Feeding on demand = 'higher IQ'

[coffeeaddict]

Another weekend, another piece of research to send me into a tizzy. I have always veered towards feed on demand, while gently trying to get the baby into a routine by a few months old.

But I am now on number 5. I can't let her sleep in till whenever she wants. She has to be up with the family and fed at 7, to get the show on the road.

Also: when she was little she was very sleepy and we had to wake her up for feeds. We used to set alarms in the night. So we had to impose some sort of routine for her. She didn't demand enough, that was her problem!

Of course now having seen the research at the weekend I am freaking out and thinking 'I've done the wrong thing' while DH tells me it's all a load of bollocks. NOt even sure what the researchers mean by 'a routine'.

It's all very well. You can do what you like with your first baby. Once you have a few, it's impossible to be so 'go with the flow'. So if this is right, are last-borns inevitable going to have a lower IQ???

PS apologies if there is already a thread on this, couldn't find it.

Whatever Frozen.

The fact remains mums should feed how they choose and which makes them and their baby comfortable.Mums shouldn't be bullied into feeding methods that feel alien to them,cause distress and which make unnecessary stress.

If you want to demand feed and it suits you and your baby do it,if you want to keep to a routine and it makes you and your baby happy do it.

Just avoid all the latest hogwash and crap which will be tomorrows chip paper.

Anecdote ≠ evidence

... and now I'm going to bed as it's clear that nobody wants to discuss epidemiology with me - unsurprising given the time of night!

MrsHeffley, just to reiterate, I wasn't trying to insult or imply negative things about your relationship with your children. They sound just as content as my own (feeding system undisclosed )

Please don't 'whatever' me. That was actually incredibly rude.

Don't bang your head against a wall then.

If a newborn baby indicates he or she is ready to feed, and a mum is happy to let the baby suck on her finger for 20 minutes/half an hour/an hour then there's no problem with that. As long as the mum is realises that for some women stretching feeds out results in mastitis and a messed up demand/supply mechanism for breastfeeding.

Of course there are some mums and babies who can feed to schedule and still manage growth spurts without changing their feed timings, but there are also plenty who can't, and who end up giving up breastfeeding because their supply isn't increasing to meet their baby's growing needs during this time.

As for mums being 'bullied' - most women want to succeed with breastfeeding and to keep their babies happy. Midwives need to give evidence based advice, and at the moment all good quality evidence supports advising mothers to breastfeed on demand. If mums find it's not working for them or they simply don't want to do it then that's up to them. But advising women about what the evidence says works best is not 'bullying'.

Good point. I was banging head because I wasn't being clear enough, not because you were doing anything wrong.

It's all a load of bollocks OP, I've fed both of mine on demand, and til they were old enough to ask for more, and they are showing all the signs of being thoroughly average IQ wise, thank god! Chill out, enjoy your feeds, and ignore the hype, because next week there'll be an article refuting it!

It could be that the most intelligent babies are the most demanding and would never ever accept a feeding schedule? Just a thought. (Thinks there must be a reason why DD is so darned strong willed and has been from birth).

gaelic clearly, she's a genius. S'obvious! And that's why DS is a tantrumming fiend from hell bit challenging at the moment, right? Cos he's a genius? RIght? RIIIGHT?

FrozenNorthPole, thanks for your many excellent posts.
I'm not a scientist myself but I do find it somewhere on the scale of amusing to irritating that so many people think a few anecdotes of their friends and neighbours can refute research based on thousands of cases.

There is also no need to get quite so defensive on the routine front as no one has actually suggested they are turning their children into morons.

I would like to come back to Penelope Leach's quote: "A baby's optimal brain development depends on communications between his 'emotional brain' and his mother's immediate and sensitive responses. The baby expresses strong feelings, the mother instantly recognises, responds and regulates them, comforting the baby when he is angry, soothing him when he is afraid; bringing him back on to an even keel when he is over-excited. A lot of that communication takes place around the baby's primary need and greatest pleasure: feeding."

A routine based feeding plan will still involve loads of responsive regulation I'm sure, so as long as babies still get loads of one-on-one responsive care there is probably no harm done at all.

