Feeding cues - unrealistic or am. I a terrible parent?

[Becka14587]

I have a 4 week old,am exclusively breastfeeding and I'm really struggling to follow the advice on feeding cues - to respond to early signs before she starts crying - especially at night . The NCT etc advice says to look for head turning stirring etc, but responding to these would mean I could never put her down to sleep, she'll always move about. I went to a local support group and the mentor there pointed out cues she displayed like opening her mouth, sticking out toingue etc and seemed to suggest I should be spotting these even through the night. There is no way, even though I sleep with my head next to her in a next to me crib, that I can see/ hear this, i keep the room dark with just a little nightlight and, if I do manage to be asleep ,I'm not going to pick up on small noises, and to be honest when drowsy I'm often confused and just don't respond quickly, not always clear what's real and what's a dream etc. So it will end up that she'll be starting to cry before I respond, and then, at least some of the time I'll change her nappy first so she'll cry through that - she will poo in the night so don't want to leave it hours and hours. Is it really that bad for her to get to a state of crying and how do people square responding to cues with getting any sleep at all?

that is crazy advice! It is absolutely fine and totally normal for them to cry to let you know they need fed during the night. And we always changed nappy before feed during the night too.

You will get a lot of conflicting often unhelpful advice in the early days, go with your gut and what works for you. X

Don't stress about it, you will start to notice when they do certain things, but at night of course you'll have to wait for the cry, bit hard if it's dark or if you're asleep to notice. You can also set a timer during the day, I think I fed every three hours so if the baby hadn't had a feed by then I would anyway. You're doing great! 😀

You're doing fine, just keep trying. Bear in mind three things 1) at this age they do feed so much that it can be hard to find any long awake period without feeding cues 2) all babies are different and you're still new to each other 3) of course you can't see them when asleep!

Read up on them elsewhere and just do your best.

So long as you are feeding your baby on demand and you're both healthy it'll all settle down.

Just go with the flow. There is no rule book and every baby is different. Don't worry yourself, babies cry that's natural, you don't see animals rushing to their babies just so they never cry.

I remember being really stressed by this with both my babies. You are doing absolutely fine. At night when they wake and cry you change their nappy and feed them! That's normal. To be honest, even during the day I found it difficult to feed them without them crying first - you just can't always pick up on all these early signs. I had low supply and had to combo feed so I was super paranoid about feeding cues but still always felt I wasn't getting it right. There are loads of graphics floating around that basically make it seem like you've neglected your baby if you let them get to the crying stage. Please don't let those make you feel guilty, they aren't always realistic.

As long as weight gain is okay and baby is sleeping some longer stretches (2-4 hours) sometimes you are doing great.

You may start to sense these things and sync up. It's very early days for you yet. Give it 6 months and you'll even know what stage of sleep they're in 😁

This is ridiculous nonsense from NCT. Your baby is 4 weeks old, they cry - you feed them. You're not leaving her to scream for hours, a little cry is how they communicate. She's only tiny and I'm sure you are doing brilliantly. It's all a massive learning process and in a couple of months time you will pick up during the day when she's getting hungry but no one in their right mind would sit awake at night watching to see if their baby moves their head about a bit. Sleep is really important for both of you. If she's not crying, don't disturb her and get as much sleep as possible. It's like the NCT want to drive people to PND ffs.

Babies are literally designed to cry. As long as you respond to the crying then that's good enough! I wish that people who work with postnatal women would occasionally understand just how fragile and vulnerable we are, and how this sort of semi-helpful advice can actually be devasting.

Oh wow, how on earth did more than one idiot tell you to look for signs that she is hungry, instead of waiting for her to communicate with you in the way that babies communicate - crying!

If during the day it goes longer than about 3 hours before a very young (4 weeks is still very young), and entirely breastfed baby, tells you they are hungry - by crying - then you could look out for signals like them looking for a nipple. My darling Grandson tried to find one on my arm, so his mum and I laughed, and I gave him back to his mum. They also might try to put their little fists up to their mouths, but once it gets past a little tummy rumble they will soon start crying to let you know.

