When do they start going longer between feedings?

My girls are 10 weeks old (1 week and 2 days adjusted). How long will we be feeding every 3 hours around the clock? Just curious what your experiences were/are. We're doing o.k., but I'm exhausted.

 

Mine ate every 4 hours from the day they came home from the hospital--the hospital put them on a 4 hour schedule, and we kept that up. At night, I also let them wake me, rather than the other way around, so that streched on its own. I would check with your ped, first, though, since yours were born so early. Mine were 36 weekers, so we never had weight issues.

 

My girls were doing 3.5-4 hours by 8 weeks and we kept them at that. Our pedi had us stretch the feedings out because of reflux. By 12 weeks we had work up to a consistent 4 hours between feedings. I was like Sharon, after the first month I had them wake me at night to feed. They were still keeping the 3.5-4 hour nighttime feedings until about 2 1/2-3 months.

 

It was quite awhile before we got off the every 3 hour feed during the day. At night there was no way I could keep them on that schedule, they were hungry every 1.5-2 hours. So it was a long road for us. I would say they were almost 6 months old but then again there were solids thrown in there too.

 

We moved our girls to on demand feeding around the 3 month mark, which meant sometimes during they day they ate every 2 to 2.5 hours, but we started getting longer stretches overnight when we did it. They STTN around the 4-4.5 month mark.

 

At 2 months we decided to switch to every 4 hours instead of every 3. This is also when they started sleeping 12 hours at night.

We never woke them to feed in the beginning. The night we came home from the hospital they slept 2 5 hour stretches with a bottle in between.

Good sleepers and eaters once we got the reflux under control!

 

Hi Beth - Are you breastfeeding? Since I was breastfeeding, mine never went more than three hours until they were about 10 weeks (not adjusted). Then we started introducing a formula bottle before bed and we would get a 4-5 hour stretch sometimes. Nowadays, at 4 1/2 months or 3 months adjusted we feed on demand and they go 2-4 hours between feedings. We try our best to tank them up during the day (although daycare has failed us in that regard repeatedly) and then we get longer stretches at night.

Those first couple months were so difficult for me/us. I was exhausted and delirious. I was pumping 6-7 times/day in the midst of feeding babies every 2-3 hours. I had a fussy boy who did not sleep well at night and a husband that went back to work right away. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I honestly don't know if it gets better or if you just adjust. I've been pondering that lately. I must admit that my sleep habits have adjusted so much in the past four months to enable me to sleep on a different schedule and pattern. I also think that once they start going right back to sleep even when they do wake up to eat that made a world of difference for us.

During those first months the only thing that helped me was to get a couple nights out of the week when DH would take a long shift from 9 pm - 3 am. I would feel like a new woman with that much sleep. My mom also came on Fridays and would get up with them on Sat at 5 am and let me sleep until 11 or so. That was heavenly. I hope you have some support and help to get you through. :hug99: