Feeding on demand / feeding on schedule

[Loobylootwo]

Inspired by a current thread in chat about a feeding schedule from 1970s I'm curious as to what's most common these days. For your newborn/younger babies, do you:

• feed on demand or feed on schedule?
• breast feed, formula feed or combi

Someone older and, I thought, wiser told me not to wake my sleeping newborn because if she was hungry she would wake up. My milk didn't come in fully and baby wasn't gaining weight. I consulted a lactation consultant who told me the baby should not be going more than 3 hours max without milk at night. Prolactin is at its highest at night too, so it helps with milk production. Not waking my baby was one of tbe reasons I didn't have enough milk and why she wasn't gaining. The lactation consultant helped to increase my milk supply but it involved setting alarms at night and waking the baby. I fed her on a schedule in that I wouldn't let 2.5 hours pass before feeding her, but on demand in that I would feed her in between these times if she showed signs of hunger. She is a chubby, happy little Teddy bear now.

Breastfeeding on demand has nothing to do with obesity. That's absurd. Babies are genetically programmed to enjoy sucking so that they will eat as much as possible. Breastfeeding is a form of communication and a kind of relationship. It's supposed to be about more than food.

"Lots of people seemed to be told by midwives to wake their baby up to feed every 3 hours.

I've never heard that as babies wake up if they are hungry."

@RedWingBoots no one told me to wake my first up every 3 hours. She had a good match but was EC and slept a lot but didn't feed a lot for the first 2 weeks, dropped loads of weight but even the midwives couldn't keep her awake on my boob. They tried to loads of interventions but it was clear she was really healthy she just needed to get to the point where she was ready to be in the world.

Breastfed both mine on demand. They nurse for comfort and they fuss at the boob to ip your supply before a growth spurt. If you've exclusively bottled fed or exclusively breastfed you're going to have such differing experiences that you can't compare strategies imo.

I’m allowed my own experiences, same as anyone else I notice you haven’t commented on the posts calling me cruel etc!

like anyone else on here I can only share what I’ve observed, the snack feeders were underweight (based on my own small sample!)

I specifically said demand feeding isn't cruel

But we don't teach them. It's instinct. It's why people buy dummies. It's beneficial for new mother's hormones and beneficial for (or preventing/ minimising PND)

Bearing in mind breast milk also changes according to the nursing child's needs. In hot weather for example it will be thinner to better rehydrate them but then they might need another feed sooner. When they're sick it's thicker and yellower and more like colostrum.

You can't judge every breast milk as being the same, but your baby will tell you what they need and your body will provide it.

That said I do agree you can comfort a child in many ways but my two were very able to communicate when they wanted a feed from very early on and I couldn't imagine not obliging.

But surely that depends on your babies? If you had babies who were hungry like clockwork then you fed on demand, their demand was just regular. Unless you let them cry til it was feeding time, you were just as responsive as your friends, you just got lucky with more predictable, less demanding babies.

Yes once they were in a routine they woke pretty much to the clock before that though I'd wake them and I'd wake them if they overslept once in routine as well so not exactly on demand. I think it's easier to have non demanding babies when they are in a routine tbh because they have full feeds and plenty of sleep and a predictability I suppose.

I wish I could get my 8WO baby on a schedule. She is breastfed on demand but it’s constant. I
didn’t manage a shower until 3pm today.

I will feed her on waking after a nap, but she still wants to feed to sleep less than an hour later. Her cry is so loud, I couldn’t possibly ignore it.

I often think that surely she can’t be hungry already and try different ways to calm her, but in the end all she wants is my boob!

She is gaining weight fine - over 50th percentile.

She likes to nap on me and once a day I make the effort to get her to nap in the Moses basket (which takes ages to get her down) as otherwise I wouldn’t have any baby free time. But generally I don’t bother transferring her as she always wakes up and screams until she’s fed again.

Eh I think that's simplifying things a bit - mine took full feeds and slept well, but not on a schedule and there was absolutely no leeway, once they were hungry you fucking knew about it and nothing else would do.

I would have woken mine before they screamed I suppose. I never had a baby scream for a feed. They either woke when the feed was due and it was ready to feed them or I woke them when the feed was due and the feed was ready so no screaming required.

The people I know who have been told it have had healthy new borns.

I was stuck on a post-natal ward with some sick babies and could overhear their feeding instructions. However these were given by pediatricians not midwives.

Likewise my friends who had feeding issues got their advice from doctors not midwives. Like me they weren't impressed with some of the advice/information they were being given by midwives but in their cases they had to push for help.

