Please help, first time mum. 8wo feeding 2hours and never sleeps long stretch

[LauraFTM]

Hey, I'm a first time mum and would love some advice or reassurance.

My baby girl is 8 week old, EBF, and still feeds every 2 hours... 24 hours a day.
I see so much of other babies going 3-4 hours at this age, and also getting a 'long stretch' at night. She sometimes will go 3 hours between a feed if I'm lucky!

I don't know if I should be pushing her to go longer and hold off feeding her when she wakes at 2 hours? My concern there is that she is only on 2nd centile, which I know can mean she's just petite (as I'm only 5ft2 myself and slim) but I don't want to encourage her to feed less often if she needs it. The HV wasn't concerned but my GP wants to check her weight again in 3 weeks. She seems to be gaining very slow.

At the same time, I've fed every 2 hours for the last 8 weeks and not sure how much longer I can keep it up. I've done some expressing but I don't get a lot when I pump. When I give her a bottle she will drink 3oz. But one pump sessions only gives me 1.5oz. So it takes me 2 rounds of pumping to give her just one feed. Again, exhausting for me!

Any help, advice, reassurance, anything welcome.

Please and thank you!

It's really normal im afraid! It does get easier, my first was like this. I'd go to bed at like 8pm and rest as much as possible during the day. You just need to take it easy and really look after yourself.

If you're breastfeeding, try cosleeping and feeding lying down. Im currently bf and cosleeping with my 11 week old baby, we both get a tonne of sleep this way, much more relaxed. Look up safe cosleeping. I was nervous with my first baby to do this but have never looked back. My DH sleeps in the spare room so the bed is totally safe. I'm far too lazy to be getting up to feed at night 😀

We have a nappy clip alarm which gives me some peace of mind too but it's really not necessary. No loose blankets/duvet near baby, literally just me, baby and my one pillow on the bed, I wear warm pjs but when I do need the duvet it'll be just on me and nowhere near baby.

If it's not for you then just know that feeding like this is perfectly normal, you don't need to do or change anything at all. Just be led by baby and know it gets easier! You're doing a great job.

It's good to know it isn't just me, it's just so hard when everyone around me seems to go so much longer between feeds and I feel like I'm doing it wrong!
Do you remember when yours did start going longer or was it always 2 hours up until weaning? 😅
We do co sleep, not fully but by 2am/3am I can barely wake myself so that's when I admit defeat and we feed and sleep in my bed just so I can survive! X

Hello, i have an 8 week old too - welcome to the club! Wanting to feed every 2 hours is not uncommon for EBF babies. In my mind it’s because they get very hungry very quickly and supply needs to be top notch. I took mine back to the hospital about this as and the midwives and lactation consutlants explained all this - I agree with the experts! The baby will also wake for comfort. Are they following the centile curve even though they’re on the 2nd? If not, advice is always to introduce a bottle but if you want to continue to ebf you’ll need to ensure they don’t get a bottle preference because babies find feeding from a bottle much easier than from the breast (look up paced bottle feeding).

Lying down to feed certainly solves a problem when you’re exhausted but with my 2 they would be so cosy and would fall asleep on the boob so wouldn’t work, and this certainly isn’t a long term fix for getting milk supply up. It could be a milk supply issue, which also isn’t uncommon.

Personally ive introduced a bottle as i couldn’t bear having a starving baby - were both much happier now.

So her length and weight are both 2nd and following the curve, although her head is 75th 😅🤣.
So you're just giving one bottle of formula a day and then continuing breast feeding? I haven't seen much advice on combi feeding so would love some info! X

Mine is 7 weeks. We are still very much every 2 hours (if not more) during the day. He will maybe give us 4 hours at the start of the night but then it’s 1-2 hours after that. We
also cosleep from 2am ish. I think it’s normal to be honest - DC1 was the same. Oodles of solidarity! We give 1 bottle of formula a day as well as I’m going back to work earlier this time and I don’t want a bottle refuser. It doesn’t help sleep but it’s nice to have a break!

@LauraFTM

I'm afraid I may not make you feel better but will give my honest experience!

My first baby woke two hours for months and months I just learned to deal with it and coslept and fed lying down all night long. It was really really hard. I don't even have a solution for you, I never found one! He finally started sleeping longer stretches at 15 months when I night weaned, and then sleeping through mostly about age 2, just in time for his brother to arrive.

This baby #2 I wake for a dream feed at 10pm, then he sleeps until 2am, wakes for a quick feed then back down til 5am, quick feed and normally back down til 7/8am.

I'm doing absolutely nothing different. They are just different babies. I feel so lucky this time because I'm shattered from running around after #1.

But it does tell me that it's nature, not nurture, babies are just different. I was so sure with #1 I must be doing something wrong, but I obviously wasn't!

People do lie about baby sleep too I found so don't listen when people say how well their babies sleep.

EBF is really hard. My first baby didn't take a bottle and I EBF until I weaned him off the boob at 18 months. This baby won't take a bottle either so I've just accepted it and not even trying now!

You'll never regret this time, just do what you can to make it easier for yourself and keep up the great work x

This is not that unusual. I would say like others we would get a 3-4 hour stretch around 7 pm but feeding every 2 hours was the norm. Then around 16 weeks I started to feed even more frequently in the day and began to shush pat a LITTLE at night- he would still wriggle and squirm and complain but what we were getting was a feed at 7, dream feed at 10 and then going through till 2/3. And then that didn’t change till weaning.
But to do that I made sure he was really tanking up in the day. Make sure he drains both breasts and also let them latch on a little bit once they are done- it will stimulate your supply.

