help! am i feeding her enough?

[sparklystuff]

our new baby is 10 days old. after a shaky start the feeding has been going well, but because she keeps going to sleep/losing interest during the feed, it's very stop/ start and to get 20 mins worth into her takes over an hour. and the last few times she hasn't even got the 20 mins worth, only 10 minutes on the last one, so i'm stressing she's not getting enough. she does seem to wake up when she's hungry though. if it's truly on demand feeding, do i just relax and trust that she will tell me when she's hungry and take enough. we are still getting plenty of wet/ dirty nappies and so far her weight gain has been good, she's 45g over her birth weight today.

I'd relax gaining weight, nappies etc sounds ok IMO

well done

thank you, the midwife who came to check her today said that i should maybe express some and get her to take that from the cup, but that seems like a backwards step. trying to force milk into her is just stressing both of us out.

Sounds very like my ds at that stage. He's 7wo old and would still be quite similar, but in 1 week he's put on a pound!! Weight gain was initially slow, so I worried and just fed as he needed but stressed about whether he was getting enough!! He's certainly making up for it now, even though feeds are short (but frequent). I wish I had just relaxed and trust that he knew what he was doing even if I didn't!!!(FYI - I always put him back on first boob after switching to ensure he got enough of the hindmilk, for calories) So please don't stress and just enjoy these times, I've learned to do that (now!) and life is so much better! . Your baby sound like she's thriving - well done you!! So R-E-L-A-X

Has someone told you babies need to feed for 20 minutes to get enough milk? If you have been given this advice it is a little outdated, there is not set time a baby should feed for as there is no set amount of milk an individual mother can make/store at any one time (everyone varies so there could be no firm rule on how long a baby must feed for).

If baby doing at least 6 heavy wet disposable nappies (8 cloth nappies) and at least 2 poos the size of a £2 coin that are yellow/mustardy/seedy, isn't sleeping for very long stretches multiple times a day (one 4-6 hour stretch is fine if they feed frequently when they are awake), and is feeding well at least 8-12 times a day then you are doing very well indeed.

Congratulations on your daughter's birth.

thanks ladies :-) every midwife who has come round seems to have slightly different advice. she does seem happy in herself inbetween feeds

i got the 20 minutes thing when i was started on a milk pump in hospital, i was told 5 minutes on each breast and then repeat. also i think some of the visiting midwives may have said about it, gotta go, madam's waking up and trying to suck daddy's nose!

Ah, expressing is a bit different as a pump isn't (generally speaking) as effective as a baby but expressing for set times is fairly common before milk come in just for breast stimulation rather than to mimic a feed.

Not all mums need to do this though to help their milk come in, just some who are parted from baby or if baby isn't well enough to suck effectively, or those who need to give extra colostrum.

This might show you how you are already reading your baby's feeding cues and give you a bit of a confidence boost.

thanks for the comments and the link, i had been recording how many minutes she'd been spending on each breast at each feed but i think i will stop that now and just let her take as much as she seems happy with and just note the number of feeds/ times so i can keep track of how we're doing that way. still plenty of nappies coming.

I also recorded how many minutes on each side pretty religiously in the early weeks. I think it made me feel somehow in control. But I agree that if you can try and relax and not worry about timing it will be easier on your nerves and make the experience more pleasant for you and your LO. Easier said than done I know. Her feeding patterns will chop and change so much in the next few months with growth spurts etc so IMO its best to just feed her when she seems hungry and don't watch the clock.

thanks, i do find i'm glancing up at the clock all the time, rather than enjoying our time together. looking in my red book (personal child health record), in the breastfeeding assessment form bit 'an answer indicating effective feeding' is 'baby feeds for 5-30 minutes at most feeds'. so that and the above comments have made me relax a bit. i suppose all babies feed at their own speed, if only boobs had a gauge that told you how much had been taken :-)