Newborn, do you wake them up every 4 hours for a feed? when can I stop this?

[2Princess]

Am a mum for 2nd time, so feel very lucky. With my first DD she was always awake and a terrible crying baby, but this time DD2 is a dream to look after.

My DH and I were told by midwife to wake her every 4 hours maximum for a feed. DD2 is now 2 weeks old and sometimes wants to sleep longer and we have trouble waking her to get her to feed.

What happened to the term 'never wake a sleeping baby?' really confused as to what to do now. Can I leavve DD2 to wake up by herself for a feed?

if she is a well baby and no signs of jaundice then I think it is madness to be waking her TBH!! Just make sure she is gaining weight and enjoy the sleep!

Thats what I thought, just wanted other mums opinion, as like I said DD1 wa nightmare baby.

this is a bit controversial but is my experience after a awake and whingy constantly feeding dd i tried a different approach with ds

i woke him or offered a feed if he was awake every 3-4 hours in the day time and initially put him down at 7, woke and fed at 10 then fed whenever he woke in the morning 4-5 ish. This helped establish an idea of day and night that dd never had. He is now 3.5 months and i feed when he wants in the day but he has fallen into 3-4 hours between feed, with extra foremilk quick feeds on hot days, and i no longer wake him at 10 he still wakes at 5 am then goes back to sleep quickly.

so to actually answer the question at about 4 weeks or whenever your baby seems to wake up and be alert more i would stop waking and offer when she is awake

With my first I 'fed on demand' but he was so undemanding I never established a good milk supply and struggled with breastfeeding and gave up after 2 months. With my second I fed her every 3 hours between 6am and 9pm (for the first few weeks), then fed her during the night when she woke up. I found it much easier to breastfeed as I had a better supply. If you are formula feeding its not so much of an issue but she may not be able t go 4 hours between every feed so it makes some sense to try to encourage the longer gaps between feeds to be at night.

DD2 is bottle fed now.

oh sorry, didnt realise

my experience probably no use then!

I was told to wake my ds too (6yrs ago now!) because he was quite sleepy initially.

Decided to wake him during day and 'get as much in as poss' but couldn't drag myself out of bed to wake him at night. Just made the most of it and slept!

Btw he had to be bottle fed too. By 6wks he was missing out the dreaded early hours nighttime feed but feeding like a demon between 6pm and 10/11pm.

HTH

2 princess - I think it might depend on how tiny your Lo is. If she were quite a low birth weight then maybe not let her go to long. My DD (now 25wks) weighed 8lbs and midwife said don't wake her. She will let you know when she needs it.

However once DD got to about 7/8 wks I didn't let her go too long in the day so she got the ozs she needed then so hopefully she would not need so much at night.

Congrats by the way

Through the day yes, but at night HELL NO!

at that age I tried not to let ds go more than 3-4 hours without a feed during the day but never woke him to feed at night (he did that all by himself!!)

NEVER wake a sleeping baby....

No supply is not an issue, there is prob too much! Just didn't enjoy bf and then I turned to expressing exclusively and now onto bottle feeding.

Bottle fed DD1 from day 1 as she was only 5lb 4oz when born, but DD2 was 6lb 1oz, prob near 7oz mark now. DD2 have been finding is waking up eevry 3/4 hours now anyway for feeds.

Couldn't remember whether you were meant to wake them from DD1 as she wanted to feed every 1/2 - 1 hour! nightmare baby as she was so small.

Thanks for the advice about dehydration, have taken that into consideration.