Demand feeding question?

It's not totally necessary to wake her every 4 hours to feed at this age, it normally applies to the first couple of weeks. My son started sleeping through the night when he was 3 weeks old, and I demand feed him. Just make sure that your daughter has enough to drink at night, and she will wake if she is hungry. But if you are concerned at all, talk to your midwife about it.

I agree, if she's gaining weight then there should be no need to wake her, she will wake when she gets hungry enough.
Every mw has different advice. I was told by a hospital mw to wake Jody every 4 hours, however my mw said the hospital mw is being 'old fashioned' lol and to let Jody sleep once my milk came in. So it was only the first few days/nights where I woke her.

I have been demand feeding from the first day. I normally only let Cody sleep for a max of 3 hrs during the day simply because I want him to sleep at night. He still wakes up twice a night normally but most of the time he has a quick feed and then goes straight back to sleep. I think that as long as your baby is putting on weight then it shouldn't be a problem.

I totally agree with never waking a sleeping baby.

I was also told not to let him go longer than 4 hours between feeds during the day which was fine as he rarely did during the first four weeks. It all went pear shaped after 5 weeks as he started wanting to sleep longer and Plunket were not happy with his weight so they wanted me to feed him every 3 hours.

To cut a very long story short, I did what I was told and ended up with an exhausted child who wouldnt sleep and not only was his weight gain low, he even lost weight!

After a 3 weeks I ditched Plunkets advice, went back to demand feeding and what do you know, he started sleeping properly againg with 6-10 hours stints through the night and gained 210gm in a week.

If there is one thing I have learnt in the past 10 weeks is trust your own instincts!

I agree never wake a sleeping baby!!! I was told to wake Angus, i did during the day as he hadnt put on much weight, but stopped as soon as he started to gain. He has been sleeping through the night since he was 8 weeks old.

nzpiper wrote: I used to wake during the day if it was getting near 4 hours from last feed but NEVER at night. THe rationale was they needed x amount of milk during a 24 hour period and if they didnt get it during the day they would make up for it at night......it kinda worked...I think

I agree with nzpiper to ensure enough feeds are given during the day to get them through the night! I would wake Lauren somewhere between 3 and 4 hours if she didn't wake herself up! She was sleeping through by 8 weeks old (9pm till 5am). I must admit if I thought she didn't have enough feeds during the day I would also introduce a dreamfeed that night to get her through, so I could sleep!