BF routine for 5 weeks old...please have a look and give me your advice!

[suzym1984]

Hi!

I have received excellent advice on this forum before so I am posting here, sorry if its not the appropriate place!

I am BF my 5 week old DS and its going well, hes gainning weight etc. However, I have so much "advice" from friends and relatives that by now he should be taking 4 oz every 4 hours etc. He tends to want to cluster feed on an evening, every 40 mins sometimes, and my mam says that I am obviously overfeeding him! All the "advice" is getting me stressed and making me doubt feeding on demand etc.

So far our routine is as follows:

Feed on demand throughout the day, usually every 2 hours< sometimes more, and he usually has a couple of naps in the day, not at set times tho.

He cluster feeds from around 5pm to about 8pm and again I feed on demand,

I then go to bed at about 8.30 and leave DH with a bottle of expressed milk which he gives whenever DS wants it, about 10-11.

Then DH brings DS up to bed at 12, I give a quick feed (I suspect just to soothe him). and then he sleeps until 3.30 for a feed and change.

He then sleeps until about 6-6.30 when he wakes for another feed. He then tends to be up for the day.

Does this routine sound OK for his age? Should I be trying to stretch his feeds to every 4 hours? Maybe putting him down earlier?

ARRRRRR I hate doubting myself like this!

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long post

FF fed babies are the 4 hour routine, my 12 week old baby does that now hes FF but when he was 5 weeks i was BF and fed on demand and was about every 2 hours he may be going through the 6 week growth spurt as weel if your finfing hes doing lots of cluster feeds may just be building your supply up! sounds like your doing a great job as long as baby is happy and thriving nothing to worry about!

Moules, I found expressing difficult too, in the end I decided to just give up on the expressing and feed LO myself.

Hope you find a way to help you.

Thanks to everyone who replied to this, I've been having exactly the same thing happen with my little girl (5 weeks old) and found this thread really reassuring. She can cluster feed on and off for ages in the early evening and I didn't know whether this should be encouraged (I nearly wrote "allowed" then!). But then I read this and a friend said you can't spoil a baby so I'm feeling much better now! I guess she will change so much in the next few weeks I can't get too hung up about it now. And I don't mind it, although I am stuck on the sofa for ages feeding her!

PS Moules I find the same problem with expressing, what sort of pump are you using? I was using a manual pump but have been recommended a Medela electric one. I managed to find a secondhand one on a local forum but as I need to replace the funnel I haven't tried it yet. Or a friend hired a hospital-grade one from local SureStart centre - it's supposed to be really quick!

We FF DS1 and even then we fed as needed despite following a routine, which was wonderful as he slept through the night very quickly. If we'd followed the 4 hour rule we would've had a very distressed baby (and parents), and he would've woken up all through the night not having had enough during the day.

I got told when my relatives were here that I was BF DS2 too much and too often, which really got me depressed. He's nearly completely on FF now so... IGNORE when ppl say you're overfeeding them etc. Even with DS1 I was told by HV that I was overfeeding(FF) and that he was going to be an obese child. Load of nonsense, he's the thinnest in his nursery class now!

" If your Mum comes around refuse to give her a drink or anthing to eat if its less than 4 hours since she had anything too "

lol!

I agree that you are doing a fab job! I too found it confusing when listening to others' advice but one thing that helped me to stay confident was the thought that although this 'advice' was coming from other mothers, none of them were the mother of my DD so only i knew what was best. DD (EBF) is now 14 weeks old and has settled herself into a nice little routine of sorts which basically means waking at 7am, feeding roughly every 3 hours with a burst of activity after each feed and then a nap before the next one then bed at 7pm with one or two feeds through the night. We just followed her lead and let her decide what she wanted to do and a real pattern emerged at about 6 weeks. First child so no expert by any means but so far so good! Some of the friends/family who questioned my feeding on demand policy have commented on how content our DD is and think that it is because unlike their babies she has not been forced into a feeding/sleeping schedule - I think they may be converted! Obviously different things work/don't work for different babies but your little one seems happy and most importantly is gaining weight so you're 'doing it right' (as 'right' as we can ever be anyway!) Well done and enjoy!