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"

Omg - feeding 20 times a day! [shocked]

Please no one say this is 'normal' now. I really don't think I'd have another if this was what we were expecting.

Maybe it's because I'm tall and have big babies who have been happy to go 3/4 hours from birth.

When we were on the 8-12-4-8-12 routine the feeds lasted a good half hour. I was told that was necessary to get the hind milk.

Are these modern babies spending 10 hours a day feeding?

weatherall lol at these modern babies. They're all different, as they always have been.

DD wanted to feed for 10 minutes at a time every 3-4 hours. Thrived on it, so assume she was getting plenty of hind milk. And some feeds for some babies, particularly in hot weather, will be about having a drink not about nutrition, so a quick sip of foremilk may be all they're after.
DS on the other hand may have been aiming for 10 hours a day...

"Maybe it's because I'm tall and have big babies who have been happy to go 3/4 hours from birth."

Well, bully for you. DD was small (under 6lb) and had a very small stomach. My midwife advised me to feed her at east 8 times a day and go no more than three hours between feeds. It took three weeks before DD regained her birth weight. She also took over an hour to feed each time. In spite of having a good latch she just wasn't very good at sucking.

Sorry to hijack but something I'm worried about is that I was small and apparently had to be woken to feed because I was very sleepy.
How does one go about this? How would you know when to wake and feed if you had a baby like this.

Probably paranoid for nothing as scans show a largish baby (like my siblings) and I was very much an odd one out for my family who all (aunts, parents, grandparents) report the arm-waving-"eh-eh-eh" every 2-3 hours or so for the first month or so for all of theirs! It is a source of family pride that most of our babies "know what they want and know how to ask" which I suppose is one way of looking at it!

My son fed on demand every 3 - 3 1/2 hours from newborn so hv said force feed made no difference lol! I'm bf with this one so hoping might be a bit more frequent

It really depends on the baby. My DD grew massively in the first year of life (quadrupled her weight) and spent most of her time bfing. Ebf she fed at least every 2 hours on average for 40 minutes and on one occasion for 3.5 hours. She also did a lot of cluster feeding. It was exhausting but I imagine that leaving a hungry baby to cry can't be very pleasant either - at least I could alleviate her crying. Even when she started on solids she needed to eat every 2 hours.

My friend's bf baby fed every 4-6 hours and slept 12 hours from very early on.

squiz even when DD was tiny tiny if I brushed her top lip with a nipple she'd usually latch on, even in her sleep. Gently stroking her cheek helped too if she was nodding off during a feed.

Thanks. Hopefully there will be no issues! :)

Yeah I was really quite tiny (the small weak one out of premi twins) and had facial nerve damage too... thankfully all gone now!

Read Gina Ford's contented baby book. She is very anti the 4 hour feed (and demand feeding for that matter too). Recommends demand feeding in the early days & then 3 hours thereafter (from memory). She should give you some good tips for your mum.

My mum's bug bear is being induced. She is convinced they will induce me a couple of days after due date - even though I've told her many times they do not do that any longer.

Your baby will let you know when they are hungry. The first few weeks the feeding is relentless. It starts to space out after 6 weeks.

I think mine were feeding every 4 hrs ish after 12 weeks.

I didn't engineer it though.

I BF mainly on demand, but if DD had gone 3 hours without a feed (i.e. without asking for a feed) I fed her anyway. And yes, this was even if she was asleep (ex midwife MIL used to say 'never wake a sleeping baby', blah blah blah, but just ignored her).

I'm sure I remember reading something from the NHS about giving 8 feeds in 24 hours (i.e. every 3 hours).

DD was tiny as a newborn (9th centile) and jaundiced. I now have a 98th centile 12 month old, so I reckon it must have suited her.

My aunt breastfed, but with a strict ten minutes each side, as instructed by the midwives of the time*

My mum did this also. She was a midwife, it didn't go so well, I screamed all day and she got mastitis. My aunt came to her rescue and told her to feed me until I crashed out. She still blushes when she thinks about all the poor women who went through her maternity hospital getting clueless doctrine advice from her.

I've bf two children now. I'd echo vdbfamily's advice too. The sensible thing is to start with on demand and then try to gently push things out a little imo. Provided that they are are healthy weight and have no health issues. Life is a lot easier for everyone if there is some structure to the day. The trick is to recognise that there will definitely be days where it all goes to hell in a handbasket, and that every month or so you will need to adjust it a little.
Then you will start weaning at 6 months or so and that's a whole other change to schedules.

I'd also recommend having a quick flick through Gina Ford [but not for weaning recipes, my god they are disgusting]. I found it helpful for suggestions as to how to structure my day so I could get out and about and do stuff, as well as BF a lot.

My top tip is www.kellymom.com - it's brilliant.

Babies don't have to be made to feed for half an hour to get "hind milk" weatherall - hind milk just means fattier milk from an emptier breast. A baby feeding 20 times a day from an empty breast will be getting all hind milk!

Bunbaker- I really don't see the need for that snide comment.

Lots of people on this thread are discussing how the size of babies effects how frequently they wanted to feed.

I was merely agreeing with others that maybe the size difference is why some babies want 3/4 hour feeds and others 20 feeds a day. I don't know. It's been 12 years since I've read all the baby books. Advice does seen to have changed a lot since then.

In retrospect I think maybe one of the reasons dc2 was such a difficult baby, with reflux which caused her to scream in pain every night was that we were trying a 3/4 hour routine with her rather than on demand. But at the time I was told you needed gaps between feeds to let your breasts 'fill up' with milk. If people are feeding 20 times a day now I take it this advice was wrong?

Yes, totally wrong unfortunately. Full breasts mean no milk is being produced, and feeding infrequently reduces supply.

Feeding frequently from both sides means higher milk production, fattier milk and increased weight gain for the baby.

I am so glad I will never have to go through all this aggro again. The aggression from other women I found disturbing, like it's some weird competition.
I found "the Sensational baby sleep plan" very useful

We ff our lil boy and he is only a week old but already into his 4hourly feeds routine :) and he is putting on the weight fine midwives are very happy with him. Just a bit jaundiced bless him i hope it clears up x

oh dont worry, he will soon change that routine! There will be growth spurts to come and then it will all go to pot so dont get too smug just yet

In the early days with my DD1 I was so stressed with monitoring how long she'd fed, which side I'd fed from first, how long she'd had each side, how long between feeds etc etc. after a couple of weeks, (and lots of reading kellymom) I decided to relax and let her get on with it, and bf'ing suddenly got a whole lot easier. I fed her when she wanted, as much as she wanted, as often as she wanted. She almost never cried, because she was fed on demand. It makes for a whole lot more relaxed and enjoyable experience.
My DS by the way, wouldn't feed any more frequently than 5 hourly during the day. And would then feed every 45 mins overnight.

I have a friend who breastfed her newborns every 4 hours, I fed on demand but ds would often go longer than 4 hours and he'd only feed for minutes at a time, he was just a very sufficient sucker as he was massive,