A battle between hunger and tiredness

[newmum290713]

Advice please...my baby girl is 3 months old and is formula fed. She normally goes between 3 to 4 hours between a feed, i normally feed her an ave of 3.5 hours as if I wait till she starving she gets too upset. The problem is she can only stay awake for about 1-1.5 hours at a time and when she naps she generally only naps for about 45 mins to an hour. So often it ends up that she is both tired and hungry and the same time and we end up with a screaming meltdown and she does not take a full feed. Let me give an example of this morning...

7am - woke up and took a full feed
7.40-8.15 - played
8.15-9.15 -nap
9.15 -10.30 - played

So at 10.30 I fed her but she was tired so she only drank half a feed and went to sleep.

It means that I can't plan her feeds or any activities etc as she ends up snack feeding. Not sure the best way to handle it.

Thanks xx

Could you try feeding her sooner than 3/3.5 hours, maybe every 2/2.5 hours instead? So in your scenario you could feed her at 9.15 to 9.30 after her nap.

There's no benefit to the baby to try and space out feeds, or to do scheduled feeds. Current NHS advice is to feed on demand (for both bf and ff), so feeding on first signs of feeding cues. You may just have to accept that her feeds may be unpredictable, and just head out to do whatever you want to do, knowing that you might have to feed her at some point. The "snacking" thing is a complete red herring (IMO) - if a baby is thirsty then they might just want a small feed. Babies only source of food and drink is milk (bm/ff), so sometimes they might want food, but others they might be a little thirsty and just want a drink.

My DS is only 6.5 weeks but I have a similar scenario - I find the only away to avoid the tired/hungry stage is to get him back to sleep after the 45 mins. Have you tried this?

Babies generally have a REM sleep cycle of 45 mins but if you get them past that stage they will go into a deep sleep and sleep longer. Sometimes my LO can sleep for 2-3 hours if I am on the ball and watching for him stirring. Sometimes it takes persistence and sometimes hebjust won't have it, but it works most of the time.

HTH.

HTH.

I agree with Gerty, the waking after 45 min could just be the end of a sleep cycle. DD wakes up then but usually with some shushing and jiggling she will go back to sleep.