At 5 months getting really fed up with complete lack of routine

[Flangelina]

Can someone give me some help/encouragement? I am b/fing almost exclusively at 5 months. Have always found it easy, but have no routine whatsoever and am getting really hacked off. Currently: night feed at 4/5am so then ds not hungry for breakfast, thus half a feed at 7ish. To add to the problem, often get him to sleep using boob, so another small feed at 8.30ish when he goes back down for a nap. Around 10am I think he's hungry again but still only a bit of a half feed, as distracted by TV and just about anything else. I am also attempting to wean but worried that I am replacing milk with food, since I have no clue how much he's getting. I think I should introduce a formula feed but don't know which feed or what. It's all gone Pete Tong! help!

What happens the rest of the day, Flangelina

Babies are really efficient about feeding by that age so a feed can be quite short. So it may not be a half-feed after all.

Have you tried the Baby Whisperer EASY routine - stands for Eat, Activity, Sleep, You-time. It could help structure the day a bit more and help break the feeding-to-sleep pattern, if you are concerned about this (it never bothered me). The Activity needn't be anything fancy as they might get overstimulated - could just be a walk round the room or watching a mobile.

Also, don't cut back on bfs yet in the early stages of weaning, certainly no need until your lo is nearer 1.

Sorry tiktok, I meant to add that the rest of the day carries on a bit like it starts, with me never being really sure when he's hungry or when the next feed is due. So if he cries, I might think he's probably just tired (for example) but in the back of my mind I think maybe he could be hungry because I've no idea how much he took at the last feed.

Hi fluffyanimal. Yes you've got a good point there. He has always been a very fast feeder so probably he's getting more than I think. I have been a bit disheartened by the experience of expressing. It takes ages to get even 20-30mls, so I can't work out how he gets a whole feed so quickly. I guess he has much better suction than a machine?

I am self crowned queen of expressing (moo ) and I only get 30 - 60 mls off each time. I express while feeding to take advantage of the let down stimulated by her sucking on the other side otherwise i get hardly anything. Also get tonnes during 4am feed - apparently you're at your most productive then.

my "routine" (if you can call it that!) is 4-5am, wake up 9ish for another feed then every 2hrs ish til 9 when dh gives 8oz bottle of ebm so shes usually in bed by 10.

DD 19wks also distracted by anything and everything, I just have to try and keep her attention. Have given up feeding whilst on the phone coz she thought I was talking to her so would start cooing and gurgling back at me. very cute but not getting the job done!

Might be worth me mentioning that I went away for a weekend and had left ebm - obviously had no idea how much she would have if fed from bottle all day so dh had to play it by ear. She ended up being happy with 5oz each feed and I only express 2-3oz during her feeds normally so I reckon babies must be twice as effective as the pump. Dodgy science I know but it makes sense to me!

Is he gaining weight well?
What routine would you like him to be in? My HV suggested to take dd out for a walk just before her feed time to "stretch" her to 4 hrly feeds by distracting her or getting her to sleep through one. Apparently this works if you've got a snacker by making them really hungry so they take more rather than constant top-ups. Having said that this didn't work with dd, she's a bit of a tiddler so I think shes just a "little and often" sort of girl.

Flangelina - we're the same. my LO is 5 months and his feeds are completely random. he feeds at night around 12 and 4, and then at 7 he only has a nibble as he's not that hungry! (little cheeky monster...)
anyway, some days he eats every two hours and other days he goes all day and doesn't eat because he's so distracted. i find that he feeds best when going off to sleep, so i've recommenced feeding before naps after trying so hard to break the feed to sleep thing.
Pete Tong is just a way of life around here. I figure that's a bit how it is with BF on demand, you never know where you stand. it makes it tricky if I want to leave LO with DH for a bit, as I just don't know if and when he'll be hungry, but I figure he's been growing pretty well, he's not going to starve and DH has some good distraction tricks up his sleeve.
Anyway, I have no advice, but I'm sure it will get better. I'm trying to get a nap routine going, but as for the feeding, well I can't be bothered.

sorry for the ramble!

ps. i heard that expressing only gets 1/3-2/3 as much as a baby can extract. it makes sense to me. a pump is using pure suction. whereas a baby latched onto the breast correctly compresses the milk sinuses to drain the breast of milk. i read on la leche that you can use a massage, stroke, shake action to help get more milk when expressing.
and also i think there's just a psychological element when you look at your baby nursing - it stimulates more milk. don't you just love seeing your baby with a milky grin!

I'll second that - Its hard to get emotional about a bit of plastic!

I've given up on routine - the moment I think shes in one she'll switch and do something completely different. I've lost count of the number of times I thought she'd started sleeping through - now that plays havoc with your boobs!

smallone - i agree. it's not worth my LO randomly sleeping longer at night as i wake up with painful boobs and have to go and befriend that bit of plastic again

oh yes been there! esp when I went away for the weekend (bad mother!) and only had pump for relief.

Flangelina - it sounds to me you don't trust the process yet. You are constantly worrying if the current feed is long enough, or if the previous one was maybe not long enough...and also worrying about the overall total of his intake.

