Advice from people who f/f to a (vague) routine

[BellaCB]

DD, 10w, has been bottle-fed to a 3-hour routine for the past five or six weeks - roughly the Supernanny routine. She's been very happy on this and rarely cries for food before ten, fifteen minutes before she is due a feed.

However, now she is mucking around a little with her feeds and not taking them so well, so I'm starting to suspect she needs to move to a 4-hour routine and take more food then (she can easily drain 6oz if she wants to without bringing any back).

Can I just ask how anyone else knew that their baby was ready to move to longer between feeds?

Hi Bella, I did the BabyWhisperer routine so not quite sure what the Supernanny one is, but I'm sure it'll be similar. My DD showed exactly the same signs as your own when she was ready to move on to a four hour routine - she started mucking around with her feeds and wasn't as interested in the milk. We changed to 3.5 then 4 hourly and she went back to her happy contented self .

My 22 week old DS still has 9oz every 3 hours. He does sleep for 12 at night though.

Try upping her bottle by an oz and see if you get get her to go an other 30 mins or so..

HTH

We moved to 4 hr for our twins at 6 weeks old, kind of accidentally as it was on Boxing Day and we all overslept (including the babies) and there wasn't time to fit all the feeds in! It didn't affect their night wakings (which were already more than 4 hours) so we stuck with it. And of course you need to increase each feed accordingly

Thanks all! I was worried about it affecting the nights as she goes so well, so good to hear it didn't affect it - I suppose she can always get more at the dream feed if she wants it. I think I'll go to to 3.5 and then work from there as I'm sure she can take 7 or 8oz as long as she is hungry enough.

OK, hoping someone is still reading this... I've tried changing to 3.5 and 4-hour feeds (almost back to feeding on demand, really) but she is still mucking around a little and not taking enough in total throughout the day so she has woken twice in the night the past few nights, despite a dreamfeed, when she used to go from that 10.30 dreamfeed through until 5 or 6 am. And, of course, her naps are now completely out of sync!

Do I just push on through with 3.5/4hr feeds and hope she settles in a day or two? (With the obvious proviso that if she is screaming for food I'll feed her)

Not sure that I can help here as I just fed on demand but my son gradually fell into a routine. When he was drinking a full 6 oz for a couple of days I would up it to 7 so that he constantly had extra to go at. Yes looking back I did waste a lot of milk but I wanted to be sure that he was getting enough. Best of luck but I would perservere with your own method. Xx

My DD is 15 weeks now, and we FF to a routine. She (from birth) fed at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm. She still does this now. We also would dreamfeed her at 11pm, and she would wake roughly 3am for a feed. After a few weeks she dropped the 3am feed, and at around 12 weeks she dropped the dreamfeed (we didnt wake her and she didnt wake).

However, we still stick to 3hourly during the day, even now. She now has 5 bottles and drinks between 6-8 oz at each feed. I tried moving her to a 3.5/4 hour routine and she became totally out of sorts, so I swapped back. Now, I have resigned myself to the fact that she will probably be on 3 hourly feeds til she weans. I dont mind, though.

MY DD likes to know the bottle is empty, so if I am concerned that she wont take enough at her 7pm feed, I make the 4pm feed a shorter one (say 6oz) and she seems content once she starts to drink in the air. Then, at bedtime, she'll take a full feed.

My Will is 14 weeks old, feeds 3 hourly at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm but only has between 3oz and 5oz at each feed. Sometimes his 7am feed is 6oz because he has a dreamfeed at 11pm which he takes 4 or 5oz so is hungry by 7am.

We established a routine for him at 8 weeks as we made notes about EVERYTHING - nappies, feeds and sleep and were able to determine what he wanted when.

He was 12lbs 14oz at 12 weeks and 4 days old. Will he likely increase the ounces in his feed as he gets older? He seems to want to take 6oz sometimes but his little tummy is full and also he is teething and he ends up chewing on the teat at the side of his mouth!

willsmum, it just seems so confusing, doesn't it?! At the moment DD is eating roughly 4oz at feeds at roughly 8, 12, 3/4 and 6pm, with 1 or 2oz to feed her to sleep at about 8, 3oz at a dreamfeed at 11 and then maybe 3 or 4oz between 4 or 6am. I'm going to do what you do and start writing it all down and see if we can work out a different routine. Sometimes she does want to take 6 or even 7oz but its so rare its hard to make the correct size bottles up! At the moment she is getting easily distracted as her eyesight seems to have come on leaps and bounds in the past week or two, which really doesn't help. But it seems like she isn't quite getting enough in the daytime as she did sleep through until 6am for a week or so, but we're now slipping back to an earlier night feed

Sorry to hear that your LO is teething already, that can't help! But if it helps, we did find (until now!) that she was draining more than 2 bottles a day, which we'd heard was the sign to up the food on offer with each feed, so the fact that he occasionally takes 6oz means it will start to creep up?

Has anyone found that changing to medium flow teats helped their baby to eat more? Have been Googling (dangerous, I know!) and a few places suggest DD might be getting annoyed with working harder for her milk...

I upped my DDs teats at around 9 weeks, she's on Number 2 teats, and works well for her. Up until then she kept falling asleep on the bottle as she had to work so hard for her milk.

I also write everything down, and thought "6 bottles of 6 ounces = 36 ounces" therefore if I don't offer her the dreamfeed, and offer an extra ounce in each of her daytime bottles (5x bottles at 7oz) this = 35 oz, so gthe same. Thankfully, DD realised she was still getting the same amount of milk and slept through.

I have to say, we have had a set back this week as DD has been ratehr poorly (little stay in hospital) and she is now on 4oz bottles pretty much 3hourly day and night, but as she improves, no doubt she will slip back in to her 'old' routine.

Thanks madame, I might get some of the next teats as she'll need them at some point anyway. I think I'm stressing because she is currently only eating about 26oz at 11 weeks and weighing 12lbs, which seems under what she should have. She was slightly slipping off the slope of her percentile at her last weight-in, so will see in a few days if she has slipped any more.

And sorry to hear your DD has been poorly, hope she is feeling better now?

She is on the mend, got a bad cough, which unfortunatley is resulting in her bringing most of her milk back up, and as such, think her tummy has shrunk.

I was worried that DD was overfeeding, but since being ill the ounces have dropped off her so I am keen for her to start taking 'full feeds' again.

I found that some feeds, DD would eat 6 oz, other feeds she would eat up to 8oz, therefore I made each bottle up to the bigger amount, just so she had the chance to take as much as possible. Means a little waste, but kept her going the 3 hours between daytime feeds.

I also have a dummy (not sure if you are a fan or not), which, if she woke in the night (after starting to sleep through), i'd offer her the dummy and 9 times out of ten she'd go straight back to sleep. 1 time in ten I'd give her a feed (but would do my best to only give half of a feed, so if the bottle popped out of her mouth, i'd see if she'd be happy to stop feeding then).

It will work out in the end. It is a constant worry though, and I thought I was silly writing all feeds sleeps etc down, but actually, this last week, having to go to hospital, it worked well as I was able to confidently tell the nurses exactly how much and how often she usually fed which definetly highlighted how little she was eating (and was staying down) when she was ill.

Good luck, am sure upping the teat size will go a some way to help you, and if not, as you say, you need the teats anyways eventually.