how long does a newborn feed for?

[gloucestergirl]

I have a brand new baby - a week old. She is gorgeous, but seems to feed all the time. I have read that they should feed every 2-3 hours up to 15 times a day. But I can't figure out how long a feed should be - 5, 10, 30 mins? But my baby feeds for long periods of time: she feeds for between 1 and 4 hours at a time, with 2-4 hours between feeds. I have added this to about 10-12 hours a day. She has done nearly 10 hours today, without the night to go!!!

She seems to be a very slow feeder and uses feeding for comfort. This is very hard on me. Ironically I wanted to go to the local breast feeding nurse, but was stuck at home during a nearly 5 hour continuous feed.

Basically is this normal? Is there something that I can do to increase the speed of her feeding? Thanks in advance for any advice.

All babies are different, mine only broke off the latch to sleep.just relax and go with it. As she grows things will change, she is absolutely tiny right now. Her tummy holds about 10 ml and she will grow at up to half a pound a week so she needs to feed a lot. If you can hear and see her swallowing (it might be easier to get DH to watch her throat) then she's feeding fine.

at about a week - 2 or 3 months ish olds she feeds last over an hour.... and she fed every hour & 45mins (2 hours max) so we seemed to spend all our time feeding.

she rarely napped, and on the odd occasion she did she would wake up 10 / 15mins later hungry ready to start again

she is now 5month old and feeds 4 hourly and feeds it take 15mins max (except her 25 - 30min bed time feed, then she lasts 8 - 10 hours)... it does get better

Someone might be able to come to you as well - call the clinic perhaps?

My ds1 fed for long periods (not quite as long) and basically wanted to use me as a warm dummy. Check if your baby is swallowing; you can gently slide a finger to the front of her neck to feel the throat movements. When she's not swallowing for a little while (15 sec minimum, but you might want a longer gap) you could try taking her off just to interact for a little.

gloucestergirl check with your midwife but all this sounds normal for a new born.

A week ago she was inside you, feeding as and when, and so of course she feeds for comfort/closeness/connection on the outside in these early days.

The 'feeding for long periods of time' you describe is not continuous feeding - she will be stopping and starting within that time, with slows and pauses and short naps. If feeds are literally continuous for 4 to 5 hours, then this would be highly unusual and yes, needs checking out.

The key is 'is this feeding transferring milk well?'

You can guage if feeding is effective by

• having her weighed - she should have stopped losing weight and be putting it back on now
• assessing her nappies - several soft large yellow poos each day is normal
• her sucking and swallowing rhythm - best videos I have seen for this is Jack Newman's (he's a paed with a bf clinic in Canada) . One of them is here www.breastfeedinginc.ca/content.php?pagename=vid-reallygood but there are several

Comgratulations gloucestergirl on your new baby. Tiktok is the bf expert here but I thought it might be useful to supplement her expert advice with my recent experience. I have a 5 week old baby who also has not "read the books" and loves to feed what feels like 27 hours a day. I asked the mw / hv when discharged from mw care to check the latch, especially that dd was opening her mouth wide and not just chewing the nipple. When I feel dd slipping off so she is just on the nipple and clearly not swallowing, just comfort sucking, I pop a little finger in the corner of her mouth and delatch her. The problem is in the early stages it can be hard to recognise this but it does get easier as you get to know your baby.
I totally recognise what you say about being unable to make it to a bf expert because baby won't stop feeding! Clearly it depends how far away it is but my dd had to cry for 30 mins while I went to a bf group, clearly it was horrible to listen to but it has its benefits as I arrived with a hungry pissed off baby who fed well so I could show the bf counsellor her latch.

I also strip dd to her vest to feed and change her nappy first; this definitely wakes her up so the feed is a bit better.
I also built a good place to bf- telly, MN, chocolate- just dig in, get someone else to do everything else. Yes it is boring, yes it is tiring, but yes it will end. At 5 weeks dd feeds for one hour at a time in the day, but she still tanks up near continuously from 7pm till 2am some evenings.

Good luck!

Speak to your HV as ours had a BF expert who came to the house when I wanted DD's latch checked as I'd had a section and couldn't get out with DD due to steps in and out of our house.

Are they continuous 5 hour feeds, or is it 15 minutes feeding/10 minutes dozing/10 minutes feeding etc?

I'd get someone to check the latch and examine her for tongue tie too though.

Comfort sucking is important in the newborn period.

Glad it was ok for you, helium, but usually, babies who are upset and cross and crying are harder to feed....so it's not right for all :)

You're right tiktok. In my small experience, DD2 fed better when annoyed only because the alternative seemed to be incredibly sleepy and only managing a few sucks before falling off (repeat X 100000). A happy medium would be better! And the " comfort sucking" I meant was the nipple sucking with no swallowing which DD would have happily done 24/7 and which was shredding my nipples and driving me bonkers simulataneously. Both DD1 and DD2 fed for the patterns OP describes, and it was really wearing. (DD2 cluster fed for 6/ 7 hours, on off, on off, last night and it is gruelling gruelling work). I think what I was really trying to say was to encourage OP to consider breaking off a 5 hr feed if possible to get to the bf counsellor in person as that would be super useful.

Well....we're still waiting for OP to come back with more details about those feed-a-thons :)

This baby is a week old. If everything is fine, she doesn't really need to do anything, as tomorrow and the next day and the day after that could all be so different.

Agree with tiktok. It's a good way to get your supply up, good way to make you rest (very important) when you've just had a baby.

Is there plenty of output (wet and dirty nappies?)

DD still feeds for an hour sometimes - it's just comfort sucking and she usually does it when she's tired and wants a little nap so less about hunger. If I take her off she gets most upset! So if I can, I let her. However most of her feeds are about 5-10 mins but she's 13 weeks.

Thanks for the replies. They have all been really helpful.

@ Tiktok: yes, you're right she isn't feeding continuously. She is breaking for breaks of a couple of minutes, falls asleep and slips off, but she is definitely sallowing as I can tell by her throat. She is also heavier now than at the birth and poo looks like it should.

As I suspected, there is probably a lot of comfort feeding happening. It is good to know that this is perfectly normal. I was just getting myself worried as this feeding pattern hadn't been mentioned before by any of the midwives or in the books.

I will try and see the breastfeeding centre at the local hospital on monday to see if her latch is okay.

And actually today, she has feed significantly less than yesterday. As you can probably tell, I am a first time mum and there is so much to learn about my new little girl :)