How can I be sure my BF DS has had enough milk at bedtime?

[MrsHD]

And what is 'enough' anyway?

We're in the process of establishing a bedtime routine for 3 month old Max, based on what he tends to do and suppertime for the rest of the family etc. He feeds frequently in the day - maximum of 2 hours between feeds and often only one. He's immense, 98th centile stuff. He has a feed after his bath (about 7pm by then) and usually falls asleep on the boob though I'm now making sure he surfaces before I put him in his cot, even though it leads to lots of complaining. Previously I would have whipped him out of his cot and stuck him on the boob at the first whimper, but I know now that if I leave him for 5 mins (leave him off the boob I mean - I usually sit there til he is quiet, if not asleep, usually just a few mins) he goes to sleep.

I don't want to deny him milk, but equally I'm not going to take him out of his cot every 2 minutes all evening. On the basis that he's an enormous, healthy boy gaining weight like there's no tomorrow, can I be sure one good big feed at bedtime is enough for him to sleep for a good 5 hours or so? I always find it very hard to 'know' that he's not hungry as he's always been such a big feeder.

Thanks.

I am not sure what you are asking. You have got a routine for nightime and feed him on demand and let him self settle at times.

If he wakes up and asks for milk, then he needs feeding. Don't forget babies also find comfort from feeding, so he might not be hungery.

I don't think you can ever 'know' that a baby is not hungry, especially a bfed one.

I've tended to give mine the benefit of the doubt and assume they are hungry if they wake.

Ds1 stopped waking once properly established on solids at about7 months.

Ds2 is 5 months now and is demand fed - hopefully he'll do the same!

I think it becomes easier once they are on solids - if you saw that they wolfed down a huge bowl of porridge at tea time you can be more confident that they are waking for another reason.

But I'd always feed a bfed baby

Personally I do not believe in this theory babies must be awake going to sleep or they will never settle themselves.

I breastfed all my 4 babies and they all fell asleep on the breast before bed. I then knew they had had enough milk and none of them had sleeping issues.

Baby's routines vary and so do their needs. If he seems hungry feed him.

What I'm asking is: how do I know he's had enough food to be full enough to go into a longish sleep? Trouble with Max is he'll fall asleep on the boob then be awake 5 mins later sometimes, and I can't be sure if it's more food, comfort or something else that he needs. Quite agree that if you've seen them demolish a plate of something you can be more confident they've had enough to eat.

It's not a big issue, was just looking for others' experiences. Thanks for the replies

I doubt you'll ever know TBH.

My own philosophy was, if they woke, to check that their nappy was dry. Try a cuddle and if that didn't work, just to feed again.

I also offered both breasts at bedtime. I think that you really can't torture yourself trying to judge the size of the feed because it isn't all sleep related.

One night, he will just sleep for a long period, or even all night with you doing nothing different.

If he wakes up after 5 minutes and asks for milk, then he needs feeding. Try not to worry, he sounds like a perfectly normal baby.

Have you considered letting him sleep downstairs in the evening ? It would save you going upstairs every 5 minues

YOu can't know I fear - and it might be different from night to night. But if he goes on the breast hungry and comes off content then you can be reasonably confident they they've had enough and that they might need just a pat, or the dummy, when they whimper. If it goes to full on howling obviously get them on the boob!

But their needs change ALL the trime at this age - for many babies 16 weeks heralds a change in eating and sleeping patterns...good luck.

I had this problem as well - my ds ( now 7.5 months) was a frequent feeder and I never whether he was taking enough etc etc.Plus after 3 months of 2 hourly feeds 24/7 I was totally knackered. What we did in order to be sure he took enough and didn't just wake after 2 hours looking for milk was to give him a bottle of expressed milk at his last feed as well as a breast feed and sort of tanked him up. Within a week he started to go 5 hours without a feed. It depends whether or not you can be bothered with the faff of expressing.It was a bit of a pain but it did work. After about a month or so we didn't do the bottle any more and as he had settled into the routine of 5 hours he obviously took enough at the last feed to get him through. All went to buggery after he started teething at 4 months however.

Surely the way you know if he's eaten enough to sleep for 5hrs, is if he sleeps for 5hrs?

If he wakes asking for food then he needs feeding. It may be that he's just not ready to sleep for that long yet, as he's still quite young. Lots of feeding in the evenings is really common and normal in babies.

I don't agree that he must be hungry if he wakes 5 mins later. Even if he hasn't taken very much milk, I don't think he can possibly be hungry 5 mins later.

I think the only way you can judge it, MrsHD, is by comparing his bedtime feed with his other feeds. How long is he feeding for? If it's at least as long as his daytime feeds, and you can hear him swallowing, and you've offered both sides, then I think you can be as confident as you'll ever be that he's taken a full feed.

But whether that will get him through the next five hours is I think a very individual matter. I tend to work on the basis that if mine has taken a good feed at bedtime she doesn't need feeding sooner than she would have done if she'd been awake.

What does a 'full feed' actually mean? If you think about it, this is actually a bottlefeeding concept that comes from the idea that we can somehow measure what babies take in and use this to predict when they will next need milk. Bottle fed babies 'have feeds' breastfed babies just feed .

