I have a little boy who will be 8 weeks old on Sunday. I've been breastfeeding him since he was born, with some success. I've been trying to feed him every three hours up until now because I understand that it takes that long for a little baby to digest the food completely - sometimes I have to gently rouse him to feed him during the day so that he sleeps well at night.
He can go for 3 or 4 hours between feeds at night at this stage. Last night I didn't dreamfeed him to see how he would be and actually found that he was able to go for 5 hours, then 4 and then another 4, so I think I will stop the dreamfeeding because it seems to be working.
However, in the last few days he's been very much in snack mode, rather than full on feeding mode. Up until now he has been taking about 30-40 minutes to feed at a time but now he just stops after 10 or 15 minutes and I'm starting to get worried. He doesn't looked 'zonked' after a feed now like before - is he getting enough? Why has he become suddenly less hungry?
What do I do? Have I been doing everything wrong up until now? 4 hours or so seems like such a long gap during the day - I don't want him to go hungry and I also want him to be able to sleep reasonably well at night. I have tried to get him into a little routine during the day, but find that if it's every 3 hours then he just doesn't seem hungry at all and doesn't have a really satisfying feed.
Am starting to lose confidence with feeding - am I being overly paranoid or should I worry?