Breast feeding chaos

[lozzy1982]

Hi ladies i have an adorable 3 week old baby boy and have managed to breastfeed which in itself is going well. However my little man has no patten at all to his feeding. This morning i feel like he has fed constantly with a couple of small gaps in between for brief sleeps. Last night was very similar. Anyone else having this? And when do things change?

Welcome to the joys of cluster feeding! This is all perfectly normal and he's just trying to get your supply up.

I found that it was manic for the first week, weeks 3 and 4, then week 6 and 8 was crazy and then it settled down a bit after that.

Literally just going with the flow and feeding on demand makes things much easier and forget about patterns right now.

My ds2 (now 11 weeks old) did this at three weeks. I believe they often have a growth spurt around then so can feed like crazy. It will pass (the crazy growth spurt feeding should pass fairly quickly, after a few days, but your baby will probably still be feeding or sleeping most of the time for a while yet) but it's so hard when you're in the middle of it!

I think we found a pattern about 6 weeks.
I used an app on my phone to track feeds, I think it was 'sprout' and it started to show a pattern around 6 weeks, though that was just for my sanity, there's no need to track if you don't want to.

This sounds 100 per cent normal for any young baby - and perhaps especially a young breastfed baby :)

Your baby needs to feed like that, for the nutrition, for the hydration (has it been warmer for you in the past few days?),and for the closeness to you.

Things gradually change as babies get older, but there's no actual 'rule' about when :)

Totally normal and is how baby stimulates you to produce a better network of prolactin receptors. These receptors will help to keep your supply up as your baby's appetite increases.

It is really hard on you and you'll feel like you're held hostage to this insatiable infant but it will pass. Babies dont know they only fed ten minutes ago. They know they want milk (or lovely mummy) now. Stick with it as much as your sanity allows. if it gets to much a walk with a pram might help settle him and give you a break. I remebrr how hard this period was.