rooting.

A 10wo baby is far too little to be going through the night, they should be having 2-3 feeds at night at that age.

I'm sorry your HV gave you such crappy misinformation, OP. not all are given up to date training.

Mini pie - yes, that's true for preemies, DD was preemie - but once they ARE able to take more per feed, it is much better for them to revert back to demand feeding. (that was from the Paediatrician I was seeing.)

I'm glad you got good advice from your GP. Your baby will thank you getting all that extra yummy milk.

OP I'm glad you questioned the HV's advice with the GP. I personally don't trust any advice i get 100% and always try to seek out a second opinion.

I completely blame the hospital staff for my DS ending up in NICU at 2 days old as they told me that baby was getting what he needed from my breast when i was worried that he wasn't feeding enough. eventually he was found to have dangerously low blood sugar and needed iv glucose and tube feeding for 3 days.

He is ok now but it totally destroyed my breast feeding confidence (and i still got no advice or help) and could have been so much worse if we hadn't demanded a paediatrician come and look at him as he had been discharged.

10 weeks is early, but I don't see an issue with at some point encouraging a baby to take more calories during the day and give them and the parents better sleep by using water to help teach a baby to skip feeds through the night.

I'd do it with a 5 year old. I wouldn't open up the fridge and say 'chow down'

All as long as they make it up during the day, they're putting on weight, they're happy, developing well and generally not sick. Then, what's the problem.

Of course lots of water is bad for small babies, of course not taking in adequate calories across the day is bad. But parents operating with the right information and ensuring baby is well, it's not a problem.

I'd bet a well rested parent is going to be much more on the ball to babies need than one that gets the odd hour here or there.

Thought you might be interested to know that I spoke with my HV earlier re the whole water situation. She assures me that the information they give to parents is definitely up to date. She said she'd speak with her manager though and come back to me.

Conflicting advice is what I would expect to get from family, friends and forums like this one because you are asking for people's advice based on their EXPERIENCE.

I DO NOT expect to get conflicting advice from the so called experts (HV and GP) as I am asking them for advice based in FACT!

Advice from the professionals should bloody well be the same!

Soooo annoyed!!

tatler- I think you just have to get used to it.

Advice changes, professionals don't always keep up to date and impose personal views too.
So many areas of childrearing are subjective too- perhaps not the water one, but things like discipline, introducing solids, dummies, breastfeeding advice, sleep techniques, attitudes to co-sleeping etc.

GPs and HVs are happy to dish out advice here too- and these are very grey areas- so there is not a hop in hell that so called experts are going to agree.