conflicting advice from different health visitors. what do you think?

[ilovefirelighters]

my dd has been gaining weight well and both hvs are impressed and thought she was ff because of the rate she was growing. she is 10weeks today and has been sleeping through the night for just over 2 weeks for 12 hrs a night. 1 hv says if she was hungry she would wake and that im doing just fine the other says shes not getting enough and that i have to feed her every 2-3 hrs in daytime to make up for it. after i saw 2nd hv i felt so guilty and so fed her more often as suggested. then a very emotional exhausted me saw the original hv and asked why dd poo is turning green with what looks like spinach in it!? she said its because shes over eating and to believe in myself and dds wet nappies and weight gain to tell me shes doing just fine. what do you think?

I think the first MW makes more sense. if your DD is gaining weight even though she sleeps through the night I would not feel like feeding her more than what she actually demands.

If she's gaining weight, has plenty of wet and dirty nappies, you're feeding on demand, and she's happy, I don't think you have anything to worry about. How often do you think she feeds in the day?

As for the green nappies - how long did they last for? Sometimes it can be an indicater of a bit of a tummy bug if it just lasts a few days.

Sounds like you're doing really well - and she'll start waking up again in the night at the four month growth spurt, don't worry

She will let you know if she needs to feed more, don't worry. :)

thank you. i was demand feeding her but she was literally attatched to me all day. that was ok to begin with but when i spoke to 1st hv about it she said there should be more of a routine starting to show and it was probably a comfort thing not a hungry thing, hense the green nappies! i feel confident she hasnt had a bug as when she has steady 4hourly feeds the nappies go back to the usual bright yellow. she now feeds 4 hourly for about 30-40mins at a time.
oh great, i cant wait for the 4 month growth spurt iv heard all about those. is it very different when bfing? i also have a 3.6yo who was ff from 6weeks.

If you hadn't been to see the HV would you have thought there was a 'problem'?

Some babies sleep through from a very early age and some don't. If your DD is happy, contented, has plenty of wet and dirty nappies and is gaining weight in-line with what's normal then you are doing fine and the fact she is sleeping through is a bonus for you.

If she were failing to thrive i.e slow eight gain or weight loss and you were keeping her to some sort of 3 hourly routine with no night feeds it would be a different matter.

Green poo can be down to a number of things, rarely but sometimes over-feeding.

Use your instinct and go with what your baby tells you.

When you say four hour routine - do you stick to it rigidly, or do you feed her before if she asks? If she's sleeping through and feeding every four hours during the day, that's only 3 or 4 feeds, right?

This is a very, very unusual pattern for a 10-week-old - that's not to say it is wrong, but it would make me explore a little more what was happening, and why this baby seemed to be happy to feed so infrequently. I'd want to keep an eye on it, as well, and it's not surprising there are two different views on it.

Green poo is insignificant - certainly does not have to mean over-eating, under-eating or anything important at all, in a healthy baby.

she feeds 4 or 5 times a day. of course if after say 3 hours shes screeming and all the other boxes (dirty/wet nappy, tired, wants to play etc) are ticked then she will have it early. shes never deprived!
japers-no i dont think i wouldve said there was a problem. they asked questions and then gave advice. i suppose i should keep schtum as so many women would love to be in my shoes. i suppose i just wanted to hear others opinions.

What would happen if you just ignored the clock and fed completely on demand? 4 or 5 times a day does seem like very little.

well its been a few days now and shes fine. very content cries when its feed time and very little inbetween. it does seem very little but then wouldnt she cry if she was hungry. im certainly not ignoring a crying baby and i dont expect to have a text book baby. i was the same with my ff ds.

Crying is quite a late indicator of hunger. She will be giving earlier signals. Try to look out for these, things like suckling, rooting and sucking her fingers/hands, learn what your baby's are and respond to them promptly with the offer a feed and she will be fine, as will your milk supply, whether or not she continues to sleep through.

My DD1 did exactly what your LO is doing, gaining weight very well, 91st centile whilst EBF and sleeping 12 hours a night from 12 weeks.
What does your intuition tell you about your baby?? Would you have thought there was a problem if you hadn't seen the 1st HV??

my intuition tells me shes doing great, but i have always questioned my intuition. i dont think it has helped when 2 health visitors have said different things. they are ment to be a support network, instead i just feel pulled between them.
i found the demand feeding really tough in the earlir weeks as feeding every half an hour just didnt fit in with making sure my ds was cared for too, thats not really an issue now as she feeds, plays for a bit, sleeps for a bit plays again and feeds again, all day long. absolutely when she is hungry early i feed her.
what is the usual age bf babes sleep through and feed 4 hourly? my ds slept through from 6 weeks,as soon as he was ff.
im going to give it ago today with no clock and see what she wants to do. shes very alert and doesnt sleep through feeds.

