Hungry BF baby, is he getting enough?

[mickymouse]

My 14 week old is breastfed and was doing fine at first, was gaining weight well and could sleep for 6 or 7 hours at night. Now weight gain has tailed off (was above 75th centile on weight chart for first few weeks and has now worked his way down to 25th) and he has been waking every 2 hours to feed in the night for about 3 weeks.
I can hear him gulp down the milk and he is contented immediately after a feed but gets hungry again so quickly. He has plenty of wet nappies so I?m happy he?s getting enough fluid but is he getting enough calories in it?
Has anyone else been in this situation? Anyone Started formula in similar situation ?what happened?

mickey mouse
this is exactly the same as my ds. for the last week he is wakening after 11pm every 2hrs.
i did a thread on it earlier this week and got a few replies saying the same thing.
my ds is 15wks. i think its a phase, they do feed to increase your supply and maybe thats what they are doing.
dinny whoposted said this happened to her and it has now settled again.
what i would do for 4hrs unbroken sleep!

i am going to intoduce milumil in bottle but my ds is quite stubborn and takes about an oz from the bottle and gives up.

Hi Mickymouse

DS was born on the 75th and has dropped to the 25th, but since the charts are from bottlefed babies in the fifties and didn't even plot the same babies' growth over time, I don't pay them much attention. Look at your baby - is he lively, alert and learning new things?

DS also went through a phase of being more unsettled around the 'traditional' weaning time - fed more and slept less. I think it was a growth spurt or three and I just rode it out. He's 33 weeks today and is only really starting to show much interest in (or need for) solids.

HTH a bit xxx

hunkermunker, agree with you about the limitations of charts....but the data they are based on is fine

They are not based on bottle fed babies in the fifties - if you look in your child health record you should see references showing where the info comes from - there's nothing wrong with it. The babies in the seven or eight data sets are bottle fed, breastfed, given early solids, and are a mixture. They give an accurate picture of a population's growth. It's the way they are used with individuals that is so poor. Mickeymouse's HV may be ok, though, and may well be trying to reassure her about how the health and development of her baby is crucial to any assessment.

Some babies do travel down the centiles to reach their physiological weight - nothing wrong with that, MM. Your baby may be needing extra calories at the moment, and nothing wrong with that. You have the extra calories on tap!! It is likely he will move on and out of this phase.

Did they plot the same babies' growth though? I thought they just took a bunch of babies who were x weeks old, weighed them all, found the average and plotted it, then the next day took another bunch of babies who were x+1 weeks old, plotted them all and found the average, then joined up the dots to find the centiles.

I'd be interested in them doing it again now, that's for sure!

DS has descended down the centiles and HV won't get a breastfed from birth chart, so I don't bother having him weighed any more - they just exchange looks and question me about breastfeeding - like the chubby smiling baby who's learning new things every day isn't a bit of a huge clue that everything's fine!

Sorry for the rant - just makes me cross. Phew!

If he is having enough wet nappies my guess is he is just going through a growth spurt. I was lucky as far as fretting over the charts - we just didn't take ds in for well baby checks . Not that I'm saying everyone else should do that, but we have a lot of medical people in the family and I felt comfortable that we had everything under control.

Message withdrawn

Sounds like a growth spurt to me - it should get better in a few days and then if you're lucky, you'll get a few sleepy days and an enormous weight gain!

(don't worry about the charts though - just means you're bab isn't growing like the "average" baby does really. I haven't weighed ds for ages - he's nice and fat and healthy and that's all that matters).

hunkermunker, you are right about how they collected the data - not taking the same babies, but lots of bunches of babies at diff. ages. This is ok, and a respectable way to track the growth of a population. However, the use of the charts as a clinical tool to assess an individual baby demands a degree of skill and a healthy respect for the other signs a baby is developing and growing well. IMHO, this is just not done well in many baby clinics.

Thanks for all your reassurance on this topic. Have to say that chart alone wasn?t bothering me that much but then ds started to get very hungry as well and HV had pulled a face at weigh?in, and although she said baby looks fine and to continue feeding the same it was the ?we?ll keep an eye on it? phrase that started me wondering. Only reason I have had ds weighed so much is that I go to mother and baby group where one of the things they do is weigh the babies so I just think ?might as well while I?m here?. Anyway on a positive note ds slept for a whole five hour stretch last night (first time in weeks). I?m not expecting that it will be so good every night but at least there is some hope for us hermykne!

mickeymouse
lucky you that was great to get.
i had the most awful night last night, just couldnt go on. my ds wouldnt settle and my dd was getting impatient and it all blew up!
i was in tears ......i could go on and on.
my dh works away from us for a period of 26hrs and then home for a day then away again, so its just demanding on your own esr when sleep is minimal.
i have to decide what to do re the b/f as i am fiding it drainigng in the night.

keep in touch

mickeymouse, you got the HV face! I've seen that a few times!

I think it's very normal for growth to slow down at 3 months, babies simply cannot keep up that growth pace forever!

I was in a similar situation with my dd. I just kept going at at (hard I know) and came out the other side. Kept chanting, 'think of the long term' under my breath!!

Good luck.

MM - same here too!

DS is 15 weeks. He had been piling through the centiles (born on 25th, but went up towards 75th) and has now started to tail down again. He was gaining 6-8oz a week and now it's only 3. I also got the "we'll keep an eye on it" type comment. I panic constantly too that he's not getting enough. (Does anyone else try to estimate the quantity from the feel of the boob?)

I found that he was eating less well in the day (too distracted - doesn't want to just stare at a boob I think) and was therefore making up for it at night, so I've just started expressing for some of his day time feeds to make sure it's going in. That does seem to be helping with spacing out his night feeds again.

I think he also went through a growth spurt as he slept loads last week - from 2pm to 7am the next morning one day, only waking for feeds/changes!

milklady, I find it difficult to estimate quantity by feel of boob but I have also tried expressing occasionally. like to see how much I express and how much he drinks. I have read (in baby whisperer book) that baby can manage to extract a further 1oz of milk more than you can get out with the pump.
hermykne, hoping for a better night for you soon. Have you read the thread 'Do bottlefed babies sleep better and longer at night than breastfed ones?' I think most people are saying no. Have to say that I have given ds bottle of formula at night a couple of times (mainly so that I can have an hour off and dh can do the feed)and it made no difference to the time before he would wake.

mickeymouse
i did see that that thread. and couldnt believe how many said it made no difference. it has me all confused really.
i gave him a formula bottle last night and he had an allergic reaction to it! just my luck. the bruiser of 17lb12 at 17wks! my dd wasnt this weight at 7mths.

my dd has a cows milk allergy but it didnt manifest itself thru formula, his has, i cant believe it!
so off to doc today.

re expressing i just cant get more than 2oz this time round when i express. so to express a full feed would take all day. 1st time it was a breeze 8oz sometimes.

i have had 3 boys. breastfed first 2 for 6 months. both weight gain tailed off once weaning started. my 3rd (5mths)i have just switched him to formula milk after a couple of weeks of feeding both types. his sleep pattern hasn't changed at all!

to give an occasional bottle of formula milk doesnt mean failure! you are doing what is best for baby whether it be breast or bottle. if he's still hungry after breast feeding then bottle milk is better for them than starting weaning early

Well done mums