How do I get my baby to take more at each feed and sleep longer?

[Aiionwatha]

At night I am currently having to wake up every hour to feed my baby (she wakes me up) because she will only feed for a few minutes at a time, so she is basically just constantly grazing/snacking rather than having a good meal and thus being satisfied for a few hours. It's killing me - one hour isn't enough time for me to fall asleep sometimes anyway, so I'm either not sleeping at all or as soon as I nod off she's hungry again.
So how can I get her to stop grazing and start eating more each time?

How old is she?

She's 5 weeks

Rub her cheeks gently when she is feeding to keep her awake or to wake her up. 5 weeks is so hard. Stay strong OP it does get easier

How old? Breast or formula fed?

Does she have a dummy? Personally, I'd try that first because she could be wanting to comfort suck to sleep rather than actually want to feed. Especially if she is falling asleep while feeding.

Alternatively, you can wake her up by blowing in her face or tickling her feet if she does fall asleep on while feeding to encourage her to keep feeding.

Is she breastfeeding? Is she doing very short feeds all the time or only at night?
If she is breastfeeding avoid a dummy as they can make you miss feeding cues. Babies at this age do just need to feed a lot and often it’s little and

Often, not much you can do

Sorry to add to above..

and how is she fed?

My baby (16wks) has just this week started doing similar - every 2 hours or so. It’s called reverse cycling where they feed more during the night, sometimes with cluster feeds. There are a number of causes - google it and see if any may apply to you - that may help with stopping it.

I’m hoping mine is due to a growth spurt so am trying to fill him with calories during the day to stop him being hungry at night. He’s breastfed but I’m giving him formula top ups. He still woke regularly last night but was as angry when he woke, so fingers crossed.. He ate a LOT more than usual yesterday and last night combined.

we’ll see if it works, but yours may be for other reasons.

It's a natural safety mechanism and also works to increase your supply, they also bf more when ill/exposed to something, as well as during growth spurts. Try to nap when you can.

Oh 5 weeks is still very small - and prime for cluster feeding. It’s a hard stage. They have properly woken up and are hungry!
in that case I would say hang in there - life should hopefully get easier around the 8 week mark (until it gets harder again for another reason!)

newborns are not bloody easy 😅

Thanks everyone. I'm trying to exclusively breastfeed but we had some issues with that, so I'm also doing a bit of formula and pumping. I have tried tickling and blowing on her but doesn't seem to work. Seems there's nothing I can do then :(

Of course, now it's time to get uo she's decided to finally have a proper long feed. 😂I could bang my head against the wall haha.

No advice, just solidarity - my 7 week old is the same! No amount of tickling or blowing rouses her, but sometimes a nappy change does. Also when I see her getting drowsy, I do breast compressions to keep the flow going - have managed to extend to two hour gaps doing this! But really the only way I get any sleep is by going to bed at 9pm and letting my partner do an expressed bottle at 11pm, meaning I don't have to feed until around 1. We also got a dummy last week and sometimes this works for a little while. She just spits it out as soon as she's had enough so she's not missing out on feeds!

It will soon pass. Sounds like she's hit the first big growth spurt that happens week 5-6 and needs to up your supply. My baby is now at one still a snacker and is on the boob about 8 times a day when I'm not at work. So some of it is personality. But it's normal for many babies in the fourth trimester to fall asleep after very short feeds.

As you've said you want to ebf be careful with formula top ups. Better to express and let someone else cup feed if you need a break, especially around growth spurts/development leaps otherwise when the leap ends you'll convince yourself you're not making enough milk and give more and more formula. I am a breastfeeding peer supporter. On my training we learned that fear of not making enough is the number one reason for breastfeeding ending in the first three months.

I used to feed every four hours and they would take a good feed. Otherwise snacking and not really hungry

OP at 5 weeks if you are EBF let your baby feed on demand as they are doing . They are likely cluster feeding/trying to up your supply.
As your baby gets bigger they'll sleep for longer. Mine now has 1/2 feeds overnight and lots of daytime calorie consumption so it goes get better.

I'm a FTM who EBF (DD 4 months) and using the experience of mum friends at this age of you try to increase the time between feeds your supply may dip and bring your bf journey to an end faster than you want.