when does 8-12 feeds in 24hrs stop being the recommended advice?

[Caz10]

a bit confused re this...i know some babies feed through the night for quite some time, but others sleep through from an earlier age. dd is 8wks and will sleep from midnight/1am until 6/7am if we let her. she has had weight gain issues so we have been waking her 3am-ish to feed. but she is slowly putting on weight, also obviously getting older, and we have been told we don't need to wake her anymore.

So she currently feeds roughly:
7am
9.30am
12 o'clock
2.30/3ish
4.30/5ish

That's 5 feeds so far, both sides each time, content after feeds.

She is currently cluster feeding from 5/6ish until 12/1am-ish and feeding constantly then. but hopefully this phase will pass (purleeease tell me it will!) and i would envisage her to feed at roughly

7-ish
10-ish and/or 12-ish

So that would be 7 or 8 feeds - is that enough?

it says on kellymom 8-12 times per day for the 1st 6wks, but can't see the info for 6wks onwards?

I'm not an expert on this and have no idea what the recommended number of feeds is. With both my children at 8 weeks I would just 'go with the flow' and feed on demand. I can't remember about ds1 at that age now but ds2 was taking 6 feeds per 24 hours at 8 weeks (he settled himself into his own routine of that amount) with occasional runs of few days where he would feed more often -growth spurts I assume. I wouldn't personally think that the number of feeds per day is so important as the amount taken in total. Some may feed little and often others may have fewer bigger feeds. As long as baby is content and growing.

thanks singsong. because of her weight issues we're not quite ready to go with the flow yet, but i'm hoping it won't be long.

Yes I guess it really depends on the individual baby. Both my boys have had really good appetites and I've never been in a position where I needed to wake them for a feed because they'd be there yelling for it. In fact Ds2 is still requesting a feed at 4am at 6 months.

Does your baby look healthy and happy?

Thats what really matters, not the number of feeds.

My dd had slow weight gain to begin with and would sometimes do a 6 hour stint of sleeping. One HV told me to wake her very 3 hours but this made her distressed and unhappy.

Another HV told me, dd will not starve herself and just to feed her on demand and it will soon settle out. It did. She sometimes few 20 times a day, other days she would only take 5 feeds.

As mum's we will always worry about every aspect of our babies lives. But if your baby looks healthy and happy, thats the most important thing.

see that's what i think too!! but bf advisor has told us not to leave her longer than 3hrs at the moment, and i'm worried her longer period of sleep will cause her to lose weight.
she quite often looks to be fed after only 1 or 2hrs, and obviously i do feed her then. can't help thinking that the every 3 hrs thing is artificial and that i am messing with her sleep patterns. but bfc keeps asking how many feeds she gets in 24hrs, and i see that mentioned on here a lot too.

We need TikTok, she's the queen of BF advice.

I think you know your baby best, are you happy with the feeding?

Is it just one person who's telling you to wake dd up or hv and BFing advisor? If it's just one person, they might not be right. Have you called the NCT (Breastfeeding Line: 0870 444 8708). It's worth a try and it might put your mind at rest.

I chose not to continue waking my dd up when she was small as it felt wrong, but I did feed dd at even the smallest squeek. If you didn't want to wake her fully, you could see if she'll dream feed.

Sushipaws, Caz's baby has had weight gain and feeding concerns....that's why she has been advised to take more of an initiative in feeding her baby. Big bruiser babies can happily be left to sleep and feed when they heck they like....little teeny ones may need more than that because sleeping may be a way for them to conserve energy, so they don't 'ask' for feeds.

Caz - there is no way anyone can say that x feeds are 'right' for any particular individual baby. There are many, many babies of more than 6 weeks who feed just as often as they did when they were younger, and maybe this is what they need It's also a normal pattern for newborn 'style' frequency to space out a bit, and some babies thrive well on 7-8 feeds in 24 hours. It's not a goal though - are you seeing 7-8 feeds as some sort of sign that all is well after the difficult time you have had? This is understandable...

The info on kellymom talks about the first 6 weeks, I suppose, because this is the time bf becomes established.

thanks tiktok. Not sure if you are meaning that 7-8 feeds is not many, or a lot? My friend's baby is 4 months old and I know she feeds (bf) about 4-5 times a day, that was the only thing I had for comparison.