So I wonder if the advice is area specific.

Yes, it’s for healthy new borns to stop them becoming ill.

The only person who knows when the baby is hungry is the baby. Parents leant their baby's cues. It's the offsprings innate instinct. I don't think the human race would have evolved and survived without having the offspring alerting the caregiver to feed them.

Feed on demand. Baby will find their own routine. I like to eat when I'm hungry so I wouldn't expect a child not to.

@suzyscat mine was initially on one bottle a day because she cluster feed in the late afternoons to night. That way I could

I’m surprised about the PND as a lot of the ‘cluster feeding’ threads are written by some very stressed sounding new mums.

Maybe my baby was just efficient! She really wasn’t interested in the boob other than for milky times, she wasn’t very needy in general. She’s now a very confident 3 year old who appoints herself leader of the pack at nursery so I guess it’s just her personality 😂

I would never leave a baby to scream for milk, but if it was very soon after the last feed I would try a cuddle for a few minutes or soothe them with a toy etc. I just don’t agree that any fussing = boob.

@Cuppasoupmonster it sounds like you were very lucky with the temperament of your baby and your breastmilk supply. Your experience is far from universal and your approach would be distressing for most breastfed babies.

Well I’m due DD2 in spring so will let you know how it goes. I could be back here singing from a very different hymn sheet. I don’t agree with the ‘distressed’ though, that’s over the top.

"distressed" is the exact description of both of my breastfed babies if I tried to make them wait for a feed until a set time. Sometimes they could go 3 hours, sometimes only 1. A schedule would have lead to a lot of upset. Which is the same for the majority of breastfed babies I've ever met.

Well if your baby chose to only eat every 3 hours then it IS on demand isn't it? They just chose to eat more spaced out.

If you're not refusing a hungry baby then your baby isn't wanting food more often.

What most of us who feed on demand are saying is that at times babies often do want food more often - so in our case if we were to do scheduled feeds we'd have a crying hungry baby!!

A very close family member tried to feed her bf baby on a schedule. It was actually really distressing to watch- the poor mite was constantly rooting around for food and/or upset and was always skinny looking. I told her the baby was hungry (in the least judgmental way I could) and was told he had just thrown up his feed so he wasn't getting anymore. Please do not try to feed you newborn on a schedule. Newborns are designed to crave the warmth, comfort and closeness of their mothers and to self regulate their hunger by asking for food when they are hungry. I genuinely think anything other than feeding on demand is close to neglect.

Sounds like you've taken the baby whisperer approach Cuppasoup? That was a disaster for my baby who suffered badly with silent reflux but worked well for someone in my baby group. I remember her being smug about not letting her baby 'snack' as well. Trying to make mine take long feeds resulted in screams of agony. Please bare that in mind when you think back about thin and fractious babies. Perhaps they were suffering with medical issues too.

One formula feed, one breast feed.
Both mostly on demand but they both settled into a fairly predictable pattern.

With my formula baby, it was on demand, but if it got to 3 hours in the day, and she was awake, I'd offer.

With my breast fed baby, evenings and night were all over the place, but were bang on every 3 hours in the day. She only fed for 5-10 minutes (day or night, but did an evening cluster for a bit), and usually only one side at a time. It was very easy.

However, for both of them, I would also bring feeding forward etc if convenient. So to try and fit in a feed before a drive if I was meeting a friend etc.

I also didn't wait until my baby started crying, but only until they showed subtle signs of hunger. My first, didn't ever really cry unless she was ill (or in the car). If she cries for more than about 5m I knew she was coming down with something. My second went through a colic stage, but otherwise was also quite a low crier, albiet not to that extreme.

I fed my 9lb 10oz boy to a schedule. He was a right guzzle guts born on the 99th centile and stayed on it. He never woke up hungry, I combi-fed and would pump in the bath as I found that's when I would produce more. His last feed would be a dream feed, a few pats on the back followed by a big man burp and he was back to sleep again. He slept through from 8 weeks and was a happy and content baby who very rarely cried.

BUT this was MY baby and as humans are was totally unique to any other human. What works for one doesn't work for the other. There isn't a right way or a wrong way there is only ever a 'your' way and so long as your baby isn't starving or miserable then it really isn't comparable between babies.

Do you think pursuing breastfeeding when the baby is losing weight and clearly not thriving is neglectful? Because oddly, it doesn’t seem to be on here. I’ve even seen posters encourage OP to lie to medical professionals about topping up.