Hi guys! Currently my baby boy is 4 months old! I still do not believe this and feel like we just brought him home from the hospital yesterday. I want to share his feeding routine and how it has changed since coming home from the hospital. Every baby is very different and what works for us may not work for your baby but I always found it so interesting and learned alot from other mamas sharing so if I can even help one mama out, it is worth it to me to share!
(You might want to grab some popcorn, this is a little long but I wanted to be as thorough as possible!)
Some Background
I want to start out by saying that FED is ALWAYS BEST!!! No matter how you choose to feed your baby and why you choose to do things the way you do, you know best and should not let anyone tell you otherwise. I feel like there’s so much pressure on moms to breastfeed and it doesn’t always work out the way we plan for it to. Let me just say that breastfeeding is HARD. I learned this straight away in the hospital after having Joey. He had a pretty good latch but boy was it painful. I know that they tell you that if the latch is good and you have proper positioning it should not cause pain but your nipples definitely have to get adjusted to this new thing happening. I decided that while at the hospital I would nurse him but even during my pregnancy I was doing research on different formulas, different breastfeeding strategies, different bottles, all just to be prepared to find exactly what was right once Joey was born. This is when I came across exclusively pumping. I read into this and knowing myself I knew this was going to be the best option for us even before having Joey. However, like I said I still wanted to try to nurse while at the hospital so I did and did not pump at all while there.
Birth
So let me now take you through feeding Joey right from when he was born. In the hours after Joey was born he was wanting to feed NON STOP! I knew that newborns eat all the time but I had no idea what cluster feeding was until he was born. He was literally wanting to nurse around the clock and not sleeping much. Also in those first few days, I learned a woman’s body is making colostrum and you have to wait for your milk to come in. My body was not producing enough colostrum and my milk did not come in until around day 3-4. So while we were at the hospital I was strictly nursing (like I already mentioned) but when we got home we went to the store and purchased a formula to supplement with until I was able to produce enough milk. This meant that for the first 3-4 days after coming home I would put Joey to each breast for 10 minutes and then offer him a 2oz bottle of formula. This way he was getting the nutrients he needed but was also signaling my body to help me produce more milk. After a few days, my milk supply started to increase and this is when we stopped the formula and I started pumping. This is also when I stopped nursing entirley. I will post a whole different blog post on exclusively pumping because that is a whole experience in itself but I was pumping 7-8 times a day and feeding Joey directly from a bottle. At this time we were using the Avent glass bottles and he seemed to be taking them well. He was only taking about 2-3oz per feeding for the first week and eating about 8-9 times a day.
After the first week, he was eating closer to 4-5oz per feeding and still eating 8-9 times a day. This is a lot of milk for a newborn! Most of these feedings were happening during the day but he was also eating about 2 times during the night. He would sleep a 5-6 hour stretch when first put to bed but then wake every 2-3 hours to eat during the night. Do not worry, it will get easier with those night feedings!
3 Weeks
By around the time he was 3 weeks old he was only waking up once during the night to eat. I know that this is not the case for many newborns and we were very lucky that Joey was gaining proper weight while also being able to sleep longer stretches. Around the 3 week mark he dropped to about 7 feedings per day all around 5oz each. Some days were slightly different depending on if he was cluster feeding or in a growth spurt. Cluster feeding looks a little different when the baby is bottle fed. During these times we usually noticed that even after the 5 oz bottle he was still hungry so we would offer him another 3oz bottle. We would continue to do this for however long his extra need for milk lasted and then we would go back to a more “normal” feeding routine.
6 Weeks
Now around the time Joey was 6 weeks old we noticed he started to throw himself around during feedings, in particular during his last feeding of the night right before bed. It became very hard for him to settle down and finish his bottle. This in turn also made it hard for us to put him down for the night because he was getting himself very worked up while feeding. After doing some reading and consulting with our perdiation we concluded that he might be having some acid reflux. However, we did not want to put him on any type of medication because we wanted to see if it would get better with time as he got older. We did however change the bottles that we were using. We decided to try the tall, glass Dr. Brown bottles since they had many reviews saying that they helped with gassiness and reflux issues. As soon as we tried these bottles, Joey loved them! It was seriously such a difference in his feeding. He went from throwing himself around and crying to eating calmly and taking the whole bottle in less time. It did not eliminate the whole problem because he still to this day has an occasional feeding that he’s more fussy. However, this will only now happen once in a couple days instead of almost every feeding haha.
2 Months
When talking about how long Joey was getting breast milk, my goal with exclusively pumping was first 3 months and then if everything went well, I wanted to try and strive for 6. However, we only made it to 2 months because he developed a cows milk allergy. I noticed that his stomach seemed to really bother him and he was more gassy than usual. He also seemed to have trouble using the bathroom to the point that by the end of each day he would be crying and not want to settle. We put in another call to the pediatrician. After consulting with her, she concluded he has a milk allergy and explained to us what the options were in terms of feeding him. In the end, everyone chooses what is best for them and their baby and what was best for our family was to put Joey on a special hypoallergenic formula. The pediatrician told us about Similac Alimentum or Nutramigen by Enfamil. We ended up buying both to let him try and decide which one he likes better. Well to say the very least, he did not like Similac one bit but he took Nutramigen okay. It was a little bit of a tough transition for him to go from exclusive breast milk to exclusive formula because the taste and smell were very different but he ended up adjusting well.
Being the person I am, I did want to still keep looking for a more “cleaner” formula. I was not very impressed with the smell of the nutramigen and also wanted the cleanest ingredients possible for my son. I do not think there is anything wrong with feeding your baby these formula brands, it is simply just a preference both me and my fiance had. We did some research and ended up buying HIPP HA, a German brand formula to try. I was impressed with both the ingredients and once it arrived, we were impressed with the smell of it too (it did not smell haha). Both Joe and I thought it resembled breast milk more closely and we trusted the brand. Luckily, Joey took well to it right away so we decided that this will be the formula that we would be giving him.
4 Months
Currently, Joey is 17 weeks old and ever since he turned 3 months his eating pattern became relatively consistent. He is currently eating 6, 6oz bottles a day. Sometimes he might leave a little milk here and there but for the most part he is eating around 36oz a day. He eats all his feedings during the day because he has been sleeping through the night. I think what really helped us achieve this is we make sure to feed him every 2-3 hours during the day. This way we ensure he is full and hunger will most likely not wake him during those night hours. No baby is perfect, so we still have occasional wakeups from fussiness or gas but he is not fed during the night.
A sample day looks something like this:
- He wakes up between 7-8am and we feed him his first bottle
- From then on we make sure to feed him every 2-3 hours all the way until bedtime
So something like 7am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6:30pm
Like I said, everyday is slightly different, sometimes he eats a little less and sometimes a little more. Him eating a little less is more likely when his first feeding is closer to 8am then it is to 7am. Regardless of the time he wakes up, we still put him to bed around the same time so he just might not be as hungry.
I just want to say again, that every baby is different and what works for us may not work for you and that is perfectly okay! Even for us things change day to day but we use the 2-3 hour rule as a guide to ensure that Joey is full and has a consistent routine (not rigid schedule) during the day.
I hope this was helpful to even one new mama! I enjoy sharing this with you guys and I want to thank you for reading!
-With love, Kasia
No Comments