My goal to be honest is to be able to do like you said - "sleep and feed when the heck they like". However her weight issues are stopping us doing that, coupled with the fact that even if her weight does improve I'm still not 100% confident abuot early feeding cues, and worry that I might not feed her often enough.

the 3hr thing seems unnatural, and it doesn't always work - eg today the 3hrs was up and she hadn't seemed to have been looking for food during that time. so i duly offered the breast - she never point blank refuses to open her mouth, but i just felt she wasn't hungry, she played about with it for a few mins then just kept coming off. If I was more relaxed I've just have said oh well she'll feed when she's hungry, but instead i was panicking cos she'd missed a "slot". (she ate well when offered again about 40 mins later)

Caz - 7-8 times in a day is on the normal spectrum for a baby of four months, and 4-5 is not very often....it's actually not very often for grown up people, either!

Think of a toddler, or a pre-schooler. They're very typically gonna have a drink of milk (breast, cows, whatever) on rising, then a breakfast. We'd expect them to have a couple of snacks (fruit, biscuit, drink of milk) before lunch, which will include a drink then another snack and a drink mid-afternoon and then tea , with a drink, plus a bedtime snack with a drink. That's 8-9 times - and that's a kid who doesn't wake in the night, and some still do, for a drink.

Btu by then, no one is counting, or timing....we're just responding to what seems to be sensible and what the kid wants

Not to say 4-5 times in a day is not enough - might be fine for that particular baby

hi tiktok and anyone else who can help! bumping this up again as i've been told again today to make sure dd has no less than 8 feeds in a 24hr period, and i'm really struggling to get her to take that many!

As I said above she is still more or less having the following 5 feeds (rough times obviously, but generally we've done 5 by tea time):
7am
9.30am
12 o'clock
2.30/3ish
4.30/5ish

she feeds well at all of these times except sometimes the 2pm-ish feed, it can be a struggle as she doesn't seem very interested.

her cluster feeding is starting to tail off now - she still feeds a lot from 6-10ish but then isn't interested and keeps dozing off.

last night i ended up putting her down at 10.30, she slept till 12, woke but only fed for 15 mins (normally 1hr) then that was her through to 7 again.

i know if she was bigger this would be fine, but her size and slow weight gain are a concern. but i can't see how to feed her when she's not hungry!

I don't know if this helps or not, but my DD2 had a feeding pattern very similar to yours at that age - would feed roughly every 3 hours through the day and then cluster feed all evening and then sleep from 12-7am. She was 7lbs 6oz at birth (50th centile) but has ended up somewhere around the 9th (she's 7 months now).

But she is healthy, happy and in proportion (she has quite a small head so would look a bit odd if she was any fatter!)

I don't know the full details of your DD, but just wanted to share my experience to reassure you.

Caz10, I think the health professionals are being slightly pedantic in advising you to feed her X amount of times, you cannot force feed a baby. Its okay for them to advise it but the reality is totally different.

If you are offering her the breast as often as humanely possible then I can't see what more you can do. I don't know the history of your DD's weight gain but as you are well aware, some babies do not gain very quickly and some do.

I hope things get a bit better for you.

Well done for feeding her this long especially because she is having difficulty gaining. A lot of mothers would have bottle fed by now.

thanks! bodkin what did the docs/health visitors say re your dd's weight loss? mine only lost 3oz, which is now back on, and although i appreciate that she is far smaller than average and a slow gainer, i still think she is healthy. but i was made to feel like she was on the brink of death!

thanks helenelisabeth i veer towards ff-ing about 25 times a day in my head! just don't want to stick to bf-ing at her expense though...so confusing...

Caz, it's hard to comment on this as I don't know enough about your situation - it may well be considered important by the hcps to get more milk into your baby, and taking the initiative in making milk available to her is part of this. 'Wearing' your baby - in sling - keeps her close so you can respond at small feeding cues. I can't remember if you have tried this, sorry.

Ah, well, my DD didn't actually lose weight... I don't think... just gained slowly. TBH as she was my 2nd I didn't get her weighed very often. It was only when people kept looking shocked when I said she was 5 months that it occured to me that maybe she was a bit on the small side. I was expecting a bit of a bollocking from the HV when I finally did take her to get her weighed, but she was totally cool and just said that she looked healthy and in proportion and don't worry.

I'm still eating snacks on about that timetable, and I'm 32 :-(

How heavy is your DD Caz?