Help - 5 week old is "eating too much" (breastfeeding), I don't know what I should do

[Bartimaeus]

DS is 5 weeks. We've had no problem breastfeeding since birth. He latches on fine and although is a very messy eater (loads of milk misses his mouth - goes on his chin, his clothes, my clothes...) he is putting on lots of weight.

I started off demand feeding, which meant about 10 minutes every hour. I got told this was far too often and to space it out to 2-3 hours. Thanks to an osteo, I managed to space out to 2 hours (4 at night), partly because we identified that he has silent reflux so some of his "I'm hungry" sticking out of tongue etc. were actually reflux signals (bad mummy!) and partly because she fixed something or other to do with his thorax so he can eat more without throwing it all back up. he still can't eat more than 20 minutes at a time though, and often its less than 15 minutes.

Last time I got him weighed however I was told he is gaining too much weight. Since leaving hospital it's an average of 50g/day whereas apparently it should be 25-30g/day...

Thing is, although I'm mainly spacing out his feeds to at least 2 hours, sometimes he really cries and cries and the only thing to stop him is to feed him. DH worries whenever I feed him with less than a 2 hour gap, but I feel so sorry for DS when he's chewing my arm (for example) or screaming the place down that I have to feed him.

Yesterday evening I ended up feeding him every hour for about 5 hours. He then slept for 11 hours without needing to feed (an anomoly - it was only because he hadn't slept all day).

Just realised this is really long, but I'm so confused. I'm told if I feed him too often it will give him more reflux plus he's gaining too much weight. But if I don't feed him when he wants it he cries so much it's horrible and I can't stand it. I don't know what to do - space out the feeds? Or demand feed?

If he's 5 weeks old, he's starting to head into the 6 week growth spurt territory. If he's asking for food then I would feed him. When you say about yesterday evening, that sounds like classic cluster feeding pattern to me - tanking up and then sleeping through.

I'm really not sure about the idea of spacing out feeds in such a tiny person. You and he are part of the same circle of feeding - by feeding on demand, he's 'telling' your breasts how much milk to produce. If you start to drop the frequency of feeds then your breasts consequently don't produce as much milk.

Has his reflux been diagnosed by anyone else other than the osteopath? The taking excess and then vomiting (or posseting??) back up, just sounds as though he's getting used to how much he can take at one time in his tummy. Not necessarily reflux.

Please could you think about ringing one of the BF helplines (LLL etc) and talk this through with them? I'm not sure that you've necessarily been given the right advice so far.

demand feed, you honestly can't overfeed a bf baby. It sounds as if you might have oversupply though so you might want to think about switching breasts only every two feeds (especially if he feeds every hour or so). Listen to your baby and not the cr**p advice you have been given. With ds i was told the same as you and thought him a difficult baby because he wanted feeding more than every 2 hours. with dd i just fed her every 40mins and we were all much happier. Both children are now healthy, wiry and in no way fat

Hi- I'm afraid I'm no expert, sure someone will come on who is ! But my youngest used to want to suck for comfort rather than food, luckily my milk use to run out fairly swiftly so he just used to suck away without getting more than he needed. However, that did mean I was 'on call' all the time. I ended up giving him a dummy which did the trick, but realise this is quite an emotive one and some people are very against dummies. Sure you will prob get a much better way of doing it on here, but just thought I would let you know what worked for me

I'm no expert (hopefully one will be along in a minute) but feeding hourly sounds totally normal to me, my DD was similar at the same age. Small babies have tiny tummies but need proportionately lots of food for growth. And sucking is also important for comfort and closeness, independent of nutritional requirements.

My understanding is that babies usually self-regulate their milk intake quite efficiently and can't really be overfed, at least if breastfed. My DD put on a similar amount of weight to your baby some weeks, and very little other weeks, but in all balanced out in the end. Again, I am no expert, but maybe you should just listen to what your instincts are telling you :)

Thanks for your replies. No one apart from osteo has identified the reflux, but they don't seem to particularly care. Doctor gave us some medicine when I said the osteo said he has it, it doesn't always seem to work though.

One thing that has worked is changing my diet (advice of osteo) to eat less acidy things, and DS seems to be in a lot less pain when bringing up sick.

In fact, apart from the osteo who said feeding every hour will mean DS has more reflux, everyone else (doctor, clinic, midwife) says feeding every hour is bad because I can't do much else. But I'd rather he was happy than I have 3 hours between each feed IYSWIM.

Mum I've tried a dummy many times but DS really doesn't like it. He spits it out or tries to hit my hand away when I'm holding the dummy. He does love sucking our fingers though, so one of us ends up holding him to comfort him with a finger in his mouth!

I'd always heard that you can't have an overweight bf baby, but now I'm being told that you can, and DS is set to become one (although he is still a very average weight as he was born 2 weeks early and comparatively light). It's so hard sticking to demand feeding when no one is suportive of it!

X-posts, sounds like lots of us think the same thing!

I'm supportive of demand feeding!

Please ring a BF helpline. x

I support demand feeding too! As others say, please do ring a bf helpline.