On the extreme end though, for example when the mother (or other primary care-giver) is severely depressed and finds it hard to respond to her baby's cues, brain development is indeed affected. And a few IQ points are the least worrying compared with mental health problems that can be the outcome. Here's a link that's quite interesting I think: Why Love Matters

I think the stealth boasting on this thread is hilarious, because in order to do it people have to keep on ignoring the blindingly obvious issue that 5 or 6 IQ points gained or lost would be completely imperceptible at an individual level. And this has been flagged up on the thread several time.

But no, witness more posts saying 'I fed to a schedule and my ds is on the gifted and talented register at school'.

I will award a to the next person to do this on this thread.

"Dr Maria Iacovou from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University said: "The difference between schedule and demand-fed children is found both in breastfed and in bottle-fed babies.

"The difference in IQ levels of around four to five points, though statistically highly significant, would not make a child at the bottom of the class move to the top, but it would be noticeable."

She said that in a class of 30 children, a pupil who is right in the middle of the class, ranked at 15th, could be ranked at around 11th or 12th with an an improvement of four or five IQ points." (Guardian)

Mrs. Heffley - I hate to rain on your parade but I would imagine your babies are the types that would naturally go into a routine anyway. I have a routiney type baby and a totally non routiney type baby. I had the non routiney baby first. Those that wax lyrical about Gina Ford have those types of baby.

Pleasingly, I have yet to meet a mum who doesn't feed their baby when they are hungry!

Rain away.

Babies and mothers differ massively.

Demand feeding just doesn't suit many babies or mothers, ditto GF.Life circumstances differ too.One size does not fit all.

Which is why such "research" is so pointless.Mothers need to feed and raise their babies how it suits them,their babies and their families. Pushing a round peg into a square hole will only cause stress and stress isn't good for IQ I'm sure,mental wellbeing or an enjoyable family life.

That was my point.I could no sooner demand feed than climb Everest,my babies loathed it.

It's such a silly thing to obsess over as give it a couple of years and they'll be saying more routine led babies get into Oxbridge!

the problem with feeding on demand, is it's fine if you have a baby that DEMANDS it, but if you have a dopey sleepey jaundicey baby that doesn't then I don't think simple demand feeding works

also, if you actually READ GF cover to cover you'ld see that she allows demand feeding between feeds for small babies, its just about not letting them go LONG times between feeds NOT refusing them feeds.

And agree whole heartedly with the OP - it's all well and good for a first baby, but when you have to be out the door at 8.20 to sit in traffic for 30 mins to drop off by 9, you can't wait till new baby demands food, they have to get in the car with a full tummy!

and surely, bright parents help children to be bright?

so parents who have the sense to take a flexible balanced individual approach to what suits their child best (re feeding), will continue to do so through childhood helping the child reach it's potential? Rather than those who decide before even meeting their child that they will take X or Y approach because it is the only right choice in a one size fits all way

Oh hell, I see now that I should be worrying too - I thought I had demand fed, but turns out I hadn't. Or could this be the case with the mothers in the study too

Yes they just asked the mothers whether they demand-fed, schedule-fed, or 'tried to' schedule feed. There was no attempt to define any of those terms as far as I can tell.

Seriously no one should be worrying or changing what they do based on this. It's an indication that maybe future research should look at this question more rigorously too see if there are any connections or causative relationships, but this study alone does not prove anything either way. Even the authors say as much.

Interestingly they recommend randomised trials (e.g. randomly assigning mothers/babies to each group) as the best way to sort out all the confounding factors. Which makes sense, but I'm not sure of the practicalities or ethics of that sort of trial for something like this, not to mention how you'd monitor compliance etc!

Shredded, this is arguably why the (on average) less educated, less middle class mothers who tried and "failed" to feed to a schedule, showed almost the same benefits as the ones who demand fed from the start - they were selecting for sensitivity to their baby. Pure hypothesis here of course.

Or have babies without high metabolisms that are happy to feel hunger and don't panic.

