Advice for on-demand bf'ing please!

[Pootles2010]

Right, so our little boy is 6 weeks old on Friday. BF so far, with the odd formula feed, and a bit of expressing and also just started using dummy.

He's starting crying a lot more, a breast feed seems to calm him, he'll feed for about 5 mins, then either start screaming, so i wind him then give a cuddle till calms down, or he falls asleep, then promptly wakes in 10 mins or so. In this instance i do what midwife told me and rub his hands, feet etc to try and get him going again, but just doesn't work.

I did want to demand feed, as midwives seem to think this is best way - and seems kindest to him.

However, is he maybe doing it more for comfort than anything else? I don't think it's a growth spurt, its been going on too long. A few weeks ago he got into the habit of having good, 40 minute-odd feeds, which was great as he'd sleep longer, but that seems to have gone out the window.

We've started trying to use the dummy, as we thought this might help with him just needing to suck rather than being hungry, but he doesn't keep it in.

Sorry i know this is rambly and long, but my brain's a bit broken from sleep deprivation!

We keep getting differing advice. Everyone says 'get him in a routine' but no one will tell us how!

Thank you!

One little teeny question :) : what's wrong with comfort?

Imagine being 5-6 weeks old. No language. No real understanding of time, or place, or where self begins and ends. But highly sensitive to you, your presence, your smell, taste, voice, face, and lovingly familiar with your breasts and breastfeeding and the way you hold him and reassure him when he feels he needs that reassurance.

The need to have this close, responsive contact is met with a breastfeed, and/or being close to you. It does not appear according to the clock. The luckiest babies are the ones who are responded to without anyone wondering if it's too soon or too long or too awkward to do so :)

You have a life and needs, too, of course, but you are likely to be more flexible with these than a young baby - you have language and understanding, and you can do things for yourself to make life easier. You can express your needs, and change things round, and reschedule and do all the grown up things a baby cannot do.

I would even say think about not bothering with the foot rubbing and so on - if it doesn't please him or do whatever it is you think it should be doing, it's ok to stop!

Keep demand feeding, 6 weeks is very little to expect a routine that he'll stick with for any length of time. If you think about it logically he has a liquid diet and a very small tummy, he can only hold small amounts of liquid and, because breast milk is easily digested, his little body processes it quite quickly so he needs to feed often. It's also his drink so if he feels thirsty he will need a drink from the breast.

He may not need winding in between when he becomes fussy at the breast, it may be a simple case of he's dropped the nipple and wants it back. Have you tried keeping him at the breast, not disturbing him by winding him and letting him find his way back onto the nipple (he may need a little guidance)?

If he falls asleep at the breast and you want him to take more milk you can try moving about a bit to wake him slightly so he starts sucking again or stroking his cheek to get him sucking again may help.

He may very well want the comfort of the breast sometimes rather than being hungry but there is nothing wrong with giving it for this reason, he gets a cuddle, a drink and something to suck, perfect for a baby who needs comforting.

Try not to wait until he is crying for a feed, crying is a very late indicator of hunger. Look for other, earlier signs, i.e rooting, sucking his fingers. You will learn more and more what his indicators are and will recognise them easily very soon.

Remember all the good you doing him(and yourself) by breastfeeding him, it may seem like hard work sometimes but it is worth it. Do you have breastfeeding mums groups in your area that you could go along to? You'll find lots of other breastfeeding mums with the same questions and issues you have and there will other mums who have been through it all and will share their experiences with you. Well worth popping along to one if you can.

But he was feeding for 40 odd minutes and then going for 3 hours or so, so i don't really understand that. I do put him back on nipple/re adjust latch, this is different.

I have a bf'ing group, they're great, but last monday the leader was on hol, then it wasn't on yesterday with bank holiday, and i'm away for next two weeks. Bad timing!

also, pootles, remember the old This Too Shall Pass thing - at 6 weeks you no doubt feel like this is going to last FOREVERRRRR and you can't see an end to the general knackeredness of being a mum. BUT - it does change...sometimes imperceptibly. He's probably still working it all out, your milk is changing too, and goodness, before you know it he'll be chomping on a rusk
They are tiny for such a short period of time. Tiktok is right - try to ignore the analytical voices in your head and go with it (says she with a very LOUD analytical mental voice?!!)
if it helps - DD2 is 5 months and hasn't fed for more than 10 minutes ever...mostly i'm lucky if she feeds for 5. she needs a good burp after and then doesn't want to go back on the breast for at least 20 mins. It's a pain but this is how she is...

