Is it normal to be advised to wake a newoborn every two hours to feed?

[LynetteScavo]

A relative in the US has a week old baby, and has been advised to feed her every two hours in order to establish a good milk supply. Being obedient parents, they are setting an alarm to wake up to feed.

Is this normal advice? Surely the poor mum is going to be so exhausted it wont be doing her milk supply much good anyway?

I never woke my babies, but my youngest is now 5, so I was wondering if this was modern advice. (Can there be modern advice on breast feeding, lol?)

NOOOOOOO

we did this what bloody idiots we were, DS would finally drop off, and we'd wake him up to feed. TWATS!!!!

never again!!!!

and if a hewborn wants to sleep 4 hours plus at night. fine by me!!!! wont happen tho

WOTmania - yes I know many babies may wake themselves up for a feed 2 hourly. Big difference though between a baby that wakes by itself and is wanting/needing a feed and poking a contented, full baby awake for no good reason.

DS2 is a most excellent baby, once he is asleep I think it would take a direct nuclear strike to wake him. I did try the dreamfeed idea with him once, it wasn't pretty.

I think if he could have spoken his word would have been "sod off!".

I was told this (scotland). I did it. I then revealed to the community midwife at about day 7 that I was doing it. She nearly fell over and said that it only applied to the first day or two. Now it seems stupid, but I'd never had a baby before so was just doing as I was told!

In a way it's wonderful that they are so dedicated to feeding, so any advice should come from a position of praise IMO. It may be more helpful to suggest that they ask the doctors if they need to continue and that was they get to avoid feeling silly!

Now now, no need to get tetchy. You just said this:

'I'm not saying there won't ever be a time where a baby needs to have 2 hourly feeds but if this is the case then I'd doubt very much if it would be fit and well enough to be at home.'

and I was responding. We don't know if the baby is sleepy/not gaining weight appropriately etc. Or maybe the parents are just being PFB and don't realise that it isn't necessarily needed at night too.

But what I was saying that in all the 100s of babies I have looked after who haven't been gaining weight appropriatly none of them have ever been on a regime where they needed to be woken every 2 hours. So even if this baby had lost weight it shouldn't need to be getting woken up every 2 hours.

Unless possibly its so sick its in a SCBU, but then it wouldn't be at home being woken by its parents.

but you didn't say that exactly so I misunderstood your meaning.
I don't think it is that 'out there' for parents of a small sleepy baby with a mum who is struggling to build up her milk supply to be told to do thisnfor a cople of days.
Mute point anyway as we don't know what they've been told or the situation.

Well, apparently baby is feeding well, and only lost the normal amount of weight in the first week, so I think the alarm setting has stopped.

I've been looking at baby's first photos, and apparently they give the baby a bath a soon as it's born(with bubbles!), so you are handed a nice freshly bathed babe.

Glad to hear it's going well with them.
What a shame they don't get to hold their sticky little just born baby

we had to wake our DS every 2 to 3 hours to feed as he didnt wake at all on his own. we were told this is normal as he was 3 weeks prem and was loosing weight rather than gaining it. so, i guess the advice depends on the situation! i cant see it doing much harm long term though, it made me exhausted but we only had to do it for a week then he was back on track with the weight gain.