is a 10 minute feed enough?? how do i make him drink more?

[pogface]

My month old ds is quite regular in his feeds every 3 hours, but recently thats been because i ignore his crying and rooting for as long as possible during the day, when he seems to want to feed more often ( i know he can go 6 hours without a problem sometimes so i think the rooting is just looking for comfort). The problem is, he won't feed for more than 5-10 mins and then resolutely refuses to take more and is usually very sleepy. we've tried changing his nappy to wake him up, but this just pisses him off and he will go back on the boob only to chew on it. ive also tried changing breasts even tho im pretty sure he hasnt finishes the first one (a big no-no i know) and he will drink more sometimes but thats probably cos the fore milk is sweeter?
any suggestions?

Pog, why do you ignore your baby's crying and rooting? Why do you say this is 'just' for comfort? Comfort is very important to human beings, and especially little ones of just a few weeks old

How else can your baby tell you he would like to feed/cuddle/snuggle?

5-10 mins isn't very long, but maybe he is tired after all that crying and rooting....sometimes babies do switch off like this.

What is his weight like?

There is nothing wrong with changing breasts to try to get your baby to feed a bit longer - there is no way of knowing if the first breast is 'finished' or not, except by the baby's behaviour.

Can I suggest you change tactics completely, and just feed him when he indicates he would like to feed? Sometimes, babies can go six hours between feeds, but more than just occasionally is not normally a healthy pattern for a month old baby and will not stimulate good milk production.

There is no difference in the sweetness of breastmilk - or none that would make much difference to the baby. Foremilk is proportionately higher in lactose, but truly, no baby is going to notice.

He might feed better if you fed him more often; month old babies can't usually go for three hours without a feed. If he's rooting and crying then the chances are he's hungry. If you've left him for too long then maybe he's simply tired himself out and is too tired to feed properly.

My dd didn't go for three hours during the day without a feed for about 6m, whether breast or bottle. Every three hours or even more often sounds normal to me for a one-month-old.

My dd only fed for 10 mins at a time but at this age she was def feeding more often. Yes she would manage a longer spell at night but that was because the more frequent feeds in the day kept her going.

At a month old my dd was feeding every hour for the most part - there's no way she could have gone for three hours, let alone six.

At a month old my dd would feed at least every 3 hours in the daytime, and when she was having a growth spurt (I think at 6 or 7 weeks), it was more like every 2 hours especially in the late afternoon/early evening - but I would look upon this as preparation for a better night, with less feeds then . Even Gina Ford (sorry to bring her up), if you look at her schedule for older babies suggests daytime feeds with a maximum gap of about 4 hours or so.

DD is now 5 months, still exclusively breastfed, and is down to feeding every 3.5 to 4 hours and takes about 15 mins to complete a feed, but was taking a bit longer than this at 1 month old (but I did have to sometimes tickle her awake to keep her feeding and stop her dropping off on the boob).

HTH

My dd was a 'speed-feeder' and only ever 'fed' for 5-10 minutes (miraculously draining a breast in that time!) but she did comfort suck for a while after and often doze a bit which was wonderful for us both. I think around 4 months she started occasionally going 3-4 hours between feeds but I tended to follow her lead for the first months. And it helped keep my breast milk flowing too.

Try to relax and not worry about scheduling feeds this early on?

I disagree with some of the comments here. You are doing what you think is right for your baby. As long as he is putting on weight, you are giving him enough milk. I used to 'put him off' to encourage him to feed every 3 hours (as long as he didn't go mental.) If they are hungry, they will cry. I have so many friends whose lives became miserable because they took the 'on demand' breastfeeding advice too seriously and basically felt like cows rather than human beings. My LO (not so little 1t 20lb at 4 1/2 months) used to speed feed and I always worried. Up until a week ago, he fed 5 times a day for 5-10 minutes, every four hours and slept through.

Also (sorry to bang on) I also don't think you should take this foremilk/hindmilk business too seriously. In some books it says that the realy creamy stuff doesn't come through until 15 minutes into a feed. If that was the case, my son would never have got any. I know it's hard but the best advice I ever got was from our NCT instructor. She said that whatever advice you get, smile politely and listen but noone knows your baby like you do. For what its worth, it sounds like you are doing really well.

