how long till officially constipated?

[forevermore]

my 4 week old baby is mixed fed, well to be honest has no real feeding pattern. I leave her no more than 3 hours between feeds, and she can feed for anything from 10 minutes to 3 hours, and every 30 minutes to to every 3 hours. just trying to let her go with the flow.

however i do add formula 'tops ups' i use this term loosely. i give her up to 3oz of formula when (she usually takes 1-2 ozs):

A) she seems 'tired' since has been sucking for over and hour and still not 'satisfied' (clean, winded and still searching for food)...she will then swallow from 1 - 3 oz's....i let her spit bottle out as an indication of 'finished'

B)if her last feed was more than 2 1/2 hours ago, she won't wake up and will half heartedly only manage to get her to BF for max 15 minutes. this has led me to tears (spending ages trying to wake what i know what must be a hungry baby but too sleepy to eat)

getting to the point now....i have no problems with mixed feeding. but worried this mixed feeding is causing constipation. when she first came home she would poo all the time, lately (well the last 2 days or so) its been once a day, but a massive one.

how often is okay, how little is a worry.

any tips on feeding schedule? i must stress she was 4 weeks early and although weighed 6lb 3oz; dropped 1lb in first week but has since gained 10oz a week. she is generally happy and i intend to fully formula feed eventually (not sure when)...want to give her as good a start as i can muster. but happy with mixed feeding for forseeable future....phew thats it. any comments greatly appreciated.

constipation is not so much about the timing between poos but the consistency (tmi I know!!). If they are hard round rabbit droppings then your lo is constipated. If they are of a soft consistency then your lo is not constipated. Breastfed babies can go a week or more without pooing and not be constipated. Purely formula fed babies tend to have to poo every 1 or 2 days to avoid being constipated. You will also find that your lo's bowel habits will change all the time depending on age and what they (or you - if bf) have eaten. In my opinion your lo is not constipated at all but is just changing her bowel habits.

Never mixed fed, but in my experience the baby would poo every feed for the first few weeks (the gastro-colic reflex). After that time, they would switch to a 5-day schedule.

Do you feel that your baby is uncomfortable in her tummy?

that sounds very normal forevermore - my 3 week early ds2 was mixed fed in the early days and only went (in some quantity!) every 3 to 4 days. He's still like this now at 21 weeks and fully bottle fed. He did go 5 days without onetime and I was beginning to get worried so phoned the practice nurse and while I was on the phone he produced!

feel a lot more reassured that she is not constipated, thank you so much. her movements are still runny and yellow...god motherhood has transformed me, never thought that the subject of babies poo would now haunt my every waking hour ...

any comments on the mixed feeding regime????

phatcat...could you tell me your experiences of mixed feeding?

Relaly making it up as i go along, you sound like you made it a sucess

no the mixed feeding I did wasn't really a success forevermore - I topped up because I could never get him to latch without nipple shields and as a result my supply never really got up to full speed. To cut a long story short, once I was topping up more than breastfeeding I decided to cut my losses and just go with bottle-feeding.

It sounds like you're doing really well from what you say. Is there a reason you want to wake her after 2 1/2 hours and get her to feed again? TBH if she has plenty of wet nappies and is gaining steadily I think I would let her carry on sleeping if that's what she wants. Why do you think she must be hungry? Maybe it's time to try to let the feeding be more demand led?

There's probably a lot of old threads with good advice on this subject - have you tried searching the archives for mixed feeding.

my 1st midwife was horrified when i said i let her demand feed...she said i should feed at least every 2 hours since low birth weight. so just carried on with this theory, but adapted it slightly to up to 3 hourly....not sure now how long is tooo long between feeds,

to be hones don't really give her a chance to demand since always trying to wake her....

my ds was 4 weeks early and weighed 6lb 6oz at birth. in hosptal the mw's were making me feed him every three hours (my experiences with that are a whole seperate thread though!)

when i brought him home i resolved to let him feed on demand.......wasn't prepared for this sometimes being every hour!

anyway i was told by the only decent mw i encountered that i shouldn't let him go longer than 5 hours without a feed as after that his blood sugar level would be too low, but anything upto five hours was an acceptable gap.

i'm also now mix feeding, but he tends to have a 3oz bottle in the early hours, which daddy gives him so i get a longer stretch of sleep. occasionally he'll have a bottle early evening too because he doesn't seem satisfied with the amount he's had off me and gets agitated.
we're really just taking each day as it comes, and let our little boy guide us.