Of course, as crying is how they communicate, that crying will be telling you that something, anything, is not quite right with their world, but that is completely normal. It can take quite a while, especially if you are a new and first-time mum, to start to notice any differences in your baby's cry, and to be fair, it takes the little scraps a while to develope a slightly differently nuanced cry for their different wants and needs. So to begin with, a slightly cold, wet or pooey nappy, or wanting feeding, are usually the main reasons for crying. But wanting cuddles, the warmth and heartbeat of a parent, and the secure arms, and the soothing voice of someone who loves them, is often what they want at any particular time. So after checking their nappies, and if they simply cannot be hungry -but they can, they are growing so quickly, and particularly if they are breastfeeding, it can be hard to know for certain that they took enough milk! But please try not to worry too much about that, as long as you offer them the breast, and they are being weighed regularly by a nurse or health visitor, they should be fine.

So check nappy quickly when they first cry, then offer them their milk, and if it isn't either of those two things, then they might be a little chilly, or have wind, but they probably want a cuddle, and as they spend more time awake, they could be bored as well, which is where maybe letting them watch a little bit of TV starts, if there is no-one available at that precise time to give them the attention they want. Each mum, or baby's primary carer, will develope their own routines, and hopefully between mum and baby they develope one that suits the two of them the best.

For me, once I had checked their nappy quickly, and if it seemed reasonable, I gave mine one breast straight away so that they didn't get too upset with their crying, and then changed their nappy (which helped my babies, as otherwise they would usually fall asleep after one breast, sleep for about half an hour or 40 minutes, then wake up again wanting the other breast, Lol) before putting them on to my other breast, as, like I intimated before, changing their nappy would almost always wake them up enough to have a good empty of my second breast. Probably everyone does this anyway, but I would always start a breastfeefing session on the opposite breast to the last time, to try to ensure that every second feed each of the breasts have been fully emptied.

So please do not keep on waking up to see if your beautiful little girl needs feeding, she will almost certainly do the completely normal and healthy thing, of waking you up by crying, when she is hungry. Of course, I don't think anyone can suggest a way to stop new mums from waking up to check that baby is still breathing, I think that is probably built into our DNA, but as baby gets older, and mum gets more confident, the waking up to check on baby does get less frequent - but I think that the tendancy for mums to do that is one of the great reasons for keeping baby in a cot or crib, right beside them, for about the first 6 months. It also hopefully means that when you do your instinctual half waking up to check baby is ok, you can check really quickly, and then get straight back to sleep.

It sounds to me @Becka14587 that you are doing brilliantly, but please do try to get it out of your head that you should catch when your baby is hungry, before they let you know themselves. Of course people who have very premature babies, or babies who are otherwise unwell in some way, may be given different advice, and if that is the case then the mum should absolutely follow the paediatricians advice. I am sending you a big hug OP, if you don't want it, just wave it away xx

There's a few things here which I hope will help.

1. at night time it's fine for you to sleep and be woken by her crying for a feed. In time you might find she settles into a routine and you wake before she does as you both fall into the pattern

2. in general look for early feeding cues BUT in the early days babies feed little and often and you might see 'feeding cues' a lot. This settles down as your supply adjusts

3. the advice to not wait for crying in the day is more about not letting yourself get flustered trying to latch baby if they are also upset. It's ok if this happens, not the end of the world. All part of getting to know each other.

4. not all babies show all feeding cues. You might find an early cue for yours is hands to mouth or tongue out. Again this is all part of getting to know each other.

Keep going to the group as you build your confidence. You're doing great.

That "advice" was written by robots.

At this age, any time your baby cries just chuck her on your breast for a feed. At 4 weeks tjey pretty much only have one setting.

Don't stress about nights: just sleep and get up when she tells you she's hungry. Let your baby be your guide!

Thanks everyone, this is all really reassuring, been feeling like I'm failing as a mum for not getting these early cues, like it's something everyone just does innately and for some reason I'm not, so good to know that it's normal.

Most of the time she'll fall asleep quickly after a feed and sometimes will sleep for hours if being held by someone, problem comes when putting her down in a crib or moses basket, she'll keep stirring, I'll have a hand on her to reassure her, shush her etc but this will often escalate to starting to cry and I'll take her back to the breast at that point. On the other hand sometimes some calming or interaction will calm her so then sometimes not sure whether to still try and feed her.

She has been putting on weight but hasn't been weighed now for over a week, I have to go to a clinic to get her weighed and getting out the house in the morning - IE being able to set her down long enough to have a shower, get some breakfast, get everything together is a challenge. I'm going to try and go next week though - any tips for getting any sort of reliable morning routine going at this age welcome! If you need to be out of the house at a certain time but she looks like she wants feeding would you just try to settle her and get on? Then make sure she gets a good feed when you can?

