Need Advice for On Demand Feeding Please

[yellowbrightsummer]

Hello mums. Apologize for my very long message. I'm desperate for advice plssss.

My baby is 12weeks old now and I've been feeding him on a loose schedule 8 times per 24 hours all these time.
(7am, 9:30am, 12pm, 3pm, 5:30pm, 7:30pm , 00:00, 4am>

To give you a brief background, he was born in good weight at 3.6kg. But we struggled a lot on breastfeeding at the beginning and his weight wasn't progress that much for the first 4 weeks. On week 8, he was only 4.5kg and everyone is telling me how small he is. He's weight started to progress along the 9th percentile from week 5 to 8. And I'm still really worry that he's being too small... he can still fit in his newborn clothes :(

I went to the bf group a few weeks ago and was adviced to stop waking him up at night, but should feed him when he wakes up and demand it. I was also told to still fit the rest of the feeding during the day, so still keep feeding him 8 times in 24 hours. And that I've been really struggling to do. He is sleeping well at night. Sometimes for a good 5 hours stretch. The problem is, I keep finding myself waking him up for a feed from his daytime naps (which I spent long time to get him to sleep). And then, he'll usually fall asleep on my breast and the feeding sometimes takes a whole hour. He's only getting around 10-11hours sleep per day which is really a lot less than the recommended 13-16 hours for his age. So I'm also concern that this will affect his development.

I've been talking to more moms and everyone thinks that I should just drop the schedule and feed him on demand. I've been now trying that for 3 days, and I feel more stressful than ever. I feel I fail to read my baby's hunger cue. He's sucking his fingers all the time and I know for sure that he does that when he's sleepy too. I feel he just want to sleep all the time. I also feel very uncomfortable as I found myself only feeding him 6 times a day now which I am still waking him up sometimes from his day time naps.

I just feel I am at loss of what I'm doing. Surely if I'm concern of his weight I shouldn't be feeding him less, right? I did a yield test and I only got less than 4oz expressed milk from both full breast. If on average baby at his age is taking 25 oz per day, I should still be feeding him 8 times with my amount of milk supply right?

Sorry again for my very long message. I just don't know what I should do and how to do it. I'm going to the HV later this week to weight him again, and stress is really building up on me.

Please help. Thank you x

And your baby sounds fine, writer :)

There is no need to do anything other than what the baby seems to be asking for, if all if going well.

I will pass all this on to the women who gave me the information, lol - it just goes to show how wrong information can get passed around. Sometimes it seems so much easier to listen to the experiences of friends and heed their advice as opposed to ringing the professionals, which admittedly I have done a few times when I've had issues.

I actually thought it was a good thing when I had full, rock hard breasts which DS drained, but really it just means he's having a feed primarily made of fore milk?

It means proportionately more "foremilk" than "hindmilk", but if you are feeding when he wants and letting him decide when to switch sides (not keeping him on one side or switching him too soon) then you can trust him to take what he needs.

Do they swap sides because they still feel hungry after the first? I.e they haven't had enough hind milk from the first breast?

DS pretty much feeds from both breasts every time I feed him - again, I thought this was a good thing, but now I'm thinking it's because he's not being satisfied from just feeding from one side?

Or am I just overthinking things now?
well known for being a bit of a paranoid mother

They swap because they are finished on one side and want the other - you don't need to think any more than that. DC1 only ever had one side per feed, DC2 sometimes has 3.

writer you and your baby are doing fine - don't over-think it :)

Sometimes babies don't want to/need to swap.

Sometimes they do.

It's all good.

Full breasts are part and parcel of breastfeeding, sometimes, and sometimes not.

There is nothing wrong with foremilk. There is nothing wrong with hindmilk. You don't have to worry about either. Full breasts have proportionately less fat in the milk than empty breasts - but it matters not a jot, because the baby sorts it out.

thefunnyshapedwoman.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/foremilk-and-hindmilk-in-quest-of.html is another good link.

Tiktok - you're a bloody marvel. Excellent link and lots if useful info, as always.

:)

My baby struggled to feed enough at first (tongue tie) and slept a lot, having to be woken for feeds and not gaining enough. Once the tie was sorted we had to re-establish his appetite and my supply. All I did was offer him a boob whenever he made a noise/got restless. Once he'd finished one, I offered him the other. He took more because of the novelty of boob no.2. The length of his feeds gradually increased, and the frequency. I stopped having to wake him at night to feed, and he settled into a routine of every 2-3 hours. In the very beginning, when he was too sleepy after one boob, I'd express from one as he was feeding from the other (hand pump) and then offer him what I'd expressed in a bottle. He had enough energy for that usually, even if he was too tired to drink any more from me. Soon, he was taking enough on his own, and I no longer needed to.

Everyone's experience is different. You just have to keep trying things until your child is gaining weight steadily and is awake/asleep an appropriate amount of time. Something will work!!

The whole one boob/two boob thing is interesting. When dd1 was little I was told to always offer both and swap sides we started on with each feed. This worked fine for both dd1 and 2 but dd3 had boob preferences and could just stay on one side for a whole feed which was a bit 'odd' for me. I perservered and swapped sides but one was easier than the oher. This led to my one and only bout of mastitis. Busy day so fed her on the preferred side first thing (she was 9 months so not feeding so often). Fed later on from the 'easy' side again because so hectic. By the time the next feed came round the unused boob felt a bit odd and we were off to the GP the next day for antibiotics with a bright red boob. I was so embarrassed! I'd done 31 months total breast feeding by then, I really should have known not to mess with that!