Breastfeeding is the normal physiological process. When babies are allowed to regulate the process they take exactly what they need. Before it is born a baby in the womb has nutrients on tap 24/7. After birth, breastfeeding takes over. Breastmilk is digested very readily, and so young babies feed frequently and not necessarily at regular intervals.

A common pattern in the evenings is to see 'cluster feeding' where babies feed very frequently and mum's breasts feel soft and floppy. At these times, the milk taken will be the lower volume higher fat harder to access milk. It's a bit like baby is taking a lot of short shots of double cream. sometimes mums find that after a session like this their baby will sleep for a bit of a longer stretch.

There's also no way you can judge his intake by timing a feed. Sometimes babies glug down milk, other times they feed at a more leisurely pace.

Aranea, the baby may not be hungry, the baby might want to touch base and bond with mum or feel lonely, ill and just want some company. Breastfeeding covers ALL these needs.

He will know when he is full, that is all you need to know. Enjoy the baby cuddles, don't worry about measuring anything, it is one of the benefits of breastfeeding that you do not have to!

MrsHD - how long do you feed your LO for after the bath? ever since my LO was 2 months old I have given him a 40minutes feed after his bath, 20mins on each breast. If he started dozing during this time I would give him a VERY gentle jiggle and he would usually resume sucking this would be enough to see him thru to 10pm. We still do 40minutes now even tho he is nearly 9months and could probably suck everything he wanted in 10minutes it's just a nice bedtime ritual!

Saying all that every baby is different.

Agree with mears, I didn't cause any sleeping probs by letting them fall asleep on the breast.

Do you offer a dreamfeed when you go to bed yourself? Pick Max up gently while he's asleep and offer him your breast, he'll just feed away in his sleep and when he's finished you can just put him back in his cot and he'll be topped up nicely without waking up. Worked a treat for my LOs

Another vote for MrsMears. No need to stop him falling asleep on the boob, he's only 12 weeks old!!!! I actually think he's too young to be "going to bed" by himself this early anyway. It's quite normal for babies of this age to cluster feed for several hours in the evening, I kept mine in the livingroom with us until they were nearly a year old, they slept in a bouncy chair or on my lap and went to bed when I did. The advice about "shared sleep" and rooming-in (ie baby not sleeping in a room alone) with regards to SIDS doesn't just mean the middle of the night, but for all the time the baby is asleep, day-time naps, early evening sleep and night-time sleep too.

The idea that a baby must learn to fall asleep by themselves from an early age is Gna Frd/Claire Verity style controlling rubbish. I guarentee that if you let him nurse to sleep whilst he's a baby you won't still be rocking him on your lap when he's a teenager, he'll learn to fall asleep independantly in his own time, theres no need to put him in his cot awake and leave him to grumble or cry.

When he's full he'll stop feeding, it may take him 3 hours of on-off nursing for him to tank himself up for the night, but if it does it's perfectly normal. You'll know he's full when he falls into a deep sleep and slides off the boob!

I'm leaving this thread now....all this talk about babies, breastfeeding and especially Greenmonkies description of the way they slide of the boob in a deep sleep when they are full is making me seriously nostalgic and broody [sigh]

Sorry Cilitbang

Presumably the supply will regulate so that if he feeds a bit more one evening, the next evening he'll have that extra volume he requires. If he settles, he has had enough, if he doesn't and wakes up in an hour you'll feed him again. And there will be more the following evening making him more likely to settle. Don't agree with Greenmonkies that all babies need to spend all evening clusterfeeding at 12 weeks, if it suits you fine to have baby up, but some babies are happy being put to bed at 7.00 with a "bedtime routine" sort of feed. Mine were. But if the baby demanded more and didn't settle I FED HIM MORE.

All babies are different. Some cluster feed, some don't. Some will feed for 40 mins, some won't stay on the breast for more than 5.

It's true that simply measuring the length of time your baby has been latched on for will not tell you whether they've been consuming a lot of milk, but when mine has been glugging away for her 5 minutes I know she is full because I can hear it going down her. And because she only ever feeds for 5 minutes and if I ever can convince her to take more it comes straight out again!

I wasn't advocating timing the feed as the only piece of relevant information Grendle, but I don't think it's irrelevant when taken together with whether you can hear them swallowing a lot and how long they usually take over a feed. Apologies for the term 'full feed' - I was just trying to say a lot of milk really. I've never bottle fed, not even expressed milk, so I don't have any idea what that means in terms of quantities.

And yes, of course babies breastfeed for all sorts of reasons babieseverywhere. But the OP was wondering how she might know whether he was actually hungry, and I don't think it's impossible to judge that. If you want a bit of sleep, that can be a helpful thing to do, and then you can decide whether or not you're going to feed them anyhow if you think that's what they want.

Actually my baby doesn't always wake for a feed. She wakes up for a myriad of mysterious reasons, but she really isn't looking for a feed every time. This is in contrast to my first baby, who did always want a feed whether she was hungry or not, and so I always fed her.

So I really don't believe in absolute rules for babies. But I think that from around 12 weeks of age you can start to recognise feeding patterns that enable you to judge when your baby is actually hungry.