How do I know if shes crying for food??

[kbaby]

I know this may sound silly but im a bit confused.
DD cries a lot. At the moment im breastfeeding her approx every 2.5 - 3 hours. Although she cries a lot in between. Ive been assuming that when she was crying that it couldnt be hunger. However, im now starting to doubt it and im wondering if she is actually hungry or does she want to comfort suck, she tries to suck her fingers constantly. I dont want to give a dummy as we gave it to her one day last week and then all during the night she woke up looking for the dummy, which meant we got less sleep than normal. How will I actually know if she is crying because she wants food? Whats the average times between feeds at 4 weeks old?

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Kbaby , my dd fed at anytime at that age. sometimes she would go 3 hrs ( usually when she was asleep) and other times sh'd want to be fed every 1hr.
It may well be that she was sucking for comfort but as she was so little I didnt mind. I just fed her.
Im sure if you do the same your baby will settle down - mine did. DOnt forget they have tiny tums, so little and often is normal. As your b/f you dont know how much she is getting.

As for average times- I dont think there is such a thing. DD is now 4.5 mnths and now on solids and has just in the last 2 weeks startes going 4 hours.

Kbaby, I started with Gina Ford's routines aprox at 3 wk old and the nice thing about them is that once they are established, you only need to check to clock to know if baby is hungry, needs a rest, or something is wrong. They made the first year of DS incredibly simple (and also allowed some time for us to rest.

How long is she feeding for? there is the possibility that if she is not feed for long she is only getting foremilk therefore may still feel hungry. IF she cries and she feeds for less than 5 minutes, probably she is not really hungry but needs some comfort sucking.

PS. I believe that she is still very young to wake up at night looking for the dummy (even if she relaxes when you insert it), as far as I know the dependanceto have the dummy always "in" in order to sleep would not develop until she is far more older (less than a year but definitively later than 7m)

kbaby -- hope things are settling down for you.

FWIW, I found that all of mine went through an unsettled patch at 4 weeks. My theory was that they had somehow started being slightly more aware and were somehow disturbed by the sensations of their digestive system.

If your baby feeds well when you put her on the boob, I'd assume she's hungry, or at least peckish. If she doesn't really settle for a good feed, or has a few sucks and then writhes around then I'd probably assume it was something else and let her suck a finger or dummy, or take her for a walk in the sling or buggy.

It is possible to get around the waking-for-a-dummy-in -the-night problem by not letting them fall asleep with it but just using it to settle them when awake.

I think there probably is no average time between feeds for babies this age, although I have a working hypothesis that bigger babies like mine (9lb +) may go longer between feeds than littler ones. You could try reading Gina to see what she suggests -- I'm not a big fan but did find that what she describes pretty much corresponded with what my babies had been doing anyway.

hth

TBH, at this age I always offered a breast feed as a first resort, even if baby had recently been fed on the assumption that the worst they could do would be th throw it up again

kbaby, your baby may need lots of cuddles and she gets that with a breastfeed. You can't go wrong if you offer her a feed when she cries - at 4 weeks some babies are feeding more often than she is, some are feeding less often and some are the same!! Some of the time it's confort sucking but that doesn't matter - you can just feed her anyway. A four week old waking in the night probably wants to feed.

It can be v. confusing and frustrating, though....no parent responds to their baby in the 'right' way all the time.

I also did exactly as oxocube suggests, mine both went about 1 hour between feeds at this stage but I know friends' babies who've lasted much longer.

Is the crying worse at a particular time? DD was awful in the early evening and we had no idea what to do...time has shown that she is actually a particularly hungry baby, and we did start to give her more frequent feeds in the evening, but also I think she was really really tired most of the time but we couldn't seem to settle her effectively. We persisted and something just clicked. We also gave her infacol btw, and she did seem more unsettled whenever we missed it/stopped it, but hard to know whether it really made the difference or not (still gave it to her for ages!) in my limited experience of reading these threads what you're describing sounds fairly par for the course actually - i think it just takes a while for them and you to start to know what to do and settle into a pattern that suits you...then they have a growth spurt and it all gets unsettled again. Think dd fed about every two hours during the day (for an hour!) but was a bit better at night. HTH.

Thanks everyone. When she wakes at night I always offer her food which is generally every 3hrs. She just seems very unsettled in general. If I feed her and then lay her down for some sleep she cries until she is picked up. When I pick her up she starts trying to suck her hands so I offer more food but she only sucks for a few minutes and once I take her off she goes back to trying to suck her hands. She seems to cry at the slightest thing and I cant work out why. Ive checked that she doesnt need changing etc but she doesnt settle.

kbaby, she sounds as if she likes to suck, and that where she feels most loved, comforted and responded to is at your breast. Some babies like this are described as 'high needs' by some people in the US and sometimes, it is easier not the fight it but to go with the flow and work out how you can meet her needs most conveniently for you. You can get some information about it

here

If you think about it, your baby was near you, actually inside you, just four weeks ago....it's gonna take her a little while to get used to life 'on the outside'. Some babies adapt more quickly than others, that's all.

You may need support and care while this phase lasts, though, as it is very demanding.

kbaby, just to say again that I've had this unsettled thing at 4 weeks with each of mine. I came to the conclusion that, like tiktok says, they were adjusting to life outside the womb.

With each of them the phase had passed by 6 weeks. In the meantime it probably isn't anything that you are/aren't doing, and IT WILL PASS, probably quite quickly. By six weeks she will have discovered social interaction, and will be giving you wobbly little smiles instead of just fretting.

She's probably not quite old enough to take an interest in toys, but you could try putting up a hanging mobile to distract her (a bunch of old cd-roms tied on a string works well).

My dd was like this too and we found that she was a little windy and sucking helped her ease the wind. We started using infacol and the inbetween sucking dropped quite a bit.
DD is still a sucky baby and we now use a dummy but make sure it is out of her mouth just before she is asleep so she doesn't wake up for it.
Also if you do need to feed hourly at certain points of the day my mw said rule of thumb is switch boobs 2 hourly so you may put her on the same one 2 or 3 times to try to get that hind milk. I read that if the poos are green they are getting too much fore milk.

Thanks everyone. Tiktoc I have ordered his book as the link was very helpful. I think she is quite fussy and seems to have bouts of colic as all the symptoms we get. I can only hope it passed soon..

Thanks

hi kbaby. try the infacol. if it isnt wind related, it wont do her any harm. started using infacol yesterday with dd, as had same probs as you. she has been regulary feeding 3 hourly last 24 hours, which is a miracle. also, when she woke in night just 1 1/2 hours after last feed, gave her my finger to suck ( she hates the dummy) and that actually was enough to satisfy her for just a minute, then she was back asleep. i used to pick her up and feed her at this point and she would only take a couple of minutes. think your dd is a sucky one too. maybe try settling into a 2 1/2 hourly or 3 hourly feeding routine and anytime she cries before that, take it as suckytime instead!

(baby whisperer basically says all this which is why i'm trying it but seems to be working so far) touch wood

I didn't bf so can't offer first hand advice but a friend had a baby who was very windy and wouldn't settle at all between feeds - basically vrying when not asleep. She found that particular foods made it worse - most recently strawberries which if she ate them made the milk too acid and upset db's stomach. Perhaps have a think about what you're eating and see if there might be a trigger.