Pootles, you're wondering why he has changed his apparent needs from 40 mins/every 3 hours. But babies don't stay the same. Their needs change. Unpredictably sometimes. That's a good thing :)

DD is 14 weeks old tomorrow and she did exactly the same thing as this when she was about 3/4 weeks old. I still don't know why, but it roughly coincided with her being awake for longer when she woke up. She went from sleep/poo/30min feed/sleep (repeat) to having shorter 5/10 min feeds and more looking around and cuddles before she went back to sleep. I think it was just the start of her becoming more alert and curious. Unfortunately, she had to stop sleeping all day at some point

We just went with her, followed what she wanted to do. Then at about 5 weeks she started sleeping 11-7. I'm not convinced that you can give babies a 'routine' when they're that small, I think they find their own rough pattern as long as you're consistent and they know you're only a whimper away.

Don't worry about a routine - there's plenty of time for that, and he's still only tiny.

Ooh yes, This Too Will Pass. A true lifesaver

Just let him feed feed feed, if it is for comfort then excellent he is getting comfort from you.

Best way to ensure a great supply in the coming weeks would be to ditch the formula and dummy and just latch him at the first sign of any interest. If he falls asleep after a few minutes. Just snuggle him until he wakes up and pop him back on.

So easy for me now that DS is 24 weeks. He hops on has his milk and hops off again. But in the early days he was feeding more often than not.

pootles, babies routines change all the time. My DD is 21 weeks old and since birth we have changed routines/feeding patterns more times than I can remember. Feeding on demand means exactly that - just keep on feeding your baby when he asks. I wouldnt worry too much about your baby being in any particular feeding routine at the moment. Thats not to say that you can't start some of your own routines - i.e we had a bedtime routine very early on (feed, massage, bath, feed, bed), but during the day feeding routines are set by my DD.

At around 8 weeks old my DD went from feeding for 1 hour at a time to feeding for 5 minutes at a time. I was stressing that she wasn't getting enough but she kept gaining weight. At around week 10 my DD started feeding again for roughly 40 minutes at a time. At week 19 my DD started feeding for only 5 minutes at a time again....I still stress out about these changes, wondering if something was wrong, when really I know that my DD is just feeding when she was hungry and coming off when she had eaten enough.

I think that one of the benefits of breastfeeding is the comfort that it offers babies. Quite often my DD will feed for 10 minutes and comfort suck for another 15 minutes. I also let my DD use me to fall asleep.

It's hard not to worry when babies change - I know that in a few weeks time my DD will start doing somthing completely different and I will worry if she is ok .

Could he be over tired or over stimulated? I only have my own experience to relate to I'm afraid, but between the start of month 2 and the end of month 3 both of my babies went through a fussy stage where they got very easily over stimulated and over tired. It was about the same time they started showing a real interest in the world around them and just talking to them for too long could do it. They would get to this stage where they were too tired and worked up to take a proper feed but too hungry to sleep. what worked best for me was to pop them in my wrap and walk around the house until they'd fall asleep. I'd then keep them in the wrap until they'd had a good long nap then let them wake up ready for a proper feed. If they had got themselves really overtired I might have to repeat the process again until they'd settle properly (until the next time lol!)

This was the case for both of my babies even though by this age one was exclusively formula fed and one exclusively breastfed.

Good luck x

I agree with all of the above. Unsettledness in most young babies is supposed to peak at 6-8 weeks, so this is a time when they may need more soothing and comfort than at other times.

My demand fed DS came up with his own little 'routine' of feed-nappy change-feed 6 times every 24 hours, always feeding for 40 mins on both sides. When he hit 6 weeks it all went to pot, and when he wasn't feeding he was usually crying. I was really worried (quite distressed, actually :() until I realised it was totally normal.

It lasted until about 7.5 weeks when he became more settled, and his feeding pattern changed again. Since then it's changed lots more (now 8 months, still kind of demand fed).

Enjoy being able to offer your little one closeness and comfort. :) If you're struggling with the nights, you could try giving co-sleeping a try.

DancingThroughLife - 11 to 7 at 5 weeks?? I would be such a happy mother if my 8 month old did that!

I have found the on-demand aspect of bf-ing incredibly hard to fathom because DD's needs change day by day. And at six weeks I was tearing my hair out because DD wanted to feed every 1 - 1.5 hours, each feed lasted about 40 mins, she was only napping in the pushchair or sling whilst I was out and about (and even then only for short periods) and was waking for feeds every couple of hours through the nights. And it went on for a fortnight, not the 2-3 days they tell you growth spurts last. By the end I decided I'd completely lost the plot and that I was no longer reading DD's cues correctly and was feeding her when really she was tired.

And then it just stopped of its own accord, feeds got shorter (20mins max now), naps got longer again and she started going 2.5-3 hours between feeds.

You would think I would have learnt from all this but she has just had another 2 week long hungry time and again I started thinking I was misunderstanding her demands and getting it all wrong. And then it stopped and she's back down to feeding 7-9 times a day rather than 12-14.

So if you keep on feeding your son little and often you'll find it will settle down of its own accord. He is not going to want to feed like this forever. But if you are anything like me you are going to find that hard to believe at times!