1 month old not breastfeeding every 2 hours.

[barbararla]

I breastfed my first son until he was 2 1/2. The feedings spaced gradually as he got older but I remember he was nursing around the clock when he was a newborn. This continued until three months when his feedings went to about every 4 hours. Now with my second son, I decided to demand feed instead of watching the clock. Some days he does want to nurse often, other days not. In fact he has long stretches of close to 5 hours of sleep some days and refuses the breast unless he's really hungry. Since he's still so young, 1 month old, I worry he's not feeding  enough. He's been gaining weight well. He was born 9/20 at 9.3 pounds, now he's 11.9 pounds. He's also grown in length as well. 

I kept a log out of curiosity, one day he fed 6 times the whole day. The next day it was 10. After that it was 5. I'm really confused. Sometimes when I think he's hungry and I have a letdown, he pushes my breast away and just wants to comfort nurse. But when he's hungry and vigorously sucks, it seems like he's drinking from a cup. Sometimes I think he might be taking more milk in for less feedings a day. 

Any thoughts?

[MichelleZB]

Originally Posted by barbararla 
 Sometimes I think he might be taking more milk in for less feedings a day. 

You got it, Mama!

[fruitfulmomma]

Is he having enough wet diapers? Longer nursing sessions but less frequently? If so he is probably fine. I've had some that will nurse all day long, but my current one prefers her thumb if she isn't hungry and will push me away. She is 3mo and quite a chunk.

[JamieCatheryn]

He's between growth spurts so won't need as much as at 3 weeks or 6 weeks. If you're offering, and he's having enough wet diapers, I'd say all was well. I wonder if it might be an overactive let-down or oversupply thing, and you might try block feeding or pumping an oz or less before feeding to slow the flow a bit.

[JudiAU]

Demand feeding is great and all in a perfect world with perfect communication and easy cues. But honestly my infants never would have nursed enough if that had been the case. I was never great at catching all cues and they just, I don't know, were not very demanding about wanting to nurse sometimes, especially my second. With her, I really had to watch the clock and if she hadn't expressed interest in the nursing at the 2-3-4 hours mark for whatever atime I thought was reasonable/"regular" then we would disengage from what we were doing and go to a quiet place and offer. She would almost always nurse happily and I realized she was just a really easily distractable baby. And it really, really helped with her napping to nurse her at more regular times.

There is a big difference between both trying to schedule a baby via nursing and refusing to nurse on deman when they want to and nursing on demand and keeping an eye on the clock.

[MrsGregory]

I'm another one that needed to schedule in order to be certain Little Miss was eating enough.  (And no, she wasn't making enough wet diapers.  )  We're still awful at communicating when she might want to nurse, and she's a year old and apparently almost done nursing.  I scheduled her, and if she made it clear she wanted to nurse before or after her scheduled feeding, I nursed her.  Big thanks to JudiAU for the quote below!

Quote:

There is a big difference between both trying to schedule a baby via nursing and refusing to nurse on demand when they want to and nursing on demand and keeping an eye on the clock.

Edited to add/  I devised my schedule by tracking her normal habits for a while and then nudging those habits a bit more towards the reasonable.  For example, she liked to go 7-8 hours without nursing, and then nurse like mad for 2 hours.  I'm sure I'll step on some toes, but I don't think that's 100% OK for a 2 week old.  So I let her nurse like mad when she wanted to, but in the middle of her favorite "stretches" I'd find her twice or maybe three times and stick the nunnie in her face.  She didn't always get with the nursing program, but more often than not she was hungry, did nurse, I just hadn't gotten the message.  The message usually looked like a cooing, dozing baby, so, scheduling was very, very helpful.