That sounds a good plan, ilovefirelighters. I don't think it's surprising you have had different views on this - your dd is presenting an unusual situation (apparently healthy thriving baby who feeds no more than 4-5 times in 24 hours and sleeps 12 hours at this young age). You are not going to get people agreeing on what to do, if anything :)

Most babies never feed four hourly in the way you're suggesting - many eventually sleep through without the need for feeding in the night, but actually, most human beings, inc adults, would eat/drink much more often than four hourly.

I agree that responding to earlier signs she might feed would be a useful experiment - only feeding sooner than four hours only if she is actually screaming and all those other things (nappy, tired, bored and so on) have been ruled out is a bit worrisome to me, sorry.

ilovefirelighters - in short they don't feed 4 hourly. An hour is an artificial human construct - it does not exist in nature so why would human babies have evolved to feed only every 240 minutes? Why not every 142 mins or 79 mins or 206 mins? Clock feeding does not make evolutionary sense as clocks/watches in private Upper class homes only became common in the 16th century AD not in 200,000 BC when modern humans were evolving.

A baby of a year may feed that infrequently (not like 7/11/3/7 but with a gap that might be around 4ish hours) but a baby of 10 weeks might only have 1 or 2 gaps of 4 hours (say 9pmish to 1amishand 2amish to 6amish) with the rest of their feeds irregularly spread out according to the needs of the baby (note not hunger but need).

Good for you for trying out demand feeding again - you should be seeing feeding cues like smacking of lips, rooting, licking lips, wriggling, hand sucking (possibly not aways a sign of wanting a bfing) and offering a feed then. Crying is the last resort of a hungry baby.

DS has never gone four hours between food or drink in his life, except overnight once he decided to start sleeping through aged 2!

I would be looking to feed more often during the day, 4-5 feeds in 24 hours really isn't a lot at that age.

I can understand that the needs of your toddler are pressing, especially as he can articulate better. My DC2 is due in March and DS will be 2.8 so I will have this balancing act also.
I plan to feed entirely on demand as I did with DS - with the help of a sling, Cbeebies, and the fact that DS can wait 5-10 minutes for something even though he might not want to! :)

im lost i just dont know what im doing

How did it go today?

How did it go today?

Ha Ha snap MoonUnit

Oh bless you.

Look don't panic. What happened yesterday and overnight? How many times did she feed, and did you notice any feeding cues before she started crying?

Of COURSE a four hourly feed exists in nature if a baby is naturally feeding four hourly, what a ridiculous thing to suggest.

Ds1 was a 4 hourly feeder. I wasn't remotely surprised because he was fed entirely on demand because I knew fuck all about babies and therefore let the baby lead me. I only started timing the distance between his feeds when the HV said he couldn't be drinking very much at only X feeds a day - his weight gain, however, was massive. He slept through the night at 10 weeks - 12 hour nights, right through.

Ds2 wasn't. He was the same sized baby but fed two hourly, much smaller amounts. he slept through at somewhere between 11 and 14 months. His weight gain (or lack of) nearly dropped him off the chart, although he was never even slightly slim - his was and is very short. And again, I wasn't remotely surprised, because I still knew fuck all about babies and figured that if you feed them when they seem hungry, they won't starve or get fat.

If the nappies are fine and the weight gain is fine, leave the baby alone. Don't mither them. They are instinctive little creatures, and at 10 weeks old even a neglected one will open it's gob and scream at the first twinge of hunger.

i agree with coldtits. IF the baby's weight is fine and the baby is content, leave the baby alone. that is a very important IF. i have known a couple of very efficient big bonny healthy babies who were ebf and did the four hourly thing, mums had a generous milk supply and simply fed 15minutes on each side every four hours (so so rare in a bf baby! i was quite envious as my DS seemed all over the place by comparison) - they did have a bf 'dreamfeed' though - they didn't go 12 hours at this stage. the mums were routine queens but the babies were absolutely fine. i will say that the babies did wean around a year though as i think (amateur psych) they only equated it with nutrition rather than love iyswim - bfing is about more than just milk after all) and one did have a dwindling supply around a year because i suppose it couldn't sustain the four hour thing. bfing on demand much better for long term supply.

Coldtits - but why 4 hours/120 mins? Why not any other time frame like every 72 mins or 3hrs 26 mins? How is that a normal biological way to feed?

We don't have clocks in nature, the sun rises and sets at slightly different times each day (though obviously midday is always midday) so how do babies innately know that 120 mins has passed from the beginning of their last feed to when they suddenly feel hungry?

I just don't get it. The only way I can think it works is if the mother has a massive storage capacity and if she distracts the baby until the 4 hours have elapsed not that the baby knows how tell the time at a few weeks old.