feeding on demand vs every 4 hrs

[breakfastinbread]

Please help me understand something (am 25weeks right now).

I understand that with breast feeding, it is important to feed on demand (ensure supply etc etc), but have been getting some cats' bum faces from DM today when I told her this is what current recommendations are. I personally am planning on BF'ing, but have no idea if I can/will etc when the time comes.

Apparently, me and DBro were fed every 4 hours (FF) "whether we needed it or not."

When/why did the guidelines change? I need something to counter her with next time I see her! Are FF babies fed on demand too nowadays?

I don't want to be chained to the baby, apparently.

"….rod for your own back"

And you sure get good at sleeping when you can. A moment spent awake when you could have been sleeping is a moment wasted

^ this!

I've attached a good picture on feeding cues. I was told most of these when dd was born but wished I'd seen this picture too.

And you sure get good at sleeping when you can. A moment spent awake when you could have been sleeping is a moment wasted

^ this!

I've attached a good picture on feeding cues. I was told most of these when dd was born but wished I'd seen this picture too.

And you sure get good at sleeping when you can. A moment spent awake when you could have been sleeping is a moment wasted

^ this!

I've attached a good picture on feeding cues. I was told most of these when dd was born but wished I'd seen this picture too.

And you sure get good at sleeping when you can. A moment spent awake when you could have been sleeping is a moment wasted

^ this!

This is a good snap shot picture of a babies hunger cues.

So the iPad tells me it can't upload the picture but sends the message 5 times

We formula feed. She's been feeding on demand since birth and is now 3 months old. She's settled into a routine now of every 3-4 hours, five or six times a day.

We FF on demand. DD was very good at self regulating, perhaps because she didn't get too hungry. I'm not sure if others have the same experience or whether we got lucky, but "demand" fairly quickly became an identifiable routine, so it was predictable.

Interesting photo of the interpretation of baby's hunger cues. No wonder I was so shit at it! LOL
A baby stretching is (or can be) sign of hunger, well I never knew that before, who'd of thought?
Do you not think though that all the advice and "help" makes it seem a lot more complicated than it really is?
When pregnant it seems so hard. Provide total care for total dependent with language barrier. Nursing nightmare. But really all it is, is that you get to know your baby. Annoys me slightly how angst I got about it all.

I don't think it's a medical thing, personally. After all, entire generations were raised that way.

I think that proponents of on-demand feeding think that being "chained to the baby" is an acceptable price to pay for not allowing a baby to go hungry. Previous generations were, perhaps, less willing to accommodate a baby'sassive place in a mother's life.

I think this is but one of a number of newer 'trends' that, generally, give more space to babies and infants than we might have had growing up. (I'm not counting advances in science here, things like a greater understanding of SIDS, or in the understanding of the emotional development of a child.)

You will just have to make up your mind on what you want to do and do it. You don't need to justify anything to anyone - this is the privilege that accompanies the responsibility of raising a child. You are also fully entitled to change your mind - this is your first child, and unless you have prior experience with babies nobody really knows what they're talking about until they've been through it.

Fwiw, I mix fed on demand from birth with DD settling into her own routine of feeding every 3-4 hours during the day, massive feed before bed, and waking twice in the night (not at all from around 4/5mo). Babies are smarter than we think,hugely adaptable and resilient, and taking their cues (social, emotional, intellectual) from us, very quickly.

Good luck and congratulations!

The 4 hour thing goes back to 1920s when a guy (farmer, really) promoted a regime of 4 hours like calves needed. Yes, you read that right, he was into feeding baby humans like you would orphaned calves. In some ways he was a good guy, pushed hard to develop decent formula (read more). But he knew absolutely tosh about infant growth rates or breastfeeding. He also thought you could cuddle babies too much.

I remember feeding DS1 on demand and an ancient granny observing "In my day we were told we had to wait 4 hours to feed them. You didn't dare feed them any sooner but it was horrible having to listen to them cry."

"Being chained to a baby" is not just the acceptable price you pay for not allowing a baby to go hungry, it is the crying due to hunger that you can also minimise.

I'm not sure if many mothers have tried both ways and whether it was co incidence for me, but my demand fed DD was a very contented baby.

Dd was in scbu when she was first born, and we were told to feed her four hourly. This was 18 months ago . Once we got her home I was given far more sensible advice by the community midwives, to feed her on demand or every three hours, whichever was sooner. She was tiny and jaundiced and quite often needed waking for feeds in those days.

I should add that dd was breastfed but most babies there seemed to be bottle fed and I think they based their recommendations on that

Also, back in the day formula milk was casein based which is harder to digest and would sit in the gut for longer.

"Modern" formula (don't know when it changed - 20 yrs ago?) is whey based, more easily digested and babies may therefore feed more frequently.

