Baby showing hunger cues for comfort?

[bearsbea]

So this is my second baby so you'd think I'd know better but my newborn (1 week old) is very different from my first. I formula fed both and my first we fed every 3-4 hours. New baby has been waking every 1.5-2 hours to feed and sometimes even after just an hour is showing hunger cues (rooting, eating hands, fussy etc). Sometimes he won't take much of it at all though and earlier he was showing cues and I popped him in his joie Sansa chair which he really loves while I got bottles out of steriliser and he fell asleep for a while so I'm really wondering if it's just a comfort thing sometimes? I feel a bit clueless sometimes! I really wanted to avoid a dummy and my first didn't have one but does it sound like he really needs one?! Any advice welcome.

My partner is going back to work next week (works away mon-fri so will be solo parenting) and I absolutely can't see how I'm going to survive with this amount of wake ups and then getting up with my energetic 3 year old at 6am. He's had one 3 hour night stretch so far which felt amazing but it's mostly as attached.

This looks very normal to me OP, and the advice now is to approach formula feeding with the same baby-led responsive feeding that happens with breastfeeding. At one week of age his stomach capacity will be tiny, and generally speaking ‘little and often’ is much more the biological norm. Placing babies on a feeding schedule of 3-4hourly is convenient for adults (and I say that with no judgement at all) but it is not in the physiological best interests of the baby, especially a newborn. The volumes consumed at each feed will increase over time, as will the gaps between feeds, but for now it is very normal (and optimal) for your baby to take milk in varying volumes and at varying frequencies. Follow his feeding cues responsively and give him the bottle with a paced-feeding approach (worth a google) so that he can take natural pauses and control the flow of milk himself, and take his lead.

I think this is where we get it wrong as health professionals because there is such strong messaging about breastfeeding and very little help or education about bottle feeding.

Best of luck and congratulations