Do formula fed babies cluster feed?

I'm just curious about this. My girls are EBF and at the moment won't even take a bottle but once we get them too I'm wondering if a formula bottle at night will help them not need to eat every 20 minutes for 6 hours every evening.

Do formula fed babies cluster feed or do you just feed them every 2-3 hours in the evening just like during the day?

 

Our boys cluster feed from 9:00 to midnight every night. It's pretty much non-stop eating until they drop off to sleep until 5:00am, give or take.

 

My formula fed babies didn't cluster feed. I don't know if it's related to the fact that they are formula fed, or if it's something else. We fed them approximately every 3 hours for the first 3 1/2 months, and now every 3 1/2 - 4 hours.

Good Luck!
Suzi

 

We have always formula fed and we never cluster feed. They barely like their bottles as it is.

Missy

 

Mine are formula fed and I tend to offer them two bottles right after eachother at night... my son takes both and my daugher usually takes a little of both. They end up eating around 5 or 5:15 and 6:45ish...depending on the end of their last nap. During the day they usually eat every 3+ hours.

Amy
(oh yeah, they are 5.5 months old)

 

mine never cluster fed either....they (however) did eat every 3 hours on the nose!

 

Mine did cluster feed and were formula fed. From 4-7pm it was craziness.

 

At that age, whenever DH took over the witching hour for me and gave bottles, it was total cluster feeding mayhem!

 

Just to make life difficult for you....my older DD was exclusively breastfed, but never really cluster fed.

My twins get half breastmilk, half formula in bottles, and they have never cluster fed either -- in fact, when they were younger, they got much more breastmilk than formula, but they still only ate every 3 hours.

 

My girls did a lot of cluster feeding from about two months to 4 months between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 or 9 p.m. Sometimes they would eat two or three bottles during that 3 or 4 hour chunk of time. They were doing a combo of nursing, bottles of breastmilk, and bottles of formula.