4 Week Old - sleeping and feeding

[Dav87]

Hi everyone - me again! 😊

My LG is now 4 weeks old (FTM) and I was just wondering how you know when it’s time to increase the size of the feeds? She is currently having 3oz every 3 hours, but is starting to show signs that she is still hungry after the bottle. Should I try her with 4oz? Can you increase just 1 or 2 of the bottles throughout the day, or do they all need to increase to 4oz at the same time? Sorry, silly question I expect! 😬

Also, I have started to introduce a bath at 6.30pm every evening after her feed, even though she doesn’t actually go to bed until we do at 11pm - I see a lot of people seem to do bath, bottle, bed. Should I move bath time to 10.30pm, or keep it at 6.30pm as eventually her bedtime will be around then? Or is it too early to be worrying about stuff like this?! Just want to make it as easy as possible when the time comes to put her in a routine.

Final silly question, the midwife said she needs to be woken up every 4 hours for feeding if she doesn’t wake herself. How long do I need to do this for?

Thank you! X

Hey! In regards to upping feeds, I've always upped by an oz when dd started draining the bottle. So you could start on 4oz now, it's about right for a 4 week old.

As far as bath time goes, it's your choice, whatever works best. Me personally I'd keep the bath time around then as like you said, eventually this won't be far off bed time. I introduced a bed time "routine" following the bath around 7-8 weeks and it works well cause she expects the bath now even though she's now only 10w old and still so young. So maybe it will be a good idea to keep 6:30 as bath time cause when she gets older and is tired enough to go to bed at say 7/7:30, youll already be in that bath "routine" and what baby doesn't love some nice warm milk and a cosy bed afterwards! :D x

Also in regards to feeds, do every bottle at 4oz. It won't hurt. Babies will tell us when they've had enough and it's better to offer more and leave a bit than offer too little and them still be hungry :) xx

Try not to let baby drain the bottle. If they do, add an oz. If they drain that, more next time. Bedtime routines are pointless at this age but if you keep your bath routine eventually bottle, stories, change and bedtime may follow.