7 week old still feeding every 2 hours day and night

[GColdtimer]

Dd2 was admitted to scbu at 5 days and we stayed there for 8 days (severe jaundice and strep infection). I think she is still catching up and has gone from being off the weight charts at discharge to the 25 th percente. Thing is she is ravenous all the time Nd it's taking it's toll. I have given her a coue of 5am top ups because it's the only way I can get a bit of sleep before my 4 year old gets up and needs to get ready for pre school. Will thiscalm downsoon? I really want to carry on but I am feeding for 10 to 12 hours and it's not sustInable.

Assuming she is healthy then it should settle soon, but a couple of things to consider -

a) You may want to have your latch checked by a qualified BF counsellor to make sure she is feeding effectively

b) If latch is fine, then most likely she is feeding frequently in order to increase your milk supply. Once supply is meeting her needs things should settle down quickly, so clearly the quicker you can get to that point the better. The best remedy for increasing milk supply is simply unrestricted feeding, but there are other things you could try and a BF counsellor would help with this.

c) At this age, many people swear by co-sleeping - once you've got the hang of feeding lying down, you never have to wake up fully to feed and so usually feel more rested in the morning.

Good luck!

Thank you. Have had latch checked and she us piling on. The weight so tho l she is feeding well bwillvtry and work out how to feed lying down ad it would beceasier. Sounds like I just have to hang on there!

twofalls don't give up. Sounds like you are doing great! Remember some babies just need to feed very little and often, it's just normal and it will get better, but when you have only had 1 hours sleep at a time it's very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel!!!
Good luck!

do you have loads of milk? Could be overproduction. If lots of watery poos and baby seemzs windy it could be fore/hind miklk imbalance. In bestfeeding book said this is most common where people have oversuply - where the baby gaibns quickly but wants to feed ALOT. With professional support they say could consider limiting feeds to one breast at a time. Or expressing some of the foremilk off first...

Not if this would be right, but maybe breast compressions to encourage the baby to stay on long enough to get the hindmilk

Talk to a proper bf counsellor though to makde sure you get proper support with it.

PS, you're doing fab so far - well done!!!

sorry to disagree with potpourri but IMO working out all that foremilk/hindmilk stuff may just complicate the situation and make you fret even more. There is debate about all that stuff, and you can read more about it over on kellymom.com for all the science. I don't think you've anything to worry about from what you've said.

If your baby is feeding often, piling the weight on etc then it sounds like you are doing brilliantly and your baby sounds totally normal! Sometimes my DS finished one feed and then asked for another 20minutes later, which used to make me want to pull my hair out, but it DID calm down and even though it took ages for there to be more than three hours between feeds, the length of the feeds reduced significantly, so we went from hour long feeds to much much shorter feeds over the first 20weeks or so, so it didn't feel quite so relentless.

Well done-you will look back on these early weeks soon and be amazed!

You sound like you're doing really well OP

DS was (and still is to an extent) very similar. He did start to have a couple of bigger gaps during the night (a whole 3 and half hours !) from about 9 weeks. He's now 16 weeks and is around 3 hourly in the day (apart from "arsenic hour" where he feeds pretty constantly for a while late afternoon) and had one 5ish hour stretch during the night.

Can you express at all ? I know its difficult to get the time when you're feeding constantly, but it really helped me to be able to leave a bottle for DH to do one feed for me. I would go to bed after feeding DS at around 9.30 and then would get a decent 4 hour solid sleep. I did find I couldn't keep up with expressing enough for a feed every night, so DS does have one bottle of formula now most nights.

Thank you. Don'tthink I havetoo muchmilk although poos arevery watery. I think I will go to our local baby cafe on Thursday to have a chat. I just can't face expressing I have to admit and I am ot sure when I would have the time. I am goingto hang in there because I know I have done the hardest bit. ESP as I kept up bf and expressing during our stay in scbu. Our bf support in this area is excellent so I will go this week for somemore advice. Thanks for all yourencouragement. Sorry for typing by the was. One handed as feeding and on iPhone!

I have actually remembered that at your stage, driven by the relentlessness of it all, reading stupid bloody baby books and my belief that THIS couldn't be normal, I stupidly put little DS on a "schedule" for a few weeks. This resulted in our own personal form of baby hell and WAY more unhappiness for everyone concerned. My supply was affected and DS had very poor weight gain/general growth. I also became quite demented with all the crying and DS stopping growing, obviously.

A comment from someone I met at my BF group thankfully shocked me out of it all (she informed me that she thought I had PND) and it finally clicked with me why "on demand" works. We returned to him feeding when he squeaked and we got back on track reasonably quickly. I also felt much better and my relationship with DS improved hugely.

Put your faith in the process-it will get better!