Or a growth spurt? Or something else? And more importantly, is this normal?
DS is 10 days old. until a couple of days ago he was eating regularly and suckling well at each feed (at some feeds he was doing almost constant deep sucks and swallowing and at other feeds he was pausing a lot between swallowing) and I felt confident I knew when he had finished and could settle him down easily. He was sleeping well between feeds.
For the last couple of days, he has started doing "feeds" where he spends most his time shallow sucking or just holding my nipple in his mouth and barely doing any swallowing (even when I do breast compressions and keep swappIng breasts). Sometimes he is wide awake with eyes open when he does this. These "feeds" are at times when I would expect him to be hungry and eating properly. They can last an hour and a half and I really can't tell most of the time when he's done (he either falls asleep with nipple on mouth or spits it out and sleeps but when I put him down to sleep, he starts stirring and rooting so I put him back on breast).
I read about cluster feeding and they all say it's early evening but DS has behaved like this at a morning feed, a 2am feed and a 4am feed (not all on same day).
Otherwise he has lots of wet and dirty nappies and gaining weight. Latch fine and no nipple pain.
Does anyone have any ideas?? Thank you!