snacking on the breast

[FiFi118]

hi
i have an 11 week old and am dully bf. at night she goes from 11 pm til 4/4.30 am when she wakes for a feed. she is then not interested in the morning feed and as a result snacks for the rest of the morning only getting back to fuller feeds by the afternoon. it is making her unhappy and me as i don't really know when she s hungry now and it upsets her naps also. any advice would be appreciated!!

Hi there - not sure I can help, but bumping in case someone knowledgeable is around. Well done for getting this far!

Why not leave the morning feed until she asks for it, rather than giving it when she's not interested?

Fifi, your dd sounds rather like my dd. Are you trying to establish a routine? (eg CLB) If so, do remember that however infallible the promoter of the regime claims their methods are, one of the participants (ie your dd) has definitely not read the book! Because (and please, I stress that I am not implying any criticism of you as a parent) it is quite a lot to expect a small baby to understand concepts like regular mealtimes, naptimes and snacking, let alone behave in accordance with them. I think the analogy that's used here a bit is, given that breast milk is both food and drink for a baby, if you were that baby, would you understand that it's not allowed to have a sip of water between meals? Would you always want a three course meal rather than a sandwich? It's actually a very normal feeding pattern for babies to have small feeds close together at certain times of the day - it's adults who call this snacking, with all the negative connotations this carries. Maybe you would find it easier if you go with her pattern- it changes all the time anyway as they grow.

Take care

thank you for that - i do think it is more disruptive for the mum to try to follow a routine for when it doesn't work!

HTH! Glad you feel that way.

Funnily enough, dd did eventually evolve a routine of her own, napping at fairly regular times and for consistent periods. Until we started solids, and even then, she would have lots of little feeds between 8 and 10am and between 4 and 6.

It's also worth remembering that many writers advocating routines based their approach on working in institutions such as orphanages, and that some versions (eg 1950's interpretations) were about having the baby in a routine so that the mother had more energy to attend to her husband's needs, and that his sleep wasn't interrupted. Go figure