I thought you couldnt overfeed a brestfed baby? can you ?

[homebertha]

Hi there, i m coming from a demand feeding, attachment parenting, co sleeping baby led weaning ( but nor religeous about it) bit of a hippy kind of stance.. My son is 7.5 months old and is on the 25th centile for height but alas 99th for weight... the hv says i need to stop feeding him apart from 2x a day.. she also uttered painful words such as controlled crying, separate room, dummy and such like.. i dint dare to mention the co sleeping bit...this is when he does most of his feeding ...through the night. He has always woken generally 3-6 times a night and feeds to go back to sleep/comfort/hunger etc. last night i limited it to 4x and so this mornign my boobs are rock hard and lumping up like i m heading for mastitis...cant imagine what will happenif i feed him 2x aday?!!feeling a bit bleak about enforcing limited feeding wanted him to naturally self regulate...thats the idea isnt it?? yesterday i tried offering different activities nd solids instead of milk and he was very upset each time. i feel heart ache with it all but think that i need to do something as dont want his health to suffer. any ideas from like minded folk or others with little guzzlers?

honestly, i wondered about this at times - dd was 7lb12 at birth, 16lb at 3 months, 20lb at 4 months - EBF - 98th %ile I think. She was a complete porker and fed all the time. Looking back, she looked like a sumo wrestler. i found it hard to believe she'd ever level out, but by 1 she wasn't much heavier than at 4 months - 23lb perhaps? Now a normal sized 3.5 year old, bang on 50th %ile. I bf on demand for the first year pretty much and then gradually reduced after that (back at work 3 days/week, less comfortable feeding in public, and night weaned at 17 months - would probably do that sooner next time round - weaned just after she turned 2). She upped her solids, she was fine and eats well. Good luck!

Lots of good advice here, just wanted to add my support to say ignore hv. At 7.5mo babies should be allowed to feed as they want but I'd say minimum: first thing & last thing plus mid morning and mid afternoon. On demand at night is surely easiest, rather than dealing with roaring baby who just wants a bit of comfort. Also you've barely established him on solids, once that happens bf spaces out nicely. Dont set too much store by the charts.

Really wouldn't worry about it. Babies are all so different. There is actually a strong correlation between BF and NOT being obese in later life.

The only time I've heard (and I've been in the circuit a long time) of somebody possibly having to cut down on breast milk was in a case where the Mum/baby pair hadn't managed to establish BF so she was bottle-feeding expressed breast milk on demand. The theory was it was "too easy" for him and he was ballooning. But it doesn't sound (what with your "hippy" tendencies and all ) that's something you'd be doing.

I was talking to my mum about that French book, where the author says French babies and children have to wait long periods between feeds. Mum said all babies were fed 4 hourly when she was born and not at all at night. Do we need to be feeding all day and all night for a year or more?
My babies slept through from about 3 months and I could never have functioned if woken repeatedly as I was back at work.

I like to take a 'What would David Attenborough say?' approach to these matters.

Breastfeeding is about more than just calories - hunger may not be the problem but boobies are always the answer! Telling you to restrict your child to 2 feeds a day is just cruel and shows a complete lack of understanding of how a breastfeeding relationship works.

Imagine you are living in a cave in the stone age with no clock, no health visitor and no scales. Your baby is crying....what do you think humans have done for millions of years??! Yes, feed that baby, even at night - we are meant to sleep in close proximity with our children for warmth, protection and feeding that synchronises with our own sleep cycles so you don't really get woken up properly.

Give it a few more months and his weight will drop as he gets more mobile, they're meant to chub up a bit just now. DS (10 months) looks like a skinned rabbit compared to his chubbier self a few months ago - no more michelin man knees!

"Mum said all babies were fed 4 hourly when she was born and not at all at night." - indeed if we are talking about the 40s, 50s and 60s this may well be the case.

It is one of the reasons breastfeeding rates plummeted as bf can rarely be sustained on this regime.

French women stop breastfeeding pretty quickly, too.

Making babies go longer between feeds has a price.

