Should I wake my 3 week old baby to feed?

[scubajules]

I've been reading the Gina ford book (contented baby) and a bit confused (do these routines actually work?) i've just moved from BF to bottle and trying to work out if I should wake my 3 week old for a feed to fit in 6 feeds a day and not confuse night and day. However she falls asleep on the bottle then she's awake again looking for more milk and cries when she's awake most of the time? Is this a growth spurt or am I waking her mucking around with her feed times? new mum and a bit lost any help from you mums would be great

That sounds like totally normal behaviour for a three-week-old . As far as I know, the normal recommendation is to 'demand feed' at that age, whether bf or ff.

I would guess these strict routines do work, but you've come up against the problem that many people have with them, that is, you have to more or less force the baby into the routine at the beginning.

Thanks :)

Congratulations

I would never wake a sleeping baby for anything other than an emergency tbh.

I'd let her sleep when she wants, and feed her when she wants, and you can't go far wrong.

did you hear that?

that was the noise of 20,000 mums going NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Feed her when she needs it. You'll find she'll settle into her own routine soon enough My kids settled themselves into a lovely 4 hourly routine.

Thanks Mums it's in the bin, here we go x :)

Unless your baby is going for a long time and not feeding then I wouldn't wake them

One against the grain here. If your darling wee baby sleeps for more than 4.5 hours without a feed, wake her. Otherwise, I'd just let her sleep.

Longer term, routines really do work, so long as you interpret them flexibly (like giving 1/2 hr either side of the suggested times. GF's best suggestion is to always start the day at 7am so that you fall into a morning pattern quite quickly. I found that it was much easier to know where I was at in DD's day if I knew that her first feed was always 7am. Now she sleeps 7pm - 7am like a little clock. I guess she is a contented little robot!

Motto in our house: let sleeping babies and dogs lie

Sorry -another one here who woke her baby for a feed - agree with kiwi. We really liked Gina Ford. DD took to the routine and I needed to have some structure as I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with a baby . We have adapted it to suit our own particular needs, but we still more or less follow it 6 months on. In our case DD has bad cows' milk protein allergy and if she went too long between feeds and got too hungry she'd drink too quickly and take in too much liquid and would end up very distressed and in a lot of pain. Waking her for smaller and more frequent feeds was by far the better option.

sorry if i gave the impression i was speaking for everyone (just realised it might have looked like that).

TBH I think (as I know quite a few others do) its not up to you whether you can follow a routine like GF, its up to your baby. 3 weeks is still very young though, you could try and revisit it later on if you think it would be for you.

Routine or not, I would disagree with people who say never wake a baby to feed. Sorry but some very young babies (including mine a few weeks ago) just don't demand to be fed and don't wake to feed with enough regularity for healthy weight gain or to avoid dehydration. My DD lost a lot of weight the first week as we both struggled with breast feeding, but it was a vicious circle as the less she fed, the less energy she had, the more she slept, etc.

Not saying what you should or shouldn't do, just wanted to make the point that letting very young babies sleep as much as they want and feeding on demand isn't always the best thing. My little girl was wasting away, but is thankfully now back on track. I however am a little head-mashed from having got it so wrong the first week or two.

Dx

Delia I had the same problem with my dd and was told to wake her at least every three hours to feed. It's still a very different situation to feeding at specified times during the day in the hope it will encourage the baby to sleep through the night.

Also had similar problems to Delia and silkenladder - was also told to wake baby and make sure she fed 3 hourly in the early weeks as DD was not feeding well, was low birthweight and needed to catch up a bit I think.

That said, if your baby is growing and gaining weight well, you might not need to. Speak to your HV or Doctor if you're concerned about her weight or think she's not drinking enough. But certainly feed on demand!

She will probably settle down soon enough and learn the difference between night and day so don't worry too much. 3 weeks is still very young.

In common with Deliaskis, Silkenladder and theborrower, I did wake DD to feed. She was 3 and a bit weeks early, low-ish birthweight, jaundiced and 'sleepy' - she didn't wake to feed.

She's my first so I had no idea what was normal - luckily a bfc put me on the right track and said I should wake her every couple of hours to feed in the first week or so - to build up my supply and to get her up and running too.

After a few days she starting waking herself and we didn't need to do it anymore. Had she been normal birthweight, waking to feed at regular intervals herself etc we certainly wouldn't have done this, we'd have followed her lead and gone with the flow more.

If your baby is well and feeding fairly regularly, at this very young age I would just feed her when she's hungry and not worry too much about precise timings. Congratulations, enjoy her!