My 9 week old son is a big feeder, who rarely takes less than an hour to feed and always has both sides. However, that's the only way he's big. He was three weeks early, and although he was a respectable 6lbs 5oz at birth, since then he has struggled to put on weight. He lost more than 11% of his birth weight as he had jaundice and was sleepy to boot, and poor baffled new parents that we were, we didn't know enough to force him to eat frequently enough. Also, he was having trouble latching on on one side, and probably wasn't doing that well on the side that WAS working. I have enormous guilt about that, and about the fact that at 9 weeks he is 8lbs and looks like a much younger baby. I am incredibly sick of people looking at him in shock and saying 'really? He's tiny' when we tell them his age. According to the GP, we should think of him as a six-week-old as he was early, and that does help.
We were advised to formula feed him from the end of his first week, and did so, tapering off the feeds and replacing them with breastfeeding, which is now his only source of food.
That's the background, then - he had problems, he's gaining now, though slowly, and he feeds for ages. My question is this: should I be taking him off and putting him on the other side after a while? Or leave him to decide for himself that he's done? He seems satisfied when he comes off - big smiles, milky mouth, stretches and general air of cheeriness. But I am spending so much time feeding him that I don't really have time for anything else. (At the moment I think he is going through his six week growth spurt delayed by three weeks, so things are particularly slow, but I am thinking more of the future.)
Has anyone else had a slow feeder? Did it ever improve? And does anyone have any suggestions for what we should do? I'm prepared to keep going at his pace if that's what's best...