EASY for 3 week old

[Crispy Chick]

My Lo is 3 weeks old, second baby, so not much time - LOL

I am trying to impliment some sort of EASY schedule since my health visitor has encouraged me to put baby on a 3 hour feeding routine since he was previously feeding on bottles every 1 1/2 to 2 hours and putting on excess weight. 

My main problem is i struggle to get LO to stay awake for even 1 minute after most daytime feeds - i think this is also responsible for his 2am middle of the night 'party'.  How do you get LO to stay awake for even 20 mins???  no matter howmuch i prod and poke him he stays asleep!!!!

any advice???

[Lolly]

My two have both been bottle fed from birth. expressed BM and formula for a couple of weeks and then formula. With DD I found that with BM she was hungry at more or less exactly 2 hours but the same amount of formula would last her 3 hours. A 3 hour feed routine is fairly common even with very little formula fed babies as formula is harder to digest than breast milk, that said although I tried to keep to 3 hours if they were hungry earlier they were fed earlier.

How much is he taking at a feed and how long is it taking to feed him? At 3 weeks he should probably be taking around 4oz a feed and should be going at least 2 hours really if he is taking a proper feed. Which flow teat are you using?

Keeping awake is very hard when they are so little and this will improve as he gets older! I used to strip mine off a bit to wake them up, play with their feet, stroke their palms etc and a nappy change usually did the trick for a few mins at least

What was his birth weight and what is your HV calling excess weight . Has he jumped up the growth curve much? DD was 8lb 11oz born and gained around 0.5lb a week. At 1 year she is about 24lbs. In fact both of mine jumped up a few centiles in their early weeks and then followed a curve for a while. My friends breast fed baby has been gaining about lb per week in comparison!

HTH a bit, sorry for the questions but hopefully we can help a bit more!

Laura

[Yazzie]

Hey there hun & welcome to your baby

You got some great advice from Lolly, but I was thinking maybe your lo has day/night confusion?..I'd suggest limiting day time sleep to a maximum of 2~3 hrs & @ night make sure that feeds are very low key, no talking & if possible feed in the dark.

HTH

[Crispy Chick]

Hey Girls

Thanks for the replies.  Yazzie - i don't think we have night and day mixed up since he is doing really well sleeping at night.  We do all the dark feeds etc...  but i think it is a good idea to limit day sleeps to a certain length - this will hopefully help me set a better routine.

laura - i too breast fed for two weeks before switching to formula.  I expected him to go longer on the formula, but it did not seem to be the case, although he is now starting to take approx 4oz each feed now.  Today i dropped down to a 2 1/2 hour feeds and religiously woke him for feeds - i think it went better.  He was 8lb 13 oz when born and had gained almost a 1lb in the last week.  If i am being honest i think he was overfeeding too.

He takes about 15 - 20 min to feed and is on slow flow teats (he even struggled with those flowing too fast when we first changed to forumla).  It appears he has a bit of reflux and the HV is looking at putting him on meds, so i guess his feeding pattern could be connected to this.

Still struggling to keep him awake and to be honest, the more i try and keep him awake the more difficult he is finding it to go to sleep later on and then OT kicks in - ahhhhhh

Meant to be an expert at this since he is my second, but finding the time to even try and think back is hard - LOL.

Any ideas on getting him to settle himself to sleep???

Christine
x

[Yazzie]

I think he's still very young self settle, of course use sh/pat, but I don't think there's anything else to do @ this stage, just be aware to try & limit AP as much as possible, so that you're not stuck with something that need fixing later on.

Why not let him sleep as he likes and wake up for feeds, he may have extra sleep needs than usual, I always find the key is always to follow their cues, so that, as you said, you don't end up with an OT baby

[Lolly]

If he has reflux then that would explain the frequent feeds. My two are both refluxers but went the other way - going 4+ hours on a 2oz feed . I would do what you can to settle him at the moment, if it is reflux and he is in pain/ discomfort you won't be able to sleep train until you get it under control. I didn't worry too much about getting into bad habits in the early days - we did every bit of accidental parenting in the book with DS (and invented a few when we really needed sleep) and we didn't find anything in particular became a problem when he was so small - probably because we used so many different things . With refluxers keeping them calm and comfortable is hard work but necessary really. Are you keeping him upright after feeds for about 20/30 mins? Do you know what the HV wants to try for him?

Depending on which bottles you are using a variflow teat may be worth a try as he can control the speed he drinks at by how hard he sucks. We used the Tommee tippee closer to nature with DD and found the variflow really good.

As for being an expert second time around - I don't think second babies read the same books we do either

Laura

[Yazzie]

Just wanted to remind you of the reflux board, I'm sure you'll find loads of info and help there, here's the link:
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?board=13.0