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.

Thusnelda - it's not so much that the boroughs themselves are 'so' pushy, but from what I observe, there is a lot of very negative criticism from pro-breastfeeding groups/MN towards ANYONE in authority proposing anything other than bf'ing on demand. I think the UK has created a bizarre antagonistic system when it comes to how you feed your child and stuck in the middle are millions of mothers trying to do the best for their children but terrified of doing anything other than feeding on demand lest it destroy their chances of success.

Btw, the thing that really gets me going in these anti-routine discussions is the implied observation that GF type parents aren't interested in attachment theory, or in books like 'Why Love Matters'. I've read WLM, I've read most of Bowlby's work on attachment theory and Sears on Attachment Parenting. Whilst I was pregnant I ordered the lot, thinking that slings/co-sleeping/etc would be the way I'd want to proceed. I thought the Sears book I bought was terrible; a load of emotional projections largely without foundation. WLM is a good book but by no means a complete theory, there's a lot of conjecture and she goes to great pains to talk about the fact that the kind of privation she describes is NOT the normal response associated with rearing a baby - more the kind of routine abandonment you might see in an orphanage with babies given little response to their cues.

I read GF whilst pregnant and thought it a load of crap too. She does herself no favours with the starched-apron manner; I'm sure it puts loads of people off. So my first foray into routines was using a slightly more user-friendly book 'Baby Secrets' by Jo Tantum. More chatty, approachable, but the basic content was the same. We ended up switching to a more GF style of routine when the twins were about 8 weeks because I was near to exhaustion and they were refusing to settle in the evenings. I was advised by a couple of pro-bf MN types to just give in to this, to let them cluster feed on me all evening 'because you just have to go through this, it will pass'. Well, I didn't have to go through that, I started giving them a bottle after their early evening bf and wow, suddenly I had my evenings back and my babies were full up and able to sleep. THAT is progress, in my book.

I think having a baby for the first time can be incredibly nerve-racking. Many of us are desperate for simple and clear advice about how to care for our babies.Trouble is ...

• There are about a million different ways of caring for a baby, so there's loads of conflicting advice and guess what? Not all of it can be right. Most of it is pure opinion.

• Much childcare advice is not honest about possible consequences. This makes it impossible for us to make informed decisions, according to our own priorities. Strict routines have been shown to reduce the chances of BFing successfully. On the other hand, some (not all) mums will find that a routine is the only way they can cope. Mums-to-be need to know all this so they can decide for themselves what's most important - not have their choices taken away by some dogmatic guru figure.

I feed my cat on demand and he is as thick as two short planks.

I don't mean to belittle this debate with my post above but I do think that dissemination of original research by journalists who after all are looking for the angle that makes people (vulnerable new parents) read their article needs to be taken less seriously.

Often research needs to 'mature' and only often has more relevance and applicability when it is synthesised with other research, over time. Jumping on everything piece of journalist interpreted research will make you chew your own head off deciding what is best.

No doctor or health professional changes/reverses his own practice based on newly published research unless the consequences not to would be serious. They review the literature and make a balanced judgement according to the situation.

A decent knowledge of child physiology and the physiology and psychology of parenting/pregnancy is adequate IMHO. And much of that is fact not opinion.