Casein based milks are now sold as "hungry baby" milk. Same number of calories per ounce but take longer to digest.

But yes, 4 hourly feeding is probably the number one reason so many women of our mothers' generation didn't have enough milk (or were told it was poor quality and like water because their babies wanted frequent feeds).

Thanks all. Seems to make a bit more sense now.

DM is in her 60s and had me and Dbro in another country, so this may have contributed to it.

I did ask her if she tried or was encouraged to BF me at all, or if that was not the "done thing" where she was, so gave up after 24hrs.

I have no problem asserting my ppini

Sorry- on phone!

I have no problem asserting my opinion with her, but my goodness, times have changed since she had me (am only mid 30s BTW!) Every thing I point out to her that are current recommendations, like sleeping in same room or Weaning at 6months is met with the same cats bum.

I wonder if she feels like I'm inadvertently slating all the decisions she made for me and DBro?

It probably doesn't help that I am the first one in our family to have babies in the last 20yrs, but this is going to get very draining having to "defend" my decisions, when all I am doing is trying to follow the current evidence base.

DD is 3 weeks old and FF. I feed on demand. Sometimes she will only want feeding every 4 hours (at night) sometimes she will cluster feed (generally in the morning and last thing before she settles for the night).
Once your baby is happy and growing/gaining weight, do whatever you feel like and ignore the cat bum faces.

Times have changed so quickly!

I bf dc1 4hourly from birth (8lb6 baby) only 12 years ago.

My experience of being a single parent on that routine was a lot easier than the hell mums on here seem to go through.

I suppose I'd try feeding on demand if I had another one but I don't know how long I'd last.

With dc1 I ebf until I got mastitis at 10wks (in retrospect poss related to schedule) then mix fed, but kept bf til 27 months.

At night I gave a feed at midnight then through til 6 am from quite young. I'd then let him fall back asleep until 9am when we'd have another feed and get up. I didn't put him to bed til 10pm at night (was on own so he was good company!)
He was sleeping 8-8 by 7 months. We co slept so there was probably some dream feeding too.

I do think that lots of the more recent parenting trends are making mothers lives a lot harder.

But surely feeding a baby shouldn't be a trend

Would you really have kept feeding your baby every 4 hours if they'd screamed the place down for 2 out of them?

I fed ds1 to a strict 3hr routine. It suited him fine and he started going 5 hrs at night from about 6 weeks and slept through from about 12wks.

Tried it with ds2 who declared it bollocks and wanted feeding more frequently sometimes and less frequently others. He slept through around the same time though and actually has far more of a routine than his brother now he's older.

Far more stressful imo to say all babies should feed this often and for this length of time so that if your baby doesn't fit the model you think you must be doing something wrong.

OP, crimea's post is excellent

To reiterate, when your baby is here, you will find you will respond to their cues, regardless of how you chose to feed them.

I have two DC, have FF one and EBF the other, and have found drawing comparisons with the experience of others is futile -there will always be babies that are happy to go 3-4 hours (although not newborn, say after 3 months) between feeds, and there will always be babies that must feed every 1-2 hours until they are beyond a year.

Jeepers, if I listened to my MIL's parenting tips we would be buggered!!

You must feed your baby in the way that suits you and your family, not anybody else.

You will be fine

Sorry was meant to say DM not MIL!!!

weatherall - presumably you just happened to have a baby who was happy to go 4 hours between feeds though rather than one who cried a lot while having to wait to be fed?

It would definitely not have made my life easier to have spent hours with a screaming hungry baby making them wait til "feed time".

Mine started off feeding very frequently while bfing was established and then fed 2-3 hourly, it is pretty easy to just feed a bf baby whenever they need it so pushing them to go longer between feeds would have been of no benefit to anyone.

I've bfed both of mine; the second one was easier because I wasn't trying to "do" anything, with the first I felt like.I.was trying to do.something proactive or.something, not entirely sure what I thought that was. With number two what I'd really understood.is that the baby knows.what it needs and will let you know. Which means you don't.have to know anything, just be attentive and you'll.figure.it out. WRT feeding, they are particularly unsubtle, they mouth things and suck ferociously, twist their heads into the chest of whoever's holding them and generally try and throw themselves into a feeding position. While sort of.coughing.

All the weighing and measuring and charting and life and death style info from HCP while surfing the oestrogen crash can really get you into a terrible tizz, it makes you think that you have to know what you're doing and have a Plan. IME plans just taunt you with your inefficiency in a new born scenario, and efficiency isn't even any use to your new born.

Trust your baby, she'll let you know what she needs, how does your DM imagine we coped for millennia without clocks, formula, health visitors and scales? Peacefully would be my guess

Congratulations on your pregnancy, good luck