How long did your 7wk old go between feed?

[Gingernut81]

DD is 7 weeks old today & only goes 2-3 hours between feeds although she does manage a 4 hour gap between her last feed before bed and the first night time feed. It feels incredibly tying having to feed her so often and to top it off the health visitor implied she should be going 3-4 hours between feeds now. Is this pattern normal? I've tried pushing her to go a little longer between feeds but only a few minutes as she becomes really upset.

Both of mine fed every 2-3 hours until about 12 weeks when they we t to every 3 hours. It stayed at every 3 hours u til they were weaned.

It's perfectly normal. There's also quite a big growth spurt then.

And like Buttercup DD was ff and had feeds every three hours until weaning began at 6 months

This is 100 per cent normal - exactly what you might expect for a baby of this age, whether breastfed or bottle fed.

I have no idea why your HV implied what she 'should' be doing.

Easiest way to cope with this is to work out ways feeding her is not so tying - that's a lot easier than trying to change normality :)

What are the tying aspects - share them and we'll try to come up with suggestions to make it less so :)

Hi tiktok, I guess I just feel like I need to make sure I'm somewhere easy to feed. I think I just need to chill out about it a bit!

About 90 mins! Turned out he had a tongue tie though, although when it was cut it didn't make much of a difference.

About half an hour it felt like sometimes

Ignore the HV, she sounds clueless about feeding on demand - whether BF or FF.

Yeah, chilling will help :)

This sort of thinking ahead - will there be somewhere to feed/change/relax/park the buggy/ etc etc etc - is part of parenting, I think. Goes with the territory. A baby who feeds slightly less often doesn't make it all that much easier.

About hourly at that age. Very milk-focused baby!

Well my health visitor told me not to let my baby go less then 3 hours between feeds because he's putting on so much weight.
He's just a big baby! following the 91st centile and usually goes 3-5 hours (although did go 7 last night). Nearly 7 weeks.

2 hourly, sometimes every 90 minutes with some evening cluster feeding for good measure.

Completely normal. It's okay to just go with the flow. Don't feel you 'have' to be in a routine or back to whatever normal is with the baby on a strict 3 or 4 hourly schedule. It rarely works like that. 7 weeks is still young with the baby not realising it's a separate being yet. Feeding is as much about nutrition as it is about comfort and them feeling safe.

You do tend to feel that life revolves around trying to plan. It carries on like that tbh. From where will I feed next to is there a changing facility to where is the toilet during potty training to oh feck they're going to be cross if they aren't in bed or fed in the next 17 minutes. It gets easier as you get used to it I think. Mine are primary aged now and the days are a whirl of do they have all the stuff they need, when are we fitting in after school activities and homework and down time and supervised reading and spelling and tables and making a costume for Friday and learning lines for assembly and on and on and on...

An hour, 2 or 3 at the very most, but 3 was rare. That went on for six months, it nearly killed me.

Thanks, you've all made me feel loads better

As everyone said, completely normal.
I however noticed, that if I went out with my DS2 in a sling (I use a stretchy wrap), he then could go longer. So if I wanted to go somewhere not thinking about feeding and changing, I'd put him in a sling. He would feel really snug and usually sleep until I got him out of the sling.

Every 90mins to 2hours in the day, a lovely break as when not feeding or sleeping he was screaming!
Now at 7 months he still feeds every 3 hours even with 3 meals!
Not a lot of 'shoulds' with newborns, they are all completely different and comparing will drive you mad. Health visitors can be great but can also spout meaningless shit without realising you will obsess over it!

My dd also fed at least every 3 hours until beyond weaning, around 8 months. Less frequently than that overnight after first 12 weeks ish though.

Op ur lucky ds2 feeds every 1 1/2 hrs and he is 23 weeks nighttime is every 3/4 hrs. Your doing a great job

12 week old feeds every 2-3 hours including through the night. Frustratingly he'd started going for about 5 hours at night - I actually got 4 hour chunk of kip about 2 weeks ago! - but that's stopped now

90 mins- 2hrs. They both slept through overnight from quiet young which I think was helped being fed every 90mins in the day