Please explain cluster feeds

[minnumd]

Hi, I'm 25 weeks pregnant and has just started reading up on the E.A.S.Y. routine to get myself prepared for my little girl's arrival. I am not sure I understand entirely what a cluster feed is!!! My questions are: Do you feed the baby until it doesn't want anymore?? or do you only feed them a little bit to keep them going? And with regards to the catnaps before the clusterfeeds: Does the baby just sleep until it wakes or do you wake it after the recommended 40-50 min? And if you wake it, how do you do that??? (by just picking it up, talking to it or???) I guess that goes for the naps in the day as well...do you let them sleep till they wake, or wake them after the recommended 1 1/2 hours??? Sorry I'm a first-time mum to be and a bit confused by it all. Your comments are very much appreciated xxx

[alison reed]

Hi their

Congratulations on your pregnancy and good luck with your up-coming birth.

My daughter has always cluster feed at night before bed. What she does is she will have a breastfeed of one side that catnap for 10-15 mins then wake and feed from the other breast. Cat nap for another 10-15 mins and wake again for the other breast (the one she started of with), then cat nap again for another 10-15 mins and wake then have the other breast again. She will feed of each breast until she can no longer get any milk out of them. I think sometimes now with her age she just sits in her cot quitely and listens to music or watches her borthers DVD with him then starts to cry after 10-15 mins.

As for waking them after the recomended nap time for their age my daughter is still on a 2 hour nap at lunch time as she will not the recamended naps for her age so she sleeps 2 hours and only takes 1 nap a day.

Let your baby wake on its own otherwise you might end up with a child like my son who is angry and violent when woken because he has not had the amount of sleep his body wants. He is ment to still have a nap\in the day but he will not take it and sleeps for 12-15 hours per night at weekends and 12 hours during the week because he goings to half day school at the moment.

If you have any other questions don't hesitate to post them as we are always willing to help as much as we can.

To start of when she was born I believed she was doing this to get my milk supply up as she was a very hungry baby as at night she would cluster feed for 2 hours with 10-15 min cat naps after each side.