1 of mine has always struggled to maintain weight,the other two burn off food quickly and feel shite when hungry then gollup food. They need the structure of regular meals even now, as do I.I was the same as a baby.

My 3 loathed the not knowing and spent most of the first few weeks demand feeding fractious and panicky. The minute a routine kicked in they were way happier,dtwin 1 on weight at long last and was less colicky. It made me waaay happier too and the entire family as a whole with 3 under 15 months were just more happy and contented.

Exactly! I don't even know how you define demand feeding. All the midwives told me to wake DD up and feed her in the night because she was jaundiced. Was I wrecking the 'finely tuned mechanism' or whatever? Is there a school of thought that would have said 'let her sleep for as long as she likes?'

Also: it is presumed that the ideal mechanism is 'baby cries/snuffles/makes cues, mother feeds'. But suppose there is an interim moment: baby thinks 'I'm hungry' but hasn't got round to doing anything about it yet. If you feed at that point, then surely you are being even MORE empathetic as a mother? Surely the baby feels even more secure? It thinks 'Wow, I'm being fed and I didn't even have to cry! Amazing service round here.'

Just a thought. :)

Oh god, so wish I hadn't clicked on this thread. A few posts in and this kind of nonsense gets spouted: "I've seen gina ford mums in action. They ignore their babies cry and keep shuffling the dummy back in, when their mums are doing nothing more than having a coffee with other mums. It's very very sad to watch."

MrsHeffley - so with you. I followed a rough GF routine, and know scores of other women who did. The reason why - and this is addressed to you, OneLittleBabyTerror - it's possible to get to 3 hour or more stretches between feeds is that each feed is structured so you make sure your baby gets a really decent amount of milk and is actually satisfied by the end of it. I breastfed my twins (for the first six months) doing a GF routine, and most of the other people I know who followed a GF routine also breastfed exclusively. Contrary to the ridiculous shite spouted on MN, I don't think I EVER let them 'cry it out' waiting for a feed. In contrast, I had two babies whose needs were anticipated, who never needed to cry for a feed, because they were fed at the point where they started to think about being hungry rather than needing to get to the point of crying out with hunger to alert their mother that they needed a little 'top up'. I know people who have fed on demand who claim they never could have followed a routine because their baby needed feeding every 1-2 hours, even at a few months old. Frankly in all honesty when I hear these things I think the mother is utterly insane not to have tried to take some control. IMO if you're happy for your baby to snack constantly, require constant top ups, and be at the mercy of a baby who at any given moment might start crying for a feed, no matter where you are and what you're doing - absolutely fine. But don't suggest for a minute that it actually needs to be this way.

Can I just ask a slightly tangential question?

I am wondering why there seems to be only a slight correlation between maternal IQ and child IQ? Shouldn't that be a massive blatantly obvious correlation? Or is the correlation between maternal IQ and BFing that is blurring this?

Ahhh wait it is that BF is yes/no but biased by maternal IQ...sorry as you were...

Totally agree London and Coffee(great posts) my 3 definitely needed the security of me anticipating their needs.

Also re constant snacking you'd have to be so laid back as a person and I'm sooooo not that person.

I rem once in the demand bfeeding hell weeks getting dp to pull over in the car so I could feed one of the twins in a traffic jam.I was literally pulling strands of my hair out with the stress of hearing him cry.It was just awful.We'd just left John Lewis cafe,if I'd have been in a routine I could have timed it and fed him then but I was demand feeding and he demanded it and panicked on the way home.He was apoplectic with rage.

We all as a family have to eat a lot,regularly.I have in the past fainted if I go too long between meals(low blood sugar and low blood pressure,I suspect the dc are the same).Dp and dtwin 1 loose weight v easily. We're all quite slim(ish in my case now).

More importantly I'm just not a laid back Lil type of person,I can't do the snacking thing re feeding babies,I find it too stressful.

I also have friends not suited to demand feeding who got quite low when doing it.If you're used to structure,have a busy family life etc for some it just causes massive stress. For others it must work beautifully. Thankfully we're not all the same,nor should we be.