I'm hoping we will fall into more of a pattern and routine soon, it is just so variable at the moment and hard to know if I'm making the right judgements with feeding.

Really appreciate everyone's kind words x

She's so little and this is all very normal newborn behaviour. At this age she is running on instinct and that is telling her to be close to you. What you're doing to help get used to the crib is a good idea. Reassuring your close but letting her settle.

As for getting out in the morning .... with my eldest I didn't tend to emerge from the bedroom until lunch time lol. I'd have a lazy morning with feeds and cuddles then shower while he cried in the bouncer lol. Our NCT teacher said a bouncer in the bathroom or at the door was a good idea. You can see they're safe while you shower. They likely will cry but it's ok as you can see they are ok.

With my second I had to get up and out to get eldest to nursery. I'd get up after baby's 5am /6am feed and shower then while she slept some more. Then I'd get her up 7 like the toddler and do 'first' feed then. She'd usually sleep again on the walk to nursery.

Give yourself a break. Babies cry & it can be exhausting but you also need rest, head space, a shower etc.
feed her, settle her, give her something to watch (window, tv, toys whatever) and go get a shower / cup of tea. At night I only ever woke if mine screamed for feeding

Sounds like you’re doing amazingly.

At 4 weeks you just have to respond to everything when you can. And yes, it makes sense to change nappy before feed, and it’s okay for the baby to cry while you do it.

When your baby is a few months older it might be good to wait for a few seconds/minutes before responding in the night.

I say this because I pounced on my baby and fed him every time he whimpered because I didn’t want him to cry. Looking back I never gave him the chance to see if he was just going to whimper and go back to sleep, I always fed him straight away and I think this probably contributed to him waking up a lot in the night and not learning to settle back to sleep.

I remember those night times when baby squawked in the night and it felt like I was swimming up from somewhere very very deep and dark to wake up for them, having only been asleep 45 minutes. No chance of spotting feeding cues there, I was too busy trying to get some sleep!

In the day when I was awake it was a bit more obvious, rooting, chewing fists, opening mouth etc. And eventually baby started making noises that weren't just cries so I started being able to differentiate. But at 4 weeks we were in the trenches to be honest. Any grumble from baby meant check all the basics - clean nappy, feed, burb, sleep,and just repeat infinity times.

Of course she’ll cry in the night - you can’t stay awake watching for the signs!!
As you carry on BF you may find that you get so in tune with her that you do wake when she’s making little noises before she cries - but if you don’t, that’s fine too. It’s great that you are getting some sleep, don’t listen to anyone who wants to mess with that! You sound like you’re doing great.
I second the bouncer at the door while you shower - I used to get a shower, and get ready and then if DS fell asleep a nice cuppa with both hands free 😊
It took weeks for me to reliably get out in the morning too!

Bonkers ! How are you ever spose to get any sleep. Just do what works for you.

Oh, we had a bouncy baby seat thing in the bathroom as well, it was perfect for putting baby in while I had a wee, shower etc. He tolerated it for about 20 minutes at a time. He also liked a mat we had with crinkly fabric and bright colours on it, so he sometimes spent a few minutes on that on the bathroom floor too.

This completely sums up where I am right now, tell me it gets easier!

This completely sums up where I am right now, please tell me it gets easier!

I have a bouncy seat but she can't support her head yet and when I put her in it feel like she's too slumped forward and really paranoid about her airway. Her dad says ' she's breathing she's fine' but scared she could slump more if falls asleep

You could just lie her on the floor/ blanket/ towel / anything for now. Make the most of it while she can’t escape 😁

Yes just lie her on a warm towel

It gets better. I promise! For us it was from about 6 weeks, I remember DS smiling at me for the first time around 6 weeks after a particularly horrendous night where I was seriously contemplating giving him back (god knows who to) and after that things steadily got easier. After that his feeds started to space out more consistently, and he slept for longer periods more reliably.

If you're not sure about the seat then definitely a blanket on the floor. We also had a baby gym thing, like this one: www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/toys/pre-school-and-electronic-learning/fisher-price/fisher-price-newborn-and-nursery/fisher-price-rainforest-music-and-lights-deluxe-gym-baby-toy/p/152437

DS was quite happy under that for 10 minutes. DD not so much, but every baby is different, you just need to figure out what works for yours.