5 weeks old, a few questions - exclusively breastfed

[snowchick1977]

Hi

I have posted a few times and had great advice. My daughter is 5 weeks old and breastfeeding is going ok. Those of you with experience, could you advise as to the following:

• She goes 2 hours now between feeds, longer if we are travelling as she is asleep. Have you any tips for extending this time? She goes 3 hours at night though which is wicked

• She has terrible bottom wind resulting in 2 hours of hysteria at night, any tips on getting rid of this as she in in lots of pain. Shes not a sicky baby and rarely has burps, its all down below

• last night she fed pretty much constantly from 6-10, shes never done this before??? Any advice?

Thanks so much in advance, you lot have kept me going when i was close to giving up so thank-you.

Xxxxx

I would say don?t expect her to go much longer than that tbh, in fact if she does you might find she goes for a shorter time at night! It?s mostly a good idea to feed as much as you can in the day in an attempt to tank her up for the night. Speaking of which, the feeding from 6-10 was mostly likely cluster feeding, which is really common in babies. There is also a 6 week growth spurt which involves lots of feeding so it could have been the start of that.

Re the farting, have you tried lying her on her back and ?bycicling? her legs? That always used to work for DS.

Congratulations on your DD, sounds like you are doing a great job!

I hope you get some brilliant replies because at 11 weeks my DD can still need feeding every 2 hours some days (and nights), can easily do 1.5 hour feeding sessions and 3 hour ones occassinally and spent all of last night passing wind!

I fear all this may be normal...

I don't have any advice on how to lengthen the time between feeds. It just happens when the baby gets a bigger stomach and can fill the tummy with more milk. Mine started sleeping through (anywhere between 6-9 hours at night) from about 11 to 12 weeks. However her day feeds stay just as frequent, about every 2-3 hours. One thing I found helped is Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. It's not a routine book, but a set of tips on how to help the baby to establish day from night, and self settling etc.

Cluster feeding in the evening is very normal. Is she napping enough during the day? It could either be tanking up milk for the evening, or that she's overtired and want a lot of comfort sucking. Pantley has a chart on her book about how much your baby should be napping at a certain age. But I found recognising the signs of overtiredness vs hunger helps. My DH can rock DD if it's just overtiredness, IYSWIM.

As for the bottom wind, mine doesn't have that problem. But I did baby massage and they taught us things like bicycling legs, doing a rugby around her stomach, and flower petals around the belly button etc. Maybe you can google that and find a video?

at six months in DS seams happy to go to 3hours every now and then. that being said he is feeding much much quicker so what used to take 1 1/2 hours now takes 5-10 minutes.

remember she has a tiny little tummy and needs to keep filling it up.
in regards to the wind try some baby yoga either bicycling as Cosmosis suggested or lie her on her back her feet and gently bend her knees in so they touch her tummy then gentle roll her side to side. is she on antibotics? DS had terriable farts as a new born and it was because of antibotics. the farts stopped (smelling at least) when we finnished the course.

cluster feeding is common. the only thing i can suggest is to pre arm yourself. get ready to be on the couch at about 6. have some snacks ready a big bottle of water, the remote ect. get someone to make a dinner that is easy to eat one handed. a warm lamb salad perhappes.

also a huge well done! I'm only six months into this motherhood thing and i don't relish those first two month it's wonderful and joyous but really stupidly hard work. breastfeeding gets much easier as you go.

2 hourly feeds sounds pretty normal to me too - my ds didn't go three hours between feeds til he was eating solid food in between. I also think if you push her to go longer between feeds in the day she will just need to make up for it with more frequent feeds at night.

6-10 doesn't sound too bad for cluster feeding either - at least it's not 11pm-3am or something! Could just be a little growth spurt.

Does your baby like baths? If so maybe a warm bath (or sharing a bath with you) when she starts fussing with wind might help. Or even just go for a walk with her tummy to tummy in a sling - might distract her if nothing else.

I fed my DD 2 hourly in the day until about 14 weeks, then she would go to 2.5 hr which I did until I started weaning her.

Having said that a friend of mine did the Gina (can I mention that on here?) thing and her DD fed every 4 hours from quite early on. Others fall naturally onto 3 hourly schedule (7, 10, 1, 4, 7) which I think is a nice pattern. If you want to extend her times then just add 5-10 min a day - jolly her along with a walk around the garden/bounce/song or something so she's distracted and not grizzly. In theory she'll be able to take a larger feed each time which will last her longer.

My feeling is that 2 or 2.5 hourly is quite normal and if that's what DD wants and needs then go with it.

The constant feeding during the evening is also quite normal. It's cluster feeding as mentioned above, or perhaps a bit of colic. You should be prepared to just have your boobs out all evening until she falls asleep. It passes after a few weeks.

A bit of advice I wished I'd had sooner is not to read too many books and expect your LO to conform. I stressed myself out so much by expecting DD to be doing things when she had a different pattern in mind altogether. I found formalising the routine that she naturally chose (this happened at about 8 weeks) worked well for us.

My DS still can't go much more than 2 hours between feeds! The great thing is that feeds get shorter as their tummies get bigger and they get more efficient at feeding. So by 12 weeks or so feeds will have reduced in length, soon they may be no more than 5 mins long. Agree best to fill her up in the day. You can't over feed an ebf baby. If she seems hungry, it means she is.