My(non-expert!) feeling is that your son is just catching up to his 'ideal' weight and at some point his weight gain will slow and start to follow a percentile. I really believe that at such a young age the baby is the expert- they know what/how much they need, and if they ask to be fed every hour then that's what we should do.

go back to demand feeding, it's what his body expects and needs. little babies will not overfeed if bfing. they just wont. 5 weeks is calssic growth spurt stage aswell so he will feed more over the ext coupld of weeks. honestly some of these HCP's need a proper education on how BF works.

Shall we get t-shirts made?!

Do what your DS and you want, I shouldn't worry about the weight gain. Mine was putting on a pound a week very early, worked it all off as a toddler though

Anyway if you get two HV, one will suck her teeth and say 50g a week is too much and the other one will look worried and say it's not enough

Ohhh wish I had time for a long reply but my little man is BORED and grizzly. Hang in there. I think in short, YES to BF on demand, NO you can't overfeed a BF baby & hourly feeds esp in evening at 5 weeks old totally normal I think. Sounds exactly like me a few weeks ago & even now he still 'cluster feeds' before he sleeps at night. Usually feeds LOTS between 5 & 9 pm. My LO is now 13weeks and a lovely cuddly baby. My HV said that they don't worry about an 'overweight' BF baby, only formula babies.

Hang in there. xx

What everyone else has said, PLUS, get them to check the charts they're using - BF babies gain weight differently to bottlefed babies, and if they're using old charts then they'll be giving you wrong advice.

Check kellymom.com for lots of very good, clear, well-researched (with sources) information if you have doubts.

From personal experience, just keep feeding on demand, even if less than 2 hours, whether he feeds for 5 minutes or 25. Mine didn't settle down to a more regular pattern until about 3 months. I found it so much easier to deal with life with a happy full baby than with a grumpy hungry one.

"everyone else (doctor, clinic, midwife) says feeding every hour is bad because I can't do much else."

Well this part is true but its just one of the inconveniences of some bf babies. It won't last for ever, as they get bigger stomachs, stronger sucks etc they usually will start to go longer between feeds of their own accord.

Please think about going to or calling La Leche or NCT helpline. You need to build up your confidence in your body, your instincts and your baby. Also see this bit of Kellymom as a start.

In support of demand feeding too. Your DS sounds similar to mine at that age and he jumped from the 50th centile for weight and height at birth to the 98th and has remained there since. He fed for short periods of time often (1-2 hourly day and night) and I block fed (same boob every three hours) to reduce oversupply though we still occasionally get the drinking from garden hose effect. He is now 5 months and has started spacing his feeds out more and the throwing up after feeds settled at about 3 months. Like you, I was happier keeping him happy by feeding on demand than spacing out feeds but making both of us miserable with it.

Just a thought, was the advice to space feeds out from the hospital purely in response to his weight gain (although this doesn't sound right if he is ebf) or was it given because you mentioned being tired of the hourly feeding?

Glad that all the advice here seems to be
Feed on demand of your baby not the HV
Contact a BFing group
Enjoy what is such a short time in their life

also remember that you can
read a book while bf
drink a small glass of wine while bf
eat chocolate while bf
talk while bf
watch telly while bf
have a foot massage bf
you cannot do any of these things while listening to your baby cry because he wants a feed or if you are walking him up and down to calm him

what witch said makes so much sense :) I am going to print this out in case I get any of the advice the OP has been given

In the same vein as witch you can also spend many many uninterrupted hours on MN :o

Who is telling you that you're overfeeding him?

thanks witch you made me laugh

seeker medical people. His paediatrician, the women at the clinic where I get him weighed every week, a midwife we saw for haptonomy classes...

I didn't complain about feeding every hour - they just asked me how often I fed and that was my answer!

The kellymom site is great - thanks for that link! And i definately identified with the article about Too much milk - think that might be our problem so will be trying out some of the techniques recommended.

The only thing that concerns me about the kellymom site is that they say more than normal weight gain is more than one ounze per day. DS is roughly at 1.5 at the moment....

But you said their concern was more for you than him- or have I misunderstood?

I don't usually post on bf threads, being well passed that point myself but your DS sounds very much like my DS1. He used to feed 40 minutes in the hour, virtually every hour, hardly going any longer at night (it was a killer!) for the first couple of months. He put on more than 50g a day for a short while - he was topping a lb a week when he was about your DS's age which I reckon is nearer 60g a day. Nobody criticised, the HV partically gave me a medal for being able to achieve that with only bf! If I tried to feed him less, he screamed. If I ran out of milk, which I did on occasion, he screamed. He needed to feed. He shot up the centiles and went from the 9th to 90th in about 9mths but he was never fat, just long and well built (his height matched his weight centile). He as born small and I reckon he needed to catch up.

You might find your DS does the same but I agree entirely that you can't over feed a bf baby and they will grow as much as they need to and will be very upset if you try and stop them! Do keep demand feeding, it will get easier as they get older and you really aren't doing him any harm.

Listen to your DS not all the other people who just look at the statistics and see something that isn't average and panic. Your DS knows better than them what he needs.