Only four breastfeeds a day for 5m old?

[mistressploppy]

Hello, first time typing (been reading for ages) so be gentle! DS is 5 months (but was 4wks early) and currently EBF 3 hourly (7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 6pm) and sleeps 7-7 with no waking. He naps in between every feed as he can't cope with being awake very long.

I had real problems with 45min naps which are now much better. But would like to go to 3 longer naps instead of 4, which would mean dropping a feed if I want to keep the eat/play/sleep thing going....

Question is, 4 feeds a day seems a bit sparse if he doesn't eat at night? Doesn't it? Should I just try it and stop wittering?!

What are these naps of which you speak? DD5 can go from 7am to 9pm with no more than a 10-minute doze, she feeds 8 or 10 times a day, and she is 23 weeks!

Which is to say that babies differ a lot. But restricting an EBF baby to 4 feeds doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

providing his weight is ok and he is a happy chappy,. i would say do what works for you. i know all about the 45 minute thing and abandoned the eat, activity, sleep thing because it simply didn't work and his weight was starting to falter. i now feed on demand and before naps when he is sleepy too (he is quite distractable) and he is back on/above his line. we still have eating sleeping and playing, he is such a happy baby, and i have learnt there is nothing like a sleep manual / strict routine to stop you enjoying your baby! except for the no cry sleep solution which is a really lovely book imo.

i only know a couple of people for which strict routines and bfing has worked. many others have had problems with weight, and then been encouraged to top up with formula / wean early etc.

in a nutshell, if your baby is thriving, happy, gaining weight well, do whatever works for you. if that means going for 4 feeds, do it. although i would imagine they would have to be massive feeds! babies have quie small tummies too so he might want milk more often.

at 7-7

Thanks, I did wonder....

Also, think I may have cocked up my abbreviations - he's exclusively breastfed, not expressed breastmilk fed.

I do feed him whenever he asks, he just doesn't seem that bothered! And eats really well when he IS feeding (takes 45min).

from what i know 5 months is classic disctractability which might be why he is not bothered. i would go by weight and wet nappies (sometimes poos don't happen for days). if this is ok, then what you are doing is ok. ds is ebf too (i thnk that IS exclusively bf), 25 weeks and feeds mega quickly - sometimes 5-10 minutes, but is on 75th centile. its not so much to do with how long they feed for but whether there weight is good and they are clearly thriving, from what i can gather.

sorry, TERRIBLE post! spelling etc.

Do you schedule the feeds or do you demand feed? Do you ever offer feeds or wait for him to 'ask'? Is he really a laid back baby?

I have a 23 week old DD3 and I have no idea how many feeds she has a day but it's definitely more than 4. I do make sure if she is awake I offer her 1 feed at least once in each hour as well as feeding when ever she 'cues' for it. If she doesn't want it she will turn me down . She is a very laid back baby and is quite happy to watch the world (read: her sisters) rather than squeak up for food.

She was tube fed for a week due to bronchiolitis and was only on 23mls of exp.bm an hour so she went down to the 2nd%ile and got used to such small amounts of food which really compounded the issue of being a laid back baby.

Thanks Ruby, and TruthSweet, that's really helpful - he is really laid back and I did start off demand feeding but now it really is a case of me offering and him obliging! He eats on waking up from naps. He always eats well when I offer. I've not waited for him to squeak for months now...I have a feeling that if I did he'd wait quite a long time.

The only thing he "asks" for is sleep - will grizzle when tired, but not when hungry! Maybe 'cos he never has a chance to get hungry?? He doesn't even cry for food in the morning, when he's gone up to 13.5 hours without a feed. But he eats LOADS once he's on.

He's a decent weight (50th centile)

He does have reflux which we control with Gaviscon but it's much better now. I could only get the gav into him before a feed so it meant I had to be careful that he had full feeds, otherwise there would be too much gav in proportion to milk and he'd get bunged up.

I think I need to find a pattern whereby I can still fit 5 feeds into the 7am - 7pm waking day but with him having 3 sleeps instead of 4.

Interesting about the getting used to small amounts - obviously I don't know how much he's getting but just assumed it was lots as he was only eating 5 times

he probably trusts that food is on its way . sounds like its going well - as long as he stays around the 50th centile, he'll be fine, and he sounds like he is getting a good bellyfull.

i am also struggling onto 3 naps from 4. ds's 4th nap was getting shorter and shorter, but he can't quite get to bedtime happy as larry on only three do will often have a meltdown, he goes to sleep well at bedtime though on only three because he is suitably tired! we definitely have a feed around ten, and two, although that is quite a long time and he often wakes early from middle nap - the lunchtime one, hungry i think, because i feed him and he drinks lots and goes back to sleep , this nap is actually earlier than a 'lunchtime' nap as he is up at 6am (bed at 6pm )... anyway this goes round and round and i end up just going with the flow a bit which makes us all happier! trying to force him seems to cause real problems, and as I said, he is a genuinely really happy baby otherwise!

can you give him a dreamfeed at 10/11pm as the fifth feed?

Yes, I suppose I'm just reluctant to go back to a dreamfeed as I like a glass of wine of an evening! Terrible selfish attitude! But also, he never took much at dreamfeeds, I could never get him to stay awake enough.

Plus I'd hate to mess up his night sleeping, it's my proudest achievement

totally agree tbh - i felt it disrupted ds's sleep, and sometimes he was very deeply asleep!