Feed on demand or wake up?

[Lauren8642]

My baby is 3 weeks old tomorrow and just got back to bang on birth weight today, we’ve been waking her every 3 hours and she’s been having around 2-4oz every feed roughly around 500 - 570ish ml a day.

The HV has said now we can feed on demand but make sure she’s not going longer than 5 hours and she’s having a min of 525ml and max of 700ml a day.

She’s still quite sleepy and we’ve always fed her before she shows her hungry cues, sometimes in the night she’s not even woke up and will only drink like 30ml. So I don’t know what’s best whether we put her on a 4 hours routine (obviously if she wants feeding sooner we will) or just to see when she wakes up wanting food? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Has anyone else been in the same boat what do you do?

I was told aim for 2-3 hours but don’t go longer than 5. Until about 6 weeks they woke up every 4 and the odd time they didn’t I would prepare a bottle ready and gently wake them. From 6 weeks I fed on demand and they would go 6 hours when put to bed and then every 3 hours after.

I use an app to record the amounts but I didn’t track at first. You can’t force them to eat if they aren’t hungry and they will tell you if they are. I use the app more so that I can predict how the night will go, less through the day=more through the night.

I haven't woken either of my kids for a feed. Unless there's health issues like failure to thrive/ struggling to put on weight etc they will wake up when they're hungry. Just keep an eye on how many wet nappies and general weight of the baby :)

@Tdcp we only got told to wake her because she lost over 9% of her body weight but she’s back to birth weight now, so she’s never told us when she’s hungry we’ve always beat her to it

Yeah, I never woke a sleeping baby....Other than the dream feed top up at 10/11 when you go to bed.

We did a bit of both.

So we didn't wake during the night to feed (but no one did a few years ago, when my child was a baby).

During the day, it was in demand until it got to 3 hours, at which point we'd offer.

Ah I can see why you're concerned. To gain 9% back in 3 weeks is really good though! I'd let her take charge for a few days and see how you go. You can always start waking her again if you're concerned.

My daughter only had a 5% weight loss but wouldn't wake for feeds so we had an alarm every 3h until she was over birth weight and then we did another week of an alarm every 4h during this week she started to wake every 3h and we fed on demand after that. We had feeding refusals from the first week which turned out to be a cmpa and feeding was stressful and she did really short feeds.

My son had low blood sugars at birth as he was sleeping for 12h at a time and couldn't be woken for feeds. He also had a grade 1 tongue tie, cut at day 8, and feeding was difficult despite this he only had a 6% weight loss. We set alarms every 3h, at day 9 his weight gain was 50g so a bit under what they were wanting to see but given his tongue tie not surprising. His feeding improved so much the next day and he gained another 50g between day 9 and 10. He woke every 2-2.5 hours and fed well so i stopped the alarms even though he wasn't yet at birth weight as I was confident that him sleeping was he was sleeping and not having too low a blood sugar to wake for a feed.

I would have a day or two with alarms every 3.5-4h overnight and let them feed on demand during the day wake if it's been more than 4h keeping an eye out for feeding cues.