My HV watched me breastfeed once and commented that I have a very fast let down, so a 10 minute feed was more like a 15 minute feed for other babies as the milk was coming in a lot faster, and she wasn't having to work too hard for it iyswim.
My DD is eight weeks old now. She feeds about every two - three hours in the daytime, mostly two hours apart in the evenings. She tends to go from about 10:00 at night til 7:00 in the morning without a feed, which I think is very good. BUT the feed she has before going to sleep can last up to an hour!! She tends to be 'asleep' about half an hour in, but is still sucking, and I can still see my milk at the corner of her mouth when she relaxes for a second.
Have you tried stroking your DS's cheek / chin when he's drifting off? It works really well with my DD, especially in the beginning when she'd drift off and then wake up half an hour later still hungry.
As Charbell says, as long as your DS is gaining weight and your HV is happy, don't be too concerned.

About the foremilk / hindmilk thing... I was told it was about 5 - 7 minutes for the hindmilk to come through, and then about 15 - 18 minutes for the very very fatty milk to come through. But it does differ in every woman.

Sorry, CharBell, I don't understand why making a baby cry and root in order for his mum to stretch out the feeds to 3 hourly is 'right for your baby'. We actually don't know if this baby is gaining weight appropriately, but we do know he is unhappy.

You are right about the books getting it wrong about fore and himdmilk. The human body does not work to the clock like this - and in any case, the level of fat in the milk changes gradually as the milk is removed, and some babies get a full feed in a comparatively short time, precisely because we cannot use the clock as a guage.

It's no more appropriate to use the clock as a guage here, than it is to use it as a guage for deciding when to feed the baby. Babies don't work to the clock, either, and shouldn't be expected to at just a month old.

Big misunderstandings about fore and hind milk: it's not correct to talk about it 'coming through'.

The milk the breasts make is the same. When the baby is not feeding, the more watery components of it trickle down to the front of the breast, leaving the creamier (stickier) components adhering to the storage cells. Of course, most of the milk is a mix. As the feed progresses and milk is removed, the creamier components dis-adhere and become available to the baby.

The amount of fat in the milk is directly disporportionate to the amount of milk in the breast - loads of milk in the breast = less fat AND less milk in the breast (as at the end of a feed) = more fat.

To time this and say it takes x minutes or y minutes is just crazy and any author of any book that states this is ahowing just how ignorant they are of how breastfeeding works.

Mentioning no names.

"As Charbell says, as long as your DS is gaining weight and your HV is happy, don't be too concerned."

What about the baby being happy?

I couldn't care less about HVs being happy!

I would agree with tiktok... my dd hardly ever fed for more than 10/15 mins but did so fairly regularly... probably every hour or two (less at night) for the first 2/3 months.

I think if he is rooting you should probably just feed him, he'll stretch it out soon enough.

I didn't leave my baby to scream or anything! When he was tiny, I found that if I cuddled him or rocked him, that was enough comfort for him. I knew when he was hungry and when he wasn't. Rooting doesn't always mean hunger and getting your nips out isn't the only way of comforting a baby, no matter how tiny.

Got to say my ds fed for 10 minutes max every 3-4 hours from a couple of weeks old (and only ever one breast) and this was enough for him, he was just looking for comfort the rest of the time. But why don't you try feeding him more often to see if he really is hungry more often and if not find another way to comfort him (I used a dummy to avoid the chewing thing but don't want to suggest that to anyone else!)

Sorry, I just assumed from the original post that the baby was being fed every three hours. Thats about normal for my DD so I didn't think anything wrong with the orignal post, focused more on the amount of time pogface's DS was feeding.

I do agree with tiktok re the baby strongly indicating a need here. Also, your milk supply is just developing in these first few weeks. The more you feed, the more milk there will be.

I also think it's worth remembering that until a very few weeks ago your baby was inside you, being fed all the time! He doesn't know anything about schedules. And a six hour gap during the day for a tiny baby isn't a good idea, it really isn't. I suspect you've been reading Gina Ford when you talk about 'finishing' a breast. There really is no such thing. Your milk is never finished. Keeping a feed going by swapping sides is actually a good idea. But it's really, really normal IME for a tiny baby to feed little and often, because they have incredibly tiny tummies and breastmilk is digested quickly anyway.

My ds was every 2 hours for 10 minutes on one breast,normal as far as i was concerned

Agree with others - its pointless to time feeds. Do you count how long it takes to eat your own meals.

Not sure if it has been mentioned but babies vary in how hard they suck and how often, so you may get a baby who sucks v hard and gulps down a feed so will feed faster and draw hindmilk out sooner. Then you may get a baby who has a weaker suck and pauses in between sucks. They both get similar amounts of milk but will take longer. Everyone is different and babies are different so utterly pointless to time feeds and duration between htem