2 week old with no evening pattern

[LizRogers]

My dd was born on 11 July, she eased us in gently the first week but for the past 6 nights has been in a feeding and winding frenzy for around 5 hours. I start to lose the plot by 11 so my dh helps out. She is a breast fed baby. I am wondering if this is normal and when is too early to try and define a bed time routine - I don't want to follow Ford to the letter but wondered if a set bath time could structure our evening better? She is on a regular 3 to 4 schedule the rest of the day. Help!

Totally normal. The first week is deceptively easy - they just sleep so much! But really, a two week old can't be on a schedule. They don't really know they're alive at two weeks old, let alone recognise regular cues like "bathtime = bedtime". They know your smell and your sounds and they can sort of fuzzily see you, but they don't have anywhere near the cognition to make connections about routines.

It is hard at this time. The feeding frenzy (cluster feeding) is absolutely typical for a breastfed newborn, and there's just not much you can do except what you are doing - getting your husband to help when you hit a wall, and taking it a day at a time.

It seems like forever now, but it really isn't. She'll start to wake up, understand more, and show you some cues soon. For now, you're doing absolutely brilliantly.

Your dd is tiny and cluster feeding at this age is normal. In fact it usually goes on for a few months. Breast feeding is not designed to fit a schedule and works best if you don't expect it to. My dd2 is now 8 weeks and her schedule is starting to appear. I find that trying to fit babies into even loose schedules is a hiding to nothing, causes stress and can interfere with milk supply - 4 hours between feeds at 2 weeks is a long time. I would throw away the schedules and go with the flow and get comfy with cake, the remote control and plenty to drink.

Congratulations on your baby

Thank you! They are such obvious questions but sometimes you just feel like you ae doing something wrong - I'm finding it difficult to adapt to living one say at a time but I know this is the best thing to do.

Oh, I know, when mine was 2 weeks old I did the same thing, tied myself in knots worrying about a bedtime routine, comparing her with a friend's four month old. worrying that I didn't change her into proper jammies instead of letting her fall asleep in her babygrow, etc. Didn't realise just how enormous the abyss between 2 weeks and 4 months is, in baby development terms. By 4 months we did have a lovely bedtime routine going, with songs and bathtime and cuddles, and it just naturally evolved.

It takes some getting used to, doesn't it? But it really is a short time even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. Good luck.

Yes, this is totally normal. It may well carry on for quite a few weeks yet. There is nothing you can do about it, and introducing bedtime routines won't make any difference. IMO bedtime routines only start being useful from around 4 months onwards when babies start to be able to work out what is coming next on the basis of what's happened before.

Make sure you're feeding on demand the whole time - if you are trying to work on a schedule then it may well cause problems with your milk supply and could potentially mean that you can't carry on breastfeeding as long as you might like. Certainly from what I've read in her books, GF's advice on breastfeeding contradicts the NHS and World Health Organisations' advie on feeding, which is to feed 'frequently and on-demand'. Just follow your baby's cues. At this stage it's normal and good for her to be feeding 8-12 times every 24 hours.

You can find lots of good advice on the breast & bottle feeding board on here.

Congratulations and keep going. As tortoise says, it does feel like it's forever at the time, but it won't be long before it's all a distant memory.

Thanks. As dd has not put on weight since Monday I've been advised by the midwife to hand express and top her 7 pm feed. There are no other signs of concern so we will have to see if her weight increases by the time of her next weigh in! (her birth weight was 6lb 7 and she is now 5 lb 15).

Hi Liz
Congratulations on your new arrival.
My LO didn't put on any weight until she was about 3 weeks so I am sure she will be fine at the next weigh in.
The others are totally spot on, just keep going with the demand feeding. If it makes you feel better, mine was ff and we couldn't keep to a schedule because some bottles she wanted and others she didn't when it was "due" so it wasn't any easier on bottles which according to Ford she would have been ready for more every 3/4 hrs. Nonsense.
The first book I bought was Ford and I made myself very ill with PND because I beat myself up over the fact I could not get DD into this routine. Hubby shredded the book and I got help, at 3 mo we started with the bath, bottle bed routine and indeed as tortoise said it just changes gradually into happy bath time, you may be better leaving the routine a bit later until 4 mo because up until this age, my DD was hysterical every nite at the bath bottle bed time, it was awful. I perserved for over 6 weeks and she just gradually stopped over the course of a couple of weeks to happy time.
2 weeks is such a long time at the begining isn't it

Hi Lizrogers,

If you allow your baby to go three hours to four hours between feeds during the day, then she will have to feed more in the evening/night to satisfy her daily needs.

As Angeldog says " At this stage it's normal and good for her to be feeding 8-12 times every 24 hours." But the problem is that some babies do not demand to be fed, which results in them being unsettled in the evening and at night.

If you want to achieve more settled evenings, it is worth trying to feed your baby every three hours during the day, which is three hours from the beginning of the feed, not three hours between feeds.

Good luck.