Thank you everyone. Is there something I'm doing wrong as I'm not getting a longer stretch at the start of the night?
We bath feed and bed every night (roughly same time, depends on her feeding as she has 0 routine)
She actually goes down pretty well in her bed too. We've also had nights of cluster feeding from 5-8pm, and I thought that might result on a good stretch but still always 2 hours... very occasionally 3. 😞 feel like I'm doing it wrong!

Length and weight are 2nd centile?

Any signs of tongue tie - eg insecure latch (falls off boob easily), shallow latch (only nipple in baby’s mouth, no areola or boob skin), squashed/deformed nipples, very sore nipples, clicking sounds while feeding, very windy?

Sorry should say squashed/deformed nipples after a feed.

Hey yes both length and weight, but her head is 75th! 😅
I dont think there are any latch issues, no pain, no nipple problems, she can be quite gassy (farts more than burps!) And she feeds for around 30 mins mostly. No clicking sounds but I can often hear more of slurp? Sort of sound you hear when sucking on a straw - hard to explain! But I've always thought it sounded like she was really sucking well and swallowing.
She does come off the boob herself, but I can usually latch her back on (Not often she totally refuses) but if I keep insisting I think she just sucks for comfort and not properly feeding, so I tend to stop when she's come off herself.

My first baby was exactly as you describe, plus he had colic for the first 8 weeks of his life. I actually found that introducing a FF made it worse, and affected my supply, so I changed back to EBF. He started sleeping through very suddenly at 13 weeks.
It's so hard in the early days, but if your latch is okay and you have no pain, plus there are enough wet and dirty nappies, then you are probably fine. If you are at all concerned, see your GP (My HV was awful, but if yours is good, then maybe try her first). If there is a problem then you will get help, and if there isn't then you will get reassurance. Also, if there is a breastfeeding support group near you, you could see if there is someone who can check that your latch is good. I found the kellymom.com website very good when I had problems too.

My DD (now 11yo) fed every 2 hours, morning, noon and night until she was 14 months old when she just suddenly stopped.

My first DD (now 14yo) fed 3 hourly until 12 weeks when she started sleeping through..

My DS fed at 10pm and then 2am and 6am till he was 9 months old when he started sleeping through.

I parented them all the same, so in other words done compare your baby to others, as even within the same family they are all different..

As mentioned by another user, it may be related to a tongue tie - has she been checked for one? They're incredibly common, 5 out of 7 babies in my antenatal group had one!

My DD went undiagnosed for 4 weeks (she's EBF) even though I asked outright about tongue ties... the only real symptoms we had were that she was constantly feeding, she lost her latch quite a lot and had to be popped back on, she had lots of wind, she struggled to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time because she was so hungry, and the tell-tale one for us was blisters on her lips. Definitely worth having a look online and checking out the symptoms!

Sorry if this has been mentioned already but how long is she feeding for at a time? If it's not very long, she may only be getting the fore milk which is more watery and less filling, so she may be getting hungry again after a short time. If this is the case, you could express for a few minutes before latching her on so that she has a better chance of reaching the hind milk.

The other thing I was told is that every woman has a different "storage capacity". Some women can hold 5oz in each breast whereas some only hold 1-2 oz, which can mean their babies need to feed more often to get the same amount over a 24 hour period. Could this be the case?

There's lots of reasons why it might be happening unfortunately! I hope you figure things out soon though 😊

Keep feeding on demand as baby needs, you're not doing anything wrong but it is so exasperating and exhausting! My firstborn has just self-weaned at 2y10m and my second is currently 19w and feeds every 1-1.5hrs. Babies nurse for so many reasons, more than just sustenance. At one point my first was feeding every 45min day and night until we worked out baby was cold! My second is currently teething so nurses for pain relief and comfort every hour during the day and every 1.5hr at night. I'm so spent.

Keep doing what you're doing as long as it works for you, 💪

No you aren’t doing anything wrong. She’s just 8 weeks. The longer stretches come later- for me around 16 weeks. Which is double her current age. And then every time there was some developmental leap or a cold it went back to scratch. I know what the newborn stage is like- just an endless sleepless blur and you think life will never be the same. Hang in there. It will get better. Incrementally but better.

You’re not doing anything wrong. Keeping an eye on her weight gain is good, especially since she’s quite small for her age.
My baby also fed about every two hours for the first few months. I started lying to his dr about the frequency of feeds in the end because he was growing fine and the expected numbers the dr was working from were supposedly the same for breastfed and FF babies. It does get better and the stretches between feeds get longer.
Only getting a small amount of milk when you express on top of feeding is normal. You’d probably find you get significantly more when you express instead of feeding (so like when you’ve gone out for the day without your baby). Babies are also more efficient than pumps, generally.

If you’d like to try adding a bottle of formula in so you can have a longer break then pick a time of day where someone (not you) can consistently offer a bottle and take baby for 4 hours. Lots of mum find 10pm ish works well - so you breastfeed at 8ish and then go and have a sleep for 4 hours. Baby’s dad (for example) then gives a bottle for the next feed and then hands baby back at midnight and mum deals with the rest of the wake ups. Your supply will adapt fine you’re consistent with it.
Be aware that this sounds great in theory, but if you can still hear your baby cry, then you might find it triggers your let-down reflex and you’re desperate to feed your baby to relieve the discomfort.

It will start to get longer and maybe in the next few days. Do you take baby out for longish pram walks in the daylight, that helped I think in our case. Good for their body clock to recognise daytime verus night. White noise in tbe bedroom at night also helpful