Help - baby feeding ALL THE TIME!

[YellowCecil]

Hi all

Beginning to despair and hoping for some advice. My 4 week old has breast fed well from the beginning but over recent weeks has been feeding for longer and closer together. She had a low birth weight and is in the bottom 2% now but is gaining weight well - 11oz in the last week. So all in all I should be happy that she is clearly getting all the food she needs.

however today is typical: She fed on and off all yesterday evening from 6ish to 10pm. She fed again at 12.30 for an hour, then at 3 for an hour and a half. then she woke at 5 for a 30min feed, then at 7. The 7am feed finally finished at gone 9 and she slept for 1 hr 30, then fed again for an hour, went down for about 20minutes and is feeding again now!

I am exhausted and need to get her to space these feeds out!

Please - any advice or suggestions gratefully recieved!

this is absolutely normal!

in fact, it is essential that she feeds like this, to build up your supply. I know it is exhausting, but it will only be for a few weeks, and she should fall into some kind of pattern.

You have the 6 weeks growth spurt coming up, so be prepared for mammoth feeding sessions!

it really does get better, but not for a couple of months.

you are doing really well - hang in there!!

YellowCecil, I bet you are exhausted - that sounds exactly like my DS at 4 weeks. It was very tough.

That does sound pretty normal to me, though -you might well be going through a growth spurt at 4 weeks, the evening feed sounds like cluster feeding to me (used to drive me round the bend, I felt like I didn't have time to go to the loo, let alone anything else) - in all honesty, if your DD is doing well weightwise, I would just try and go with the flow and hold on to the thought that it will get easier...

Feeds will space out more naturally as your DD gets older and bigger. At 4 weeks, there's not much else you can do to distract or comfort them - if she wants feeding, she wants feeding, and that's it, really.

I'm sorry if that's not what you were hoping for - I do really remember the exhaustion and frustration of week 4, it's awful - but (a) things tend to get easier at around 6 weeks, and the super-constant feeding spaces out more, and (b) can you try to make life easier for yourself in other ways, to help you cope with tiredness?

It's not always popular on these boards, but if feeding is going ok, expressing one feed so someone else can do a bottle feed at night is one option (kept me sane from 2 weeks on) - otherwise, can you nap more during the day, and get someone to take your baby away when she's sleeping?

It's so tough, but it does get easier...

I'd get the best advice you can on latch and positioning - if you could make any improvements it could improve the efficiacy of feeds.

Yellow, this is normal, and in a baby whose weight has given cause for concern is something to be celebrated - she has a lot of catching up to do :)

This will not last. Best thing is to accept it and adjust your life to accomodate it - far easier than trying to change these normal behaviours.

No reason to suspect latch difficulties, either - the frequency and length of the feeds are within normal. I mean, get someone to look if you like, but I don't think they will necessarily find anything.

Hope you have good help and support to look after you.

The good thing is that in another 2-4 weeks things will have settled down completely and you will have all the wonderful advantages of bfing - instant food being a great one, especially overnight. You could try to co-sleep and work out how to feed lying down if it's possible as it's easy then to actually sleep at night by latching then going to sleep yourself.

It's so hard when people rarely experience normal newborn babies until they have one, but this is absolutely how it SHOULD be, so push through it and know it will get better, and soon, and you're doing brilliantly.