1st feed of the day

[yellow rose]

I have a 2 1/2 week old as well as a 2 1/2 year old.  Over the past week or so, it has worked out best for our schedule if I feed the baby at 6:30 a.m.  By the time he's done, my toddler is up and ready to go.  However, if I want to feed him at that time every morning, then I have to set my alarm clock to feed him every three hours through the night or it gets all messed up.  I don't know if this is a good idea or not though because I feel like I'm not really helping him learn to lengthen the time between night time feeds.  Any thoughts?

[lisi's mum]

Not much help, but my thought is I wouldn't just yet, give yourself a break and just wing it for a bit - your LO is changing so much and so fast right now. Waking them to feed often results in a bad feed and besides, it's the night, you want to try and get him to sleep as long as possible. Once you've settled a bit maybe then you can try and establish your ideal waking time. Right now I think you'd be fighting a losing battle!

[clh]

I agree.  At 2.5 weeks, I don't think your lo is ready for that much structure to his day.  Just try to keep the routine cycle going. 

When my boys were a few weeks older, if the night feeds didn't work out right, I'd have a really short final night cycle and then feed (top off) at whatever time I wanted the day to start so we'd have a good start to the day. 

[yellow rose]

Thanks for the responses.  CLH - I want to make sure I understand what you're saying....so if your lo woke for a feed at 5:00 a.m., for example, you would feed at that time, but then wake him again at 6:30 a.m. and give him more and consider that your first morning feed?

[clh]

Yeah.  Something like that.  Although mine were older when I started doing that, even for ds2 when I had a toddler running around.