Feeds gone from 20 mins to 5 or 10 ish by two and a half weeks?

[MissRatty]

My little one is 17 days old and exclusively breastfed. His feeds took at least 20 minutes to begin with, but now have decreased to 5 or so minutes...which seems like a very short amount of time to have become "efficient" enough to feed in such a short space of time.

The five minute feeds have only started yesterday so I'm not sure if his poo would be affected yet, but at the moment he's still making plenty of wet and yellow poo nappies. Not sure about his weight, as he's not due to be weighed again until Monday.

He's (in the last week or so) started to become quite a windy and posset-y baby...could this have anything to do with it?

Started to feed him more upright and keep him upright after food for a bit, but he can still get quite distressed by the wind bless him.

Just wondering if the five minute feeds are normal in such a young one, bearing in mind he was feeding for twenty minutes at a time only a few days ago.

MissRatty sorry to hear you're worrying about this....totally understandably as new babies are difficult to 'read' :(

This pattern of feeding is well within normal - what would be far more concerning would be a baby who dropped the frequency of his feeds by half, rather than just the length of his feeds by half. Length of time per feed does not correlate with volume of milk taken.

If he is continuing with frequent feeds - let's say at least 8-10 in 24 hours - and no other signs give you any reason to worry (ie his poos and wees are normal; his weight is normal; he's not feverish or excessively sleepy) ...then you can assume he is doing just fine :)

You can check with the clinic tomorrow about the wind and the posset, but that's prob normal as well.