EBF 5 month old - two hours between feeds?

[comixminx]

Hi all, just a bit of advice wanted about a small doubt put into my head by my mother... My DD is 5 months old now and is growing well, consistently on the 2nd percentile so although she's a small baby she's on "her" percentile as it were. Plenty of wet and dirty nappies so overall everything must be fine.

Mum was here last week, looking after DD when I went back to work for two Keeping in Touch days. She noted that DD feeds every two hours during the day and felt this was a bit frequent for a baby of her age. Is it? DD does have a cold at the moment and has been waking through the night every two hours, but I've put that down to a mixture of four month sleep regression and this cold. I'm hoping it will stop soon(!) and she'll be back to waking every four or so hours during the night which is what she was doing before Christmas.

So, how frequently do you expect a five month old baby to feed during the day and during the night?

Separately, I'm wondering what to do when I go back to work - she's likely to be about 10 months old so will be weaned but "food is for fun until they're one" so not getting the majority of her nutrition from solids. On the 2 KIT days this past week, she had some expressed milk, a small bit of formula, and Mum brought her into work so I could give her a lunchtime feed. That worked fine (I did get engorged boobs and leaks but fed her when got back at the end of the day and the next day and it subsided quickly). But I don't really like expressing, it's boring and can be a bit uncomfortable and I don't get much out. Will it make sense by then to drop some milk feeds during the day, or not? Although I have pretty much EBFd so far I think I might rather give her more formula during the day than try to chase my tail with expressing. It's a way away I know but would be interesting to get views...

Hi,I've no idea what's normal but my DD fed every 2 - 2.5 hours between 7am and 10pm (with a bit of cluster feeding in the evening) from birth until she was about 7 months old. I started weaning at 6 months and as she got the idea of solids she seems to have started dropping feeds of her own accord. So in the day I now bf at 7am, 8am, noon, 4pm, 7pm and 8pm (not sure she really needs the last one but it settles her so I'm sticking with it) and then sometimes once in the night - a couple of people have still said that's a lot but it works for me.

My 5 month old was feeding 2.5ish hourly in the daytime. Now he is 6 months and on 3 meals a day and feeds have finally spaced out to 3 hours! Think he was feeding 2-3 times in the night at 5 months. We did have to work at sorting the night feeds out after the 4 months sleep regression though, it didn't happen automatically.

At 10 months you won't be exclusively breastfeeding anyway, so I'd consider formula the same as any other food. If it's easier to give formula during the day then do it.

At the moment ds is feeding first thing, mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon and bedtime, though I can imagine he'll drop a daytime feed before long. By 10 months your DD may only be having 1-2 milk feeds during the day anyway, or she might even just hold out til you get home from work.

Thanks all for the useful info. Sounds like her frequency of feeding is nothing to worry about at all, great. (Funny how Mum never BFd and still reckons she's an expert on it all! )

TSC, is your recommendation to go for purees based on me going back to work by around 10 months, or general? I was aiming to do BLW because my brother & SIL have done it and found it worked well for them. DD does take formula ok (though not always massively enthusiastically) so I'm not worried about someone else getting food into her - Mum's already managed it for two days.

MoonUnit, sounds like good advice to think of formula as just another foodstuff by then. Let's see what happens before then with weaning, I guess.

I am rather older than 5 mths, and I have something to eat and/or drink about every 2 hours or so.

If your baby is healthy and happy and thriving (and she is) what does it matter if she has a bf every 2 hours?

I mean....seriously, what on earth is wrong with it???

Hah hah tiktok that is a good riposte to my mum! Will remember it. I think it's because the assumption is that if you FF you can leave bigger gaps in between feeds, like maybe the fabled four hours? It wasn't my worry as such, more my mum's, and then I wondered if she had a point IYSWIM. And yes as per TSC it was also a question as to whether it might cause difficulties later on with childcare.

TSC, yes, that's a point about nursery / BLW. I haven't gone to see round nurseries yet so haven't asked any of these questions - I might end up with a childminder because at this point I really don't know what I will end up doing.

