Breast feeding routine from birth?

[yellow]

Am having my first DD in December and am planning to breast feed. Want to get her in to a feeding routine from the start and have heard it is bad to feed on demand. Have asked the midwives about this and always feel my appointments are rushed and never come out feeling very informed. Does any know of any good books/websites or have any good advice?

I fed on demand, it worked (is working) for me. I think for the first few weeks it really is easier to just go with the flow, don't create unneccessary stress by forcing you both into a routine. They generally make their own routine eventually. Good luck.

i think it would be important to feed on demand in the beginning, to make sure you establish a good milk supply. After a couple of weeks you may find you've got a rough routine, which you can then fine tune to accomodate yours and your babies needs.

my own personal opinion is pro demand feeding, as i feel only your baby knows when it is hungry, and it's wise to listen to them. that doesn't get rid of a rountine though, it just becomes a child led routine rather than a parent led one iyswim excuse the typing btw, but my shift key seems to be on strike -exclamation mark-

tiktok is one of the best mners to discuss bfing with if i recall, good luck with the baby

Agree with pesme - feeding on demand worked for me, and eventually my dd fell into her own routine without me having to force on onto her. I found the first few weeks hard enough as they were, without the added stress of trying to get a newborn into a routine. Bear in mind that while you are pregnant, you are feeding your baby constantly, and so s/he has never felt hunger before, and it takes a while to learn what feeding is all about. At first a baby can't hold a large feed anyway, so needs feeding far more frequently in the early days until s/he is able to take more milk.

You may find that forcing a long gap between feeds makes your baby upset and hard to feed, making feeding an anxious time for you both - and anxiety can decrease the supply of breast milk.

Another thought - if your midwives don't have the time to talk to you about this, does your maternity unit have a breastfeeding counsellor that you could ask to have a chat with?

Whether to feed on demand is controversial - worth checking previous threads on this if you want lots of info. IMO having a feeding routine after the first 4 weeks or so IS best for both mother & baby (worked brilliantly with ds) and I used The Contented Little baby Book - you'll either love it or hate it! Just check out those Gina Ford threads!!

Agree with ZolaPola - ds put on a pound a week on GF's routine!

I prefer to call it 'unrestricted feeding' or 'cue feeding'- demand feeding sounds as if the baby is spoiled and demanding!

There should be nothing controversial about it - the research over many years and gazillions of babies shows that feeding to a schedule is not compatible with the establishment or maintenance of happy, effective breastfeeding.

Of course individuals will have individual experiences, and they may find scheduled, timed feeds work ok for them.

But the research shows that for the majority of mothers and babies, it doesn't.

This is biology - you can fight it, but you can't change it!

If feeding to a schedule is important to you, then it may work better when your baby is a few weeks old and you have built up an established supply which can stand up to a bit of messing about. But be prepared to accept that it doesn't work for you, if your baby does not thrive on it, or objects.

Babies quite naturally become more flexible as they get older, and by six months you are introducing other foods at designated mealtimes, anyway.

Many mothers find that not having a schedule allows them to have an easier, more flexible day themselves. If you always have to be at home/feeding/putting the baby to sleep at three or four fixed points in the day, it can be a big nuisance.

Keep an open mind, and go with the flow for the first weeks, and then think about changes.

A good book to read about this is Babycalming by Caroline Deacon.

Hi Yellow. Ask your midwife if your local hospital runs a breastfeeding workshop. Many of them do. I found it very hepful. My hospital also ran a breastfeeding clinic which you could go to while on the labour ward.

Good luck.

