18 week old barely feeding during the day

[littlelamb]

I am beginning to worry about ds. In the past week or so I have noticed that he is reguarly going for the best part of the day without a feed- he can go from 10 til 5 for eg, which is how it went today. If I try to offer him the breast he gets very very upset. I don't know if this is a problem or not. He is still gaining weight ad is on the 75th centile, but I can't see how he can go so long between feeds! He is awake for a good portion of that time but can be quite grizzly (I think teething). We co sleep and he sleeps very well, feeding maybe 4 times between 10 and 7 am. Anything I can do? It just seems wrong that in the whole time dd is out of the house at preschool he doesn't have a single feed- I know I couldn't go that long!

bump

fast moving boards tonight littlelamb

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Littlelamb - I think our DS' are the same age? My DS is nearly 20wo and has been like this too recently. I couldn't get him to feed properly during the day either then he would feed several times at night (we co-sleep too). He then had two days of proper feeding (which was great as he usually is very distracted) and put on more weight than he has done since he was tiny .

I'm not worried about my DS as he seems to be happy and is certainly developing well.

Does your DS have nothing at all for 7 hours? I think mine sometimes has a small drink but that's all - certainly not a feed. Mine doesn't sleep either - I wonder if they are just too interested in what is going on around them to think of food....

oh yes...ds1 fed so much at night he could repeatedly overflow his nappy, then went through much of the day on 2 teaspoons of avocado....(so must have been over 6 months, but I'm sure it started earlier).
Makes complete sense...sleep and eat AT THE SAME TIME at night then have the whole day free for playing...

LittleLamb my ds did this at that age - he went 9hrs one day and I was soooo

Phoned an LLL leader who said this is called "reverse cycling" and it is not uncommon when mummies go back to work. (I hadn't!)

She said the way round it, which totally worked for us, was to kind of sneak up on him when he was just drifting off or waking up - I would pounce on ds and jam a boob in his mouth and he would feed! (We then ended up with a wee problem where he wouldn't feed any way other than lying down , but that was much more curable!) She also recommended lots of skin contact if possible so there were a few days where I took my shirt off and lay on the bed with him when he woke up from his nap, just held him and talked to him for a bit.

She said it would take the same amount of time to get over the habit as it took to get into it - in our case 2 weeks - and that was bang on as well.

Hope that helps

He is not having anything- we were out today and stopped to try and feed him 3 ctimes because he was grizzly but it just seemed to aggitate him more, and just resulted in lots of boob exposure He is very easily distracted when feeding now- I have started wearing a long necklace to try and keep his attention when feeding, but he still likes to gaze around.

it's so frustrating isn't it! couldn't feed ds in public from the age of 4m - he simply couldn't focus at all.

phdlife- that rings lots of bells. He does seem to prefer feeding lying down. Hmm, I wonder if this may actually be the issue. When I tried to feed him just before putting dd to bed he was having none of it, but afterwards I took him to bed and he fed straightaway.

sounds like he is discovering what an exciting place the world is...
I found mobility helped resolve the "reverse feeding" - more tired at night so less night feeds, hungrier in the day so more daytime feeds...things seemed to improve around then...

Good advice from phd, try the skin to skin and feeding lying down just before/after a nap, this should help.
I do think it's worth keeping on trying to feed him more during the day, babies his age do need milk during the day, not just at night.
Hope things settle down for you soon.

And I really don't want feeding in public to become a problem- we are out and about so much it would be really restricting. He won't take a bottle either [kicks self for not persevering with ebm from day 1 like I did with dd]

sorry just seen his age on the title - so yes, nearly same age as my DS.

Have you considered trying to give him a training beaker like the tommee tippee one? If he takes it then he might be happier to feed from it while looking around - even if he only took a little ebm it might whet his appetite (?)

I managed to temporarily solve DS's distraction problem by feeding him in the rugby hold (he gets a different view and didn't feel so 'hemmed in' I think.)