Of course people don't have to feed 'all day and all night' for a year or more :(

Interesting - I have got a copy of pages from a book my mum has (it was her grandma's so we're talking 1920s? )
It says under breast feeding that infants under 1 month should be fed every hour, and twice in the night, 1-3 months, every 2 hours and 2ce in the night, then after that until 6 months, It's every 2-3 hours and once in the night, 6months to 1year, ever 3-4 hours and once in the night, then after that, 3-4 hours in the day and not at all at night.
It also doesn't specify how long for the baby to stay on each breast, but it does say to start each feed on a different side.

That was before doctors started interfering.

(night was from 10pm until 7am)

(and it says to make the last day feed finish at 10pm and the first day feed to be at 7am)

Your HV is being ridiculous, babies are supposed to be
chubby and fat. And feeding a small baby just twice a day? What an idiot, that is harmful advice, to say the least. Your baby needs every drop of milk and inch of fat he needs at that age, his body is growing at a massive pace and learning to walk takes a huge amount of energy and effort from his tiny body... not to mention brain development.

Look at Kellymom website for introducing solids advice. Food should complement milk at this age, not replace it and it's a very very gradual process. Also look at Weston Price for alternative views to current healthy eating dichotomy, and they also have sensible advice on how to feed babies and children.

Another one to reassure you they DO slim down - DD was 99th percentile for height and weight at birth (on the boys chart), 108th percentile for weight at 4 months then completely circular at 6 months, and off both height and weight charts.
She was hefty at 1 year (and I started to worry) and now at 2 years is absolutely spot on 99th percentile for weight and height - plus her height is increasing and her weight is not, she's stretching like toffee. She's in the same trousers she was wearing aged 15 months but then they were too long and tight around the waist, now it's opposite.

I am amazed - AMAZED - at the twice a day advice. What, every 12 hours????

Are you sure your HV didn't mean 2x at night?

Frankly I would be knackered if my DS was feeding 6-8 times a night I would be knackered. The problem with calling it 'demand feeding' is that people think you need to wait for your baby to 'demand' to be fed when really its you that should be offering the breast regularly whether it's demanded or not. 'Dont offer, don't refuse' (Dr Sears/Kellymom adage?), to restrict the breast until it is demanded is a form of mother-led weaning.

You say he is distracted during the day, why, by what? (not having a go but do you spend much time on the sofa, brew in hand, chilling out and Bfing like I do?!) Are you making time, quiet time, for him to have some good feeds during the day? Sometimes you do have to do a bit of closet bfing. It might be worth having a few allocated 'quiet times' during the day so he can feed well.

I practise, I prefer to call it, ecological bfing and co-sleep but not a hippy as I don't like lentils. My DS is 8 months, 50th percentile for weight. I offer the breast very regularly during the day and he sleeps all night with 2/3 short dream feeds. He take food from family meals but not enough to really provide much sustenance. I really feel if you address the day feeding, he will sleep better.

His weight, IMO, is not an issue. I would focus more on developmental milestones, is he babbling, sitting unaided, starting to become mobile? (this varies, mine is crawling and can pull up to stand but is earlier than my DD was).

• sorry overdone the 'knackered' there!

boobie oh yes twice a night would make sense

I was encouraged to feed more during the day in a quiet, darkish room so stop her getting distracted, and she did indeed feed less at night. But if you're not finding it a problem...

Another example here of a heavy baby who slimmed down towards the end of his first year. DS was 3.4kg (7lb 8) at birth, had doubled his birth weight by 8 weeks, tripled it by 14 weeks, and was well on the way towards quadrupling it by 6 months (12.5kg) (all EBF on demand). He was longer than your LO (99.6th centile) but correspondingly this meant that his weight put him 1.5kg above the top line on the chart. One HV made noises about needing to refer him to a dietician but I just ignored her. The rest said that BF babies can't get fat.

So fast forward to now....he is 15 months old and his weight has stayed almost static since 7 months old. He is much more in proportion. He started to look a lot slimmer once he started crawling, and then he lost a further 1kg (and looked his slimmest ever) in the first few months after starting nursery, when he picked up bug after bug, though he has since put this back on.

They do self-regulate. In our case, he knew what the good stuff was (BM) and that he liked it. However, he was a nightmare to wean onto solid food because he had already done all his growing, and simply wasn't hungry.

Do what feels right to you re the sleep and night time feeds, but don't feel under pressure to leave your baby upset.