Waking a newborn every 3 hours to feed?

[Shabeth]

Hi everyone
Dd is just over a week old, she's feeding well during the day (12 feeds today) and already gained back her birth weight despite being slightly jaundice. I'm wondering if we still have to force her to eat every three hours at night? Last night I had to wake her three times she was less than impressed and it took 20 minutes to latch. Tonight i finally got her down at 1 only to have to wake her at 3 to eat, it's been half an hour and nothing, she's not even rooting.
My mum thinks I'm mad to wake a baby to eat and she will let us know when she wants it.
So do I still have to be waking her?

It’s your choice to wake her for feeds, personally I would wake a baby for the first 3 weeks (or until discharged by the midwife)
If you find the feeding schedule is not working I’d suggest pumping when you’re full and sticking the milk in the fridge/freezer. As long as baby is putting on weight well and has plenty of wet nappies I wouldn’t worry too much about waking her. Just go with whatever you’re comfortable with.

We're feeding our 1 week old on demand. She's feeding every 3-4 hours but we don't wake her to feed her. We just go with her and feed her when she's ready.

I did to start with and then gradually let him sleep for longer and longer periods until I was comfortable that he could handle it and was still putting on weight. It’s not an exact science though. Perhaps try letting her have one longer sleep during the night and see how that affects her weight/day feeding. I think by 6/7 weeks I just let him sleep for as long as he liked and knew that he would wake up and cry if he got hungry.

I'm feeding on demand during the day and waking her at night. Ended up getting a 4 minute feed out of her after 40 minutes of trying at 3am it then took me another hour to get her down again. Then at 6 she woke me for a feed as she has been. Today she's been asking for something every couple of hours, she just doesn't seem to want as much at night

If baby is gaining and is bright at alert at times in the day, I wouldn’t wake her OP.

I don’t understand why some people wake there’s babies up to feed them. If they are hungry they will let you know.

Just my opinion

Thanks everyone, she's asleep before 12 after discovering the magic of white noise. She's fed loads this evening so I'm going to set my alarm every three hours and see if she's fast asleep or not. If she is I'm going to leave her and set it for 2 more hours. We'll see how she is in the morning, I just don't want her to have lost energy from not eating and struggle to feed tomorrow. We'll see how it goes!

No I wouldn't. I'm sure if she's hungry she will tell you.

Sounds like you've got a good sleeper!! :)

When mine had jaundice it made them very sleepy and they wouldn't wake to feed when they should have. One of mine ended up losing more weight than they should have. Given that your baby has a touch of jaundice and is so young I'd get advice from a nurse on this.