I worked in a nursery and some of our babies were BLW - we just gave them the toddler meals. It's kind of easier to let some babies get on with it as otherwise you're spoonfeeding 3 babies at once.

When DD (20 weeks) and I are at home she rarely goes two hours between feeds as I always offer the breast if she's fed up reading books, playing under her gym or sitting in her highchair watching me tidy kitchen\ stuff my face.

But when we are out for the day she tends to go for about two hours without a feed.

comixminx I know what you mean about mums. My mum ff too and I'm constantly getting comments about what I should and shouldn't be doing! Grr...

Love breastfeeding. Going back to work soon so making the most of doing it all day!

comix, even the 4 hour formula thing is pretty outdated now - I don't think any of my friends who ff feed that infrequently, it's all on demand and is mostly around the 3 hour mark.

TBH, I think every 2 hours is totally normal, DS is coming up to 5 months (next week) and goes anywhere from 1 to 4 hours depending on sleeping, outings etc, but 4 is rare and I don't encourage that in the day tbh - I'd rather get the 4 hours at night (I wish! )

Re going back to work, don't forget you'll be expressing instead of a feed not as well as, so you'll probably get more out.

Dd2 is 5 months old and feeds every 2.5 hours or so too, sometimes more frequently and sometimes less so, like at night there is a 4-6 hour gap. I feed her to sleep for the night at 8pm and she wakes 11, 4 and 6 usually and feeds around 8am, 10am, 2pm-4pm (cluster feed/nap in bed), 5.30pm ish, and 8pm in bed again.

Dd1 was formula fed and fed every 3 hours during the day for quite a while, and more frequently than that when she was tiny.

If you want to do BLW I would say go for it. She should be feeding herself pretty well by 10 months. I did BLW with dd1 and she was a milk monster and didn't really get going with food until 9 months but she caught up quickly. I would say don't be afraid to give it a go, you'd be surprised what babies are capable of feeding themselves, and if it doesn't work out you can always do spoonfeeding instead. With BLW you can always give her plenty of weetabix and porridge, and high calorie foods like cream cheese and avocado and buttery mashed potato - just that it's her in control of the spoons!

we did baby led weaning and DD fed the same frequency as you (day and night).

Same weight as well (doesn't matter that they're smaller than others).

She still feeds every 2 hours in the day (prehaps more) except originally it was alternating solids and milk and now it's just alternating meals and snacks. I BF her every 3-4 hours at night still too.

She went from second (6months) to 0.4 (9months), but doc was happy as she is clearly thriving.

In fact I used the lower weight as a reason to feed her every 2 hours to my MIL

Thanks everyone for the feedback and thoughts! Especially yours, PA, which I'll bear in mind if DD drops a percentile when I start weaning.

Just to add my experience. DD never really got into a pattern with feeding but will go anything between 1 and 3 hours during the day. She is also on the 2nd centile but she has always been very active and lively so this hasn't worried me.

We did BLW from 5.5m and she loved it. She started knocking back a fair amount of solid food at 6m and dropped feeds, then had a cold at 7m and only wanted milk for about a fortnight. Then her appetite picked up again.

She's just under 9m now. I went back to work 4 weeks ago and feed her morning and evening and in the middle of the night. DH looks after her during the day and she has three meals plus snacks, plus a mid-morning and a mid-afternoon bottle. I express some milk for her at work partly for my comfort and partly because I want to keep my supply up so I can feed her at weekends. So she normally has one bottle of EBM and one of formula a day.

And it is all working out just fine.

With BLW weaning you'll notice your baby eats much more some days than others but that doesn't matter because what you want them to learn is to eat to hunger. In our case spoonfeeding has never been an option. When DD only wanted milk at 7m it was knackering because my supply had already dropped. I tried desperately to top her up with spoonfeeding and all that happened was that she got very good at chucking spoons around! But in the long run it didn't matter. Her appetite for solids returned fairly fast.