I went with the flow for the 1st few weeks, I would recommend that in the 1st instance just because you're going to be so discombobulated the last thing you're going to want to think about initially is keep to a schedule! However I found I needed to know when I could have a rest or could have a window to cook or something after a while & I went the GF route. It worked for me & dd is v happy on it at 4.5 months, however the book is horribly confusing at times, esp when you're trying to work out what the hell you should be doing! I stuck with it, but swore a lot at GF & her editor for not thinking about how gaga & sleep deprived new mothers are! The best advice I got was to see how it goes & take one day at a time! You'll feel what you need - you may be fine just taking cues from the baby. Anyway - long post - contratulations & good luck! I'm jealous of the surprise you've got in store

I was and am pro-demand feeding - it is simply infinitely less stressful to feed when the baby wants food. I would imagine that GF and other routines in the early days do aim to avoid crying by feeding often, and anyway advise you to feed rather than ignore crying, but it really would be stressful to listen to your newborn crying in the early days and prevent yourself from doing anything about it.

However, I would add one thing. If your baby has jaundice, or some other condition I don't know about, and the midwives advise you to ensure you feed at least every 3 hours, make sure you take this seriously. My ds slept for most of the day, feeding only about 3 times, and then woke up at 10 to feed every hour for 45 mins through the night. Not that this is necessarily wrong at first! but in fact my attachment was not great and he wasn't getting enough milk to clear his jaundice or gain much weight. I think I really needed to get him to feed more often during the day, while continuing to feed a lot at night as well, but he was so sleepy I found it hard, and of course it was tempting after a bad night to leave him to sleep.

I feed on demand .. always have (DS and DD) and always will .. DD is now 6 months old and still breastfeed on demand ..

some babies react well to routines I suppose, as do some mothers. I don't

I kept in my head a rough idea of 3 hourly but honestly its no hassle feeding on demand and I have the happiest most placid babies in the world (don't know whether its connected)

congratulations and good luck

sorry just read my post again and i am talking about the experience of feeding to a routine when i don't know anything about it. i remain pro-demand feeding but shouldn't have tried to describe an experience i didn't have. sorry - and congratulations - and great stuff that you want to breastfeed!!

I'm another one who fed on demand and found it really easy. After a few weeks bean settled into his own routine of 'demanding' food at certain times but I never forced him into a routine that didn't suit.

I find it easier to be flexible, having bean in a strict routine would also mean that I would have to be in a strict routine, I like being able to feed him a bit earlier or later if I'm busy.

beans 22wks now and is still demand fed, he's just started nursery and has had no problems fitting into the new routine which I think he might have had trouble with if he was used to fixed meal times.

congratulations, and good luck. I'm so jealous!

Be guided by your baby! All babies are different - some seem to be hungry all the time and others less so. Mine liked to feed a lot in the late afternoon and evening. Also, a lot depends on your own milk supply. The more you feed, the more milk you make.
I BF on demand for the first 12 weeks or so, then a routine just seemed to evolve around that time, which made everything easier.
I had a big baby - she slept through from 8 weeks ( 8 - 8am) with no night feeds..and she certainly isn't 'spoilt' now ( she is 18mths).

The thing that is worth remembering about demand feeding is that it means feeding the baby when it's hungry, which is not necessarily the same as plugging it onto your boob every time it squeaks.

Babies do cry for reasons other than hunger -- some of the more 'earth-mothery' bfeeding literature can make you feel as if the baby should never cry , and that it should be more or less permanently attached to the breast.

This is a recipe for sore nipples and baby indigestion. I didn't do GF and never would, but if you bear in mind her useful observation that babies are likely to be hungry 3 hours or so (less for tiny ones) after their last decent feed, and that they will probably need to sleep after being awake for an hour or so, you'll probably end up with a routine that suits both of you.

totally with frogs!

Demand feeding really means feeding according to the baby's cues. Frogs is right that every time the baby cries, it doesn't mean he is hungry. But on the other hand, waiting for a baby to cry before feeding is not necessarily a good thing. Placid babies, under-fed babies, ill babies.....they may not cry. You should be supported to recognise when the baby is signalling the need to be held and fed, and this may start with mouthing movements, waving hands, turning the head. Placid babies may do this for a while, and then drop off to sleep again when the cues are not responded to....they don't bother crying. Other babies wake up and start yelling for food immediately!

