Need advice for 5-week old! PLEASE!!

[Molliemis]

I have a 5-week old daughter and I have been implementing EASY since we brought her home from the hospital. She's on a 2.5-3 hour EASY and is breastfed and bottle fed. She does very well on it. It's hard to get her to have activity time after every feed but she's getting better. My first child, who is now 2, was a Spirited baby (EASY saved us!) but I think this baby may be a Textbook baby/Angel Baby. She really only cries if she needs something, hungry, sleepy, diaper change, etc.

My question involves cutting out the 2 a.m. feed and tanking up. I have tried cluster feeding and the dream feed but it never seems to work. First, it is very difficult to get her to eat after waking her. She basically clamps her mouth shut and will have none of it. If after much encouragement she does eat, it's only an ounce or so (her full feed right now is 3-4 ounces) and she's right back to sleep. I don't see any extension of her sleep time on the nights that I tried to tank her up versus the nights that I just feed her every 3 hours. Right now, without tanking her up, generally her feeds at night are 11 p.m., 2 a.m. and 5/6 a.m.  And even with tanking up, it's about the same. However, we do have a fair amount of nights (including last night ugh!) when her feeds are 11 p.m., 2 a.m., 4 a.m. 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. UGH!  I have noticed that she is not able to last as long between feeds if I nurse her but that is not always the case. At this point, I realize it might be a bit ambitious to want to cut out the 2 a.m. feed altogether but can someone help me get on the right track or at least give me some advice to cut out this every 2 hour business at night - It's killing us!

Thanks so much!
Mollie

[anna*]

I'd be pretty doubtful about trying to cut out any night feeds at this age, she is still so so small! Does she have a paci/dummy? If you think she might be waking to suckle (rather than from hunger) that might help?

[clh]

{{hugs}} Mollie.  I'm in the trenches with you.  There is a growth spurt somewhere around 4-6 weeks.  You could be hitting that & seeing more frequent feedings.  I think we're just coming out the other side of that.  So if it's been the past few days, I'd chalk it up to gs & it should sort itself soon.

I'm like Anna... I'd hesitate to cut a feed at this point.  (Believe me, I know you're exhausted.)  But they are still tiny.  And you may notice some difference in timing with bf vs ff.  Breast milk is VERY easy for them to digest, so it may not hang around in their tummies as long.  Formula tends to take a little longer for them to digest. 

BTW, my boys wouldn't cluster feed or dream feed.    And to be honest, I haven't tried doing either with Clara.  Hope something there helps, even if it's only the "you're not alone!" part.