It will help to trust breastfeeding, and your baby. It's absolutely the case that babies of this age take what they need in a very short time.

There is nothing wrong with 'snacking' - I really don't know why this is supposed to be a terrible thing with babies. It means feeding for a short time, fairly frequently, which is a perfectly ok way for a human being to behave, and we all do it. With a baby of 5 mths, they do not whither away if they don't get the opportunity to feed little and often on some occasions, of course, so they can be left for short times with someone else, or if it is not convenient to feed, something else can distract them for a little while.

In a month or so, your baby can have other foods and drinks, too.

To be honest, accepting it and going with the flow, is likely to be easier than trying to change things, when they are going to change anyway with weaning.

Bf is clearly working well for you and your baby - analysing it and timing it and wondering if something is enough....well, it doesn;t help, IMO!

that's a great post tiktok, its so true. this is the whole theory of bf on demand - the babies are in control of the process and yes, they do seem to know best

Sorry I haven't been around to respond to all these very encouraging threads. Tiktok - I was happily trusting the process until recently, when: (1) ds started waking up at 2am-ish for a feed instead of his usual 4am-ish and (2) when I had him weighed he had slightly dropped off his curve. I decided to introduce solids and that is how I have come to lose confidence: I am worried that I am inadvertently replacing milk with other food, which of course is not the intention at 5 months.

It's wonderful to hear from other mums who have no routine. I seem to be the only one in my whole NCT group.

Thanks for these. Can I cheekily ask another two questions then: (1) if I've started to wean, can I now stop again until 6 months? (DH would not be in favour of this. But last 2 days ds has only had bit of baby rice before bed so not end of world.) (2) If I decided to drop a feed and replace with formula, could I then change my mind and bf instead?

DD is nearly 5 months and we have absolutely no routine whatsoever. Figure that when I go back to work in 3 months time, routine will magically assert itself! Until then am happy to go with whatever. A lot of it depends on the mother's or parents' personality(ies) I reckon. Most of my friends who have routines with their young babies are routine-led people themselves who would find it difficult to have little or no formal structure to their day.

Yes you are dead right guitargirl. I have been pretty laid back about it so far but suddenly I want some of my life back and it's driving me nuts. Did I also mention I am fed up with nasty synthetic sweaty breastfeeding clothes, and a bad back from bfing so often (I think).

My DD was bf until 6 months (started giving evening ff at about 5 months). She had absolutely no routine (or so I thought), but when I actually wrote it down, it was almost the same every day. Now that she is weaned (10 1/2 months), she has sorted out her own routine (which I am happy with). Wakes about 8am, bed at 9pm. I really miss bfing, and often wish I still was, but do relish my sleep !!!!

Good luck with it all.
p.s. re your question about stopping and restarting bfing, there was a thread about this recently. I think (feel free to correct if wrong) it said you could re-start after 3 months even, if you were prepared to express 8 times daily ! If a shorter gap, I'm sure it wouldn't take quite as many sessions

flangelina

i think it would be ok to stop solids until 6 months. sounds like you've only been giving him a little anyway. you could even give baby led weaning a try at 6 months if you're into that. agree its tough to hold off DH's and MILs etc.

sorry about your sore back from breastfeeding. have you tried lying down to feed? whenever i'm home we just BF in bed, its the most comfortable for both of us.

also remember the growth charts reflect the average of bf and ff babies (and mixed fed). around the 3-4 month mark bf babies start to put on less weight than ff babies, so don't worry about those damn charts. as long as your LO, looks healthy and is generally progressing with milestones, i wouldn't worry at all.

ok, here endeth my rant!

xx

www.mumsnet.com/incase/

actually have a look at the comments on growth charts i saw on MN ...

you can look at the WHO growth charts on their website too.

I went through a stage like this with my LO, but made a concious effort to get myself back on EASY rountine (baby whisperer) although he should now be fed every 4 hours, and still likes to eat every three, plus a bit of rice before long sleep at lunchtime). I also found that when I stopped feeding at night, he took better/longer feeds in the day and we got our routine back again.

Hi Flangelina
I have been through the same thing and what tiktok says is right imo(as per!) - it's all about trusting that your boobs are giving your LO what they need. I had a bad few weeks where the HVs were pestering me about his weight and it really threw us out cos every time he whimpered I stuck my boob in his face just to "make sure" he was getting enough.

He put on enough weight for them to leave me alone and now all that has calmed down and I have stopped stressing about it it means I can watch/listen to him a bit more and "magically" his feeds have dropped from every two hours to getting on for three hours. That could be cos he's changed his pattern or it could be cos I am being more receptive as to what he needs or maybe a bit of both. Anyway, this is all a longwinded way of saying trust your boobs and your baby and it will come right.

hi, dd is nearly 5 months old and well i am going through the same thing.

i have no routine. some days her feeds are well spaced, say 3 hourly, soem days it feels she is feeding every half hour. some nights she sleeps through, some nights she is on the boob all night long, more or less. I'm not kidding.

It is driving me mad. hopefully things will change when she starts solids.

tiktok i think you are wonderful i have read all your posts carefully and agree with everything you have said!