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

DC1: combi-fed, and fed on demand. But she did find her own loose routine after a while - I could guess based on the rough time of day when she’d be getting hungry.
DC2: very poorly baby. Had to have carefully measured feeds at very frequent intervals. So was routine fed through necessity rather than choice. He was fed way more frequently than the average baby.
DC3: exclusive breastfed on demand. Continued with demand feeding right up until she weaned off the breast at 2 and a half years old.

I fed on cue. DD1 was ebf/ff/mix fed. DD2 was ebf.

I've breastfed both my babies on demand but it wasn't 'from birth' each time. Probably from about 2 weeks as before then they needed waking to feed every 3 hours.

Feed on schedule, breastfeeding

How did that work? What happened if your baby was hungry before the next scheduled feed?

On demand but if its been 3/4 hrs I'll go and prepare a bottle and try him with it. I've loosely come to know what sort of time he wants one and his very early cues. Like us all though he has days when he is hungrier or not so much - I let him lead. He has flatly refused and pushed the bottle away from me sometimes and others where I'm making a bottle 2 times in 2 hours!

I do know people who have a strict schedule and make it work though - but it's not for me.

It sort of didn’t happen. DD was born at 37 weeks (induced) very small and sleepy, just over 6lb. She wasn’t interested in milk at all for a few weeks so I woke her to feed her every 3 hours day and night. When she got to about 8.5lb at 1 month old, we dropped to every 4 hours during the day and 2 feeds at night which she would wake me for. But during the day, she would just drain the breast every 4 hours and if she cried in between, I would pick her up or soothe her and she would stop. If she didn’t stop after a few minutes of being cuddled I would offer it to her but she wasn’t interested and that only happened a couple of times. I definitely didn’t leave her screaming for food, like this thread suggests! I think she just adapted to her initial routine and was happy with it.

What a ridiculous thing to say! All babies are different and should be cared for accordingly. The key word there is "care"! Anyway, obesity is about the type of food consumed (high fats, sugar, salt...) and lack of exercise. Not because for a few months years and years ago you were given a few extra ounces of milk in a 3 hour period ffs

Formula fed on demand from birth. At the start we noted down each feed and looking back at that first week it was 1oz every hour or so! Tbh I can’t even remember her feeding like that. After that first week she took more at each feed and went for longer, until it fell into a natural vague routine of 6 or 7oz every 3-4 hours during the day by the time she was about 6 months old, and one bottle during the night.

@Cuppasoupmonster to be honest the family member was, in my view, bf because she thought that was what expected of her not because it was what she actually wanted to do. I think she should have formula fed much earlier than she did because it was awful to watch her deny the baby food when it was hungry.

@bravelittletiger so was the weight problem to do with the schedule or her not being able to feed them properly? You’ve lost me.

So you didn't set a schedule, you responded to her cues. IE, you fed on demand.

Honestly there is no ‘one size fits all’. I think you just have to do what feels right for the family. I highly doubt any poster on here would let a baby cry if they were hungry. Women can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to raising children (not really limited to that either!). What works for you, might not work for another. So what? Just be happy in your choice, don’t be afraid to change things if it isn’t working for you, and more importantly, don’t let a bunch of people who don’t know you, your family, your set up, make you feel guilty. Take and try advice by all means, but stop if it’s not working - let go of the guilt! I say this as someone who wasted a lot of time feeling guilty about one thing or another, time would have been better spent sleeping/cuddling/feeding/watching crappy Netflix etc.!

@Cuppasoupmonster I didn't say she couldn't feed him properly just that she chose to feed him on a schedule rather than on demand.

@ButterflyBiscuit

Those that stick to a strict schedule must spend a lot of time with a sad hungry baby. Why?!

I fed mine to a schedule & so they never cried for food. Sleep was also on a schedule so they were never tired and tetchy. So it's almost the opposite of your interpretation of it. They don't cry from hunger or tiredness so you know it's something else & you don't end up spending all day faffing about trying to work out what is wrong. Also you try to fit in feeds during the day so they don't need feeding all night.

Agree with @hiredandsqueak

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.

Mine used to get woken up at a set time & so didn't wake up hungry. So they didn't really ever cry due to hunger as is was pre-empted & they had a feed at the right time.

I bottle fed & suspect it's harder to do this breast feeding.

One singleton, one set of twins. EBF all from birth on demand. Also never set routines for naps. Eldest settled into a routine of her own naturally and we weaned off BF at 19mo. DTs are 6mo and are settling into a nap routine slowly, but have to be a bit flexible due to needs of eldest and each other. Still feeding on demand. Works for us.

It depends on the baby. I tried to put longer gaps between ds feeds when he was a baby but he just screamed if not fed roughly hourly. Dd was totally different and fed approx 3 hourly, easy to get into a routine and slept through the night early on. Both breastfed but totally different internal clocks! It might be easier if bottle feeding as at least you know they’ve had a certain amount.

I always give a wry smile when people advocate very fixed routine early on and say it worked for them (implying it should work for everyone). Dd would have slotted right in, ds would have screamed about 80% of the time 😭.

If he was underweight then she wasn’t feeding
him properly, schedule or not. There are plenty of threads on here where women feed on demand for hours at a time and baby doesn’t gain. I think either it works or it doesn’t really.

No because she didn’t do cues. She would wake me by crying at night, or sometimes just stirring. During the day it was more ‘oh it’s approaching 4 hours; time to feed her’, now and then she would grumble for it.

I used to let dd nap still latched on and basically use me as a soother.

Surely that's what dummies are for? Both my kids took 3h naps pretty much from birth. If they'd been attached to my boob for that entire time I'd get sod all else done!

Oh god yes! And the ‘put them down sleepy but awake’! Mine never had that point until a lot later, and then it was a proper ‘high-five’, let’s have a glass of wine to celebrate moment! They still don’t, but they consistently go to bed now at 1930 and generally sleep through until 0630/0730 each night and have done since 10 wks (with the odd illness throwing it out the window). Absolutely nothing to do with my routine, as I didn’t have one.

how did you settle on 4 hours? Because that was generally when she'd start grumbling for food? Or was it just an arbitrary decision?

I just always find the idea of feeding babies on a schedule so bizarre. No one else eats and drinks on a schedule! You'd never think "it hasn't been four hours yet so I won't have a drink of water" so why would you assume that you could do that to a baby?

Of course they do! She has set mealtimes now at nursery. I settled on 4 hours during the day as that was what I read somewhere and she seemed happy with it.