Probably daft but if you BF how does 3/4 hour feeding work vs demand feeding?

[iwantitnow]

DS 8 weeks old day sleep routine good - determined by school run, nighttime sleep shocking. Fed DD on demand until nearly 2, so never did feed routines. Awful nights meant I looked at the Millpond sleep book today. Never understood 3/4 hourly feed works though. If I fed at 7/11/3/7 - all naps follow a long time after feeds, DS not fed to sleep but normally gets a top up before a nap to make him sleepy - do people that do routines not do that or as I suspect not count the top up feed. Curious really as happy to feed on demand although not 5 times a night since birth!

Personally and from the veiws of other on demand feeders.... the more you offer the breast in the day the less they feed at night.

I think there is published researched that concludeds babas fed on deamnd on average take in more calories than those fed 3/4 hourly.

Only have one dd but have been thinking that if/when another comes along I would nurse as much as possible in the morning and in the day as when I did this with dd1 she needed less calories in the night.....

I think the idea is that when they have a longer time in between feeds they take a proper feed and it satisfies them for longer. Think 8 weeks is a bit early though to go that long, can't remember getting four hours in between feeds at that stage, but when a bit older it's more feasible. Did feed before bedtime at 7ish and then a top up at 10pm and then they woke up at about 2 am for another and went through till 7ish, but as I said that was when they were a bit older.

I think 8 weeks might be a bit young to fall into a 3 hourly bf routine. I think when dd got to about 12 weeks she slipped into a 3 hourly feeding routine and was happy to go for 12 hours at night without a feed.

I think I can remember cluster feeding in teh evenings with dd - I used to feed approx every 2 1/2 hours throughout teh day (used to feed at 7, 9.30, 11, 1.30, 3ish and then feed pretty much constantly between about 6-8ish - I think this gave her enough energy to get through the night. Think you'd need at least 7 good feeds during the day.

Just what worked for me

My DS won't cluster feed unlike my DD at this stage he just falls asleep. He has at least 7 good feeds a day but still wakes up at least 4/5 times a night. I have on occasion taken to bed at the weekend and fed him as much as possible but still no improvement.

DD (18 weeks) is now on 4 hourly feeds (7, 11, 3, 7, 11 and one night feed). No top ups before naps, she just goes straight down.

Took a while to get to this though - demand fed for weeks which basically meant she was on and off the boob all the time and never really taking a proper feed - just snacking - and consequently expected to do the same at night. Awful... and her sleep during the night and naps during the day were all over the place.

Got her into feeding 3 hourly around 12 weeks. At this point, sleep improved dramatically! She was only really ready for 4 hourly in the last couple of weeks though so followed her lead on that.

If I could do it all again I'd demand feed in the truest sense of the word for the first couple of weeks only then try to get into a schedule as I find it works soooo much better. More satisfied baby, less windy and sicky from not snacking all the time, and MUCH better sleeping. Probably an unpopular viewpoint on MN though, I've been chastised a few times for talking about scheduled feeding!

My experience of feeding ds2 (wasn't very successful with ds1 in this area) is a bit like mumblecrumble's - at 8 weeks I was feeding a lot in the day, still do but not quite so much, but he did quite well at night.

What I do isn't very scheduled but I combine demand feeding with offering him a feed at times when it seems practical to do so. For example if I've fed him at 7 am or even 8 am and I want to leave the house at 10 am and I have a journey which might take an hour or more by public transport, the best thing to do is offer him a feed at 9 or 9.30 am even if he's not asked. Similarly, if we have a doctor's appointment I'll offer him a feed in the waiting room after the appointment. Also we change his nappy and I feed him at bedtime, which is usually quite late. He doesn't sleep through every night but he does sometimes, from 12 to 6 or 7, or other times he only wakes once.

We're having a bit of a starving baby spell at the moment, but I think this works better for me than pure demand feeding, and seems kinder to him and more likely to maintain milk supply as I want to carry on bfing as long as I can, than a fixed schedule of feeding. It's also more convenient than thinking I have to do things at exactly the same time every day.

CrazyCatLady how do you get into scheduled feeds? DS2 screams the place down if he isn't fed, and it's usually every 30 min or so in the day if we're not out, he'll sleep for maybe 45-60min. He's 12 weeks now and 91st percentile height and weight though.