BF 8 week old

[nicannie]

Those who exclusively breastfed, can you tell me how often and how long your 8 week old babies fed for roughly ? Because of lockdown I haven't met any other mums who are BF and have no one to speak to about it. Give a bit of background below on how it's went for us so far and our typical schedule

First two weeks were a nightmare. Latch was bad. The pain was unreal. My nipples were cracked and bleeding. I was in tears feeding throughout the night. Was awful if I'm being honest but wanted to stick it out as they say the first part is the hardest. I started expressing the milk, and feeding through bottle. She took to a bottle well, and was taking nice feeds every 2-4 hours.

Once my nipples were healed, week 3, I went back to BF and was so shocked at how much easier and better I found it. So now week 8 and enjoying BF the way I imagined it would be, painless and don't even need to think about it anymore.

So our schedule goes like this now

First feed of the day she takes 125ml or expressed milk in a bottle, and goes back down for 3-4 hours sleep

Then is BF for rest of the day. Going between 1-2 hours between feeds, lasting from 5-15 mins each feed. I'm worried this isn't long enough for her to be feeding or that she is wanting fed too often. Is this normal for this sort of age ?

When I put her down at night, she will take more of a 20 min feed and sleeps for anywhere between 7-9 hours straight without waking for a feed (she's always been a great sleeper so far)

Thank you if you read this far, just keen to speak to others with BF experience 🤞🏽

Hello, it's been 1.5 years since I last BF, but I didn't want to read and run.

Feeding every 1-2 hours for 5-15 mins seems fine by me. I was similar to you in that it took me about 8 weeks to get comfortable with BF after a bumpy start and I saw a lot of support people in that time.

I was told my daughter was a lazy feeder, so she would basically feed every 2-3 hours for up to an hour at the time, falling asleep half way through! I had other friends who's little ones were far more efficent only taking 5-10 mins but a bit more frequently. All the babies were absolutly fine.

I remember being told that all babies are different. As long as you are not concerned about her growth and have plenty of wet nappies, I wouldn't worry.

I know its a nightmare at the moment due to covid, but the LLL are still manning a helpline if you want to chat with someone more up to speed: www.laleche.org.uk/get-support/ Just be aware it costs 2p a min. You might have other local groups avalible to you as well.

Well done for sticking with it. I fed for 17 months in the end and was so glad I stuck it out.

@RenegadeMrs thank you for not reading and running as your response is really helpful

Yes, it's took me a while to be in that comfortable zone where it's just like a second nature to me now. I haven't seen any support people, due to the pandemic 😖. I see a HV but only seen her 3 time in the 8 weeks. Not sure if that's normal or due to the pandemic ?

I can see why it was described as a lazy feeder. That must have been quite difficult if it was up to one hour. Our daughter is suffering from a bit of reflux so the fact she feeds little and often probably helps with this at least.

HV said she dropped a centile last time in her growth chart and seemed concerned. But then GP said it wasn't a concern as she was thriving and still gaining. Also, she does loads of wet nappies so that's a good sign.

Thank you!! I'll look into that, that's great. Ps thank you for the well done, I maybe just needed to hear a bit of that as well. I'm really glad I didn't give up in those first few weeks too

I'm at 10 weeks, and not quite fully breastfeeding. After a tough start, baby still has a bottle of formula ever day. However she is bf most of the time. Like you, we are finding it much easier now. Feeds are often 10 to 20 mins and we often go 2 or 3 hours between feeds. At night baby sleeps 4 or 5 hours if we are lucky and then will wake every couple of hours. It might be worth seeing if there are any local breastfeeding groups who have facebook pages, perhaps Le Leche League.

I've got a nine week old and EBF - in a similar position to you because of covid, all the mums I know have now switched to formula... but every 1-2 hours (unless he's napping) and 5-15 minutes each feed sounds exactly the same as us. In the night he wakes once, sometimes twice, and takes about 10 minutes before nodding back off again.

Sorry to hear you had a tough start, we did too as he was badly tongue tied, but fortunately we were able to get that fixed a couple of weeks in and feeding vastly improved after that.

We only saw our health visitor for the first time yesterday, so you're ahead of us there

That said, today he's feeding LOADS more, I'm guessing because of the heat...?