New mum to 2 week old - is this normal?

[pgchimp]

Hello - I have a two week old and am a first time mum. I am EBF at the moment and he has been generally going for around 3 hours between feeds - sometimes down to 2.5 hours in the evening and occasionally going for 4 at night. He has been taking about 25 mins on one boob and then between 5 and 10 mins on the other.

However over the last couple of days, he seems to have changed his habits quite a bit - getting very cranky approaching 2 hours and nothing settles him other than another feed. Each time he is only going for 20 mins and nothing I can do will make him take any more - even stripping him off to wake him up, he isn't interested in any more.

He is also being quite a bit more cranky between feeds - more crying and less happy time than he has previously had.

I was given very hefty anti-biotics from Saturday due to infected stitches which they said might make by breast milk taste a bit funny - could it be that?

Any advice to a first-timer would be very welcome.

Maybe, or maybe just a growth spurt. 2 hourly feeds is pretty normal though, I have a 4 month old and day feeds are usually 1-3 hours apart (3 hours is unusual!).

Well the drop down to 20 minutes could just mean he's getting better at feeding more efficiently. 20 minutes is still a good long feed if he's actually sucking that whole time. More frequent feeding probably means growth spurt!

I wouldn't connect it to funny taste - if he was bothered by that I'd expect him to react at the start of the feed not 20 mins in.

Is he getting enough sleep for his age?

thanks for your replies. how much sleep is enough sleep? I haven't really been counting how much sleep he is getting. should I be?

At two weeks they can probably stay awake about 30-60 minutes between naps/sleeps. I wouldn't worry about counting sleep so much, just try to make sure they don't stay awake too long and get over tired.

I think they need about 16 hours sleep a day as newborns? Obviously some need a bit less and some a bit more but you just want to make sure it's in that sort of ball park and not, say, half that.

I just mention it because it's at this sort of age that DD ended up very overtired and miserable due to me not watching her sleep amounts (as it's at this age they stop just nodding off when tired iyswim).

Thank you both - I think you might be right about not sleeping enough. of course as soon as I got worried enough to post about it, I managed to get him off to sleep when he was getting really cranky 1.5 hours since last feed started and he has slept for another 1.5 hours (and is still going).

Thank you for the replies and the reassurance.