WONDERING ABOUT 3 hr. vs. 4 hr. feeds ?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone-Just wondering what your experiences were/are regarding how

often you feed your little GERDlings. Sofie is 4 months and has been on a 3

hour feeding schedule since 3 weeks. She has always done well, but some

have suggested that she move to a 4 hour rotation due to her age. My

experience when trying this is that she does not increase the size of her

feeds (which, at either schedule, average 6 oz per) either way. A late dream

feed does not seem to agree with her, but we can get away with one before

9pm. ps- she sleeps usually from about 7 pm to somewhere between 1-3

am, where we are playing the binky game each hour until 4 when we feed

again. My guess is that her tummy can’t hold more than 6 oz, and dropping

a feed on a 4 hr. schedule will just increase her night wakings. Any

thoughts would be appreciated!!!!

[Anonymous]

I wish I could get 4 hours inbetween feedings! Adriana was on a 2 hour schedule until I began adding oatmeal to her bottles about 3 weeks ago. Now it is about 3 hours and she only eats 3-4 ounces. It sounds like Sofie is eating enough and I would think if things seem to be going good then why change it. Plus my doctor told me to feed half as much twice as often to reduce refluxing. Hope that helps.

Oh and the 3 AM waking sounds so familiar

[Anonymous]

Hi Kelly (?)

I recently posted about transitioning from 5 feeds to 4 feeds a day. For a few reasons- she sometimes slept through her fifth feed until morning, she appeared to be feeding for habit and she was increasing her solid intake. Well, the transition has been really successful, but i think only because she was ready for it. If not I think she would still have been crying for her bottle.

My thought would then be, go with what your little one wants- if she demand feeds after three hours and drinks her bottle, then I would probably go with that- but if she is happy to wait a little longer for her bottle then go with that.

Just out of interest- Alana started sleeping through the night initially when we dropped from 4hr to 3 hr feeds- this meant she got her whole milk quota in about 15 hrs and she then slept through. This kind of happened one day when I stopped trying to stretch her out to 4 hrs (like I thought i was supposed to after being in the Special Care Nursery and them having their strict feeding routines). The reason I mention this is stretching her feeds might increase her wakings as you suggest.

To get to the point (I tend to ramble) go with your instinct about what you think your little one is telling you and don’t pay to much attention to the “some” (even if they are really educated “some”s)

[Anonymous]

Having been around babies all of my life (as a nanny and now mom of three) I think feedings every three hours for 4 month old is not that unusual. If that’s what’s working for her and she’s happy I wouldn’t try to change it. When she gets a little older you can start adding some solids and that will probably help her space her feedings, but for now it seems very reasnable to me.

[Anonymous]

My babies always wanted to eat every 3 hours until they started solids and didn’t need as much milk (I breastfed). I would try to just go by what your baby seems to want to eat, and I think she will naturally start to decrease her formula intake when she starts eating solids.

[Anonymous]

My older one (my normal feeder) used to eat every 3 hours. When we added solids, she still did that, except one of the feeds was solids instead. She stopped her night feed somewhere around 4 months when she started to sleep through the night. I didn’t stop it until she showed me that she was ready.

[Anonymous]

At 8 months, Alex still has a lot of days where she wants to eat every 3 hours. Now that she is eating solids we can sometimes stretch it a lot longer, but not often. However, in her case, part of the problem is that she isn’t taking as much per bottle. If we increase it too much, she becomes a spitting machine.

[Author]

Posts