The 'good' baby who 'sleeps for hours' can end up not getting the food he needs.

It's not bad to feed on demand - it's how it should be at the start. Your breasts need to have stimulation of baby feeding to know how much milk to make. A newborn baby's stomach is about the size of a walnut - so it needs to feed often during the day & night. As your baby grows it can go for longer between feeds & finds it's own rhythm. Good luck with everything.

yellow. If you like routines then I would look at Gina Fords books. In the first few weeks I sort of followed her routines, but fed "on demand" but made sure that I fed at least every 3 hours - some babies will sleep for very long periods to start with, and so waiting for them to demand a feed means they don't get enough.
With both of mine I found that this start led us automatically into the GF routines after a few weeks, but I did go off routine and give extra feeds if I felt mychildren really needed them

Good luck

yellow - here is a link you might find useful

info

yellow
i have b/fing my 2nd, and he is now 13wks. i am one of those people who likes routine and panics when things are not going how i would like them to go.
the first few weeks with your new born are hard, they are joyous but tiring and you can b ata loss to know what the baby wants.
b/feeding is a lovely lovely bond to have with your baby for however short a time you decide to feed. i hope to get to 6mths and maybe longer with a few bottle feeds by then!
but initially it will be crazy and the desire for a routine will freak you out and you may feel its madness but i want to reassure you that it does settle down and the breast feeding baby really does get into a routine and your body will too. my ds now at 13wks is going nearly every 4hrs. I can only see all this with hindsight and from my first,
i used the gina ford books for giving me an idea about how to structure the routine, and it works for me, others dont like it. with my 2nd i see how it can work for me personally and my space. my dd is just gone 2, so my routine is busy.

feeding on demand is good for the baby and really does help to establish your supply .
i used the expert advice of my local la leche counsellors and the best thing about them is they are a phonecall away.

as the others say dont rush the first weeks trying to get a routine, you will wear yourself out, just go naturally with your baby - they will be more content, you maybe exhausted!! but it will work out for the best come 12/16wks!

good luck and enjoy it with your first

i am breastfeeding my 2nd child and i still do it on demand and he is going to be i next week and he is vey content happy and healthy. Unless you have any other need for your milk you might as well give it all to himm

Yeah Tik Tok!! All the best Yellow. You've come to the right place for info and advice. In the end though you and your babe will have your very own way of doing things made up of little bits of others advice and lashings of your own mothery instincts. Saying that .... I had a read of "the baby whisperer" and found the advice made sense and taught me to read and listen to my babys ques. Apart from anything else, it was a good read. Good luck.

Hi yello congratulations on your first.

I, like Prufrock, used Gina Ford very early on, as a "rough guidline". It helped me a lot to have a structure to my day at first. We started very, very loosly, giving extra if we felt she needed it, then gradualy got a little more strict with feeding times as she got older.
I do believe that structuring feeds is a good idea, and it certainly helped me and dd into a good pattern.

Having said all of that, i would go with how you feel at the time as well. Your baby might also be one that gets her/himself into a good routine early on, so go with the flow, and get a little stricter when your little one gets a bit older, if no natural routine has emerged.

Best of luck!

xxx

I am with Prufrock here ...
With my first baby I fed on demand at first and then later became a mad routine obsessed GFer ...
With dd I decided to do it this way and it worked:

From day one I never let DD go for longer than 3 hours during the day until about 10pm for a feed. BUT if she seemed hungry before the 3 hours was up I fed her so I never MADE her wait for 3 hours IFYSWIM ... so in effect she never really cried from hunger. In NZ they say that crying is a late sign of hunger and you shouldn't let it get to that which I reckon makes sense.
It worked that way for me so that from the start her longest time between feeds was at night (obviously I let her wake up and let me know if she was hungry then) ...
By the time she was 6 weeks old she had settled into her own pattern and routine (which strangely was identical to GF although I haven't followed it this time round) ...