Bottle feeding

My baby is combi fed with breast and bottle, I switched to only giving her bottle through the night. I give her a bigger bottle before bed and she sleeps 6/7 hours before waking for her next feed. I’ve found that now she’s going longer stretches at night, she eats more in the day to make up for the calories she’s missing at night x

I read a couple of the popular sleep books for newborns and whilst I haven’t implemented it all, the common theme was feed every 3 hours between 7am to 7pm to increase their calories through the day instead of them wanting to feed at night. I’ve noticed a huge difference and he now goes 4-7 hour stretches. I also feed him a smaller bottle when he wakes in the night so we can eventually phase that out. We still feed on demand so if he’s hungry before the 3 hours we feed him, we just never go over 3 hours ☺️

@Sophie ah that's interesting. I was thinking to feed her as much as she'll have overnight so she'll go longer to the next feed but maybe try smaller? And did the book say to wake them every 3 hours to feed in the day if they don't wake themselves?

We were stretching feeds for the first 7-8 weeks and realised he was guzzling bigger bottles and air etc so we’ve now found these more frequent feeds easier for him to digest albeit a bit of a pain as it feels like all I do is feed him. We go off the 150ml per kg rule for 7am to 7pm so if your baby is 5kg they should take around 750ml across 24 hours but we just try and get that in before 7pm. Anything overnight is a bonus and we do try and make those feeds smaller so he’s not overeating. Every baby is different so we aren’t strict with the amounts, we just use it as a guide so we know he technically has what he needs

The two women are: Blissful baby expert (Lisa Clegg) and the Magic Sleep Fairy (Allison Scott Wright) I don’t take everything from their books as some of it involves a bit of ‘cry it out’ which I don’t want to do but there’s a lot of great advice on nap schedules and feeding. Lisa especially has some good examples of schedules on her insta highlights for free x

And yes, we wake for feeds in the day but never at night x

@Sophie that's great, thank you! X

My boy was going 4-5 hours in the day between feeds but was still getting up once to feed through the night as it fell within this 4-5 hours. I then put him on a feeding schedule and started feeding him every 3 hours, waking him if he’s sleeping for his feed. We do feeds at 7, 10, 1, 4, 7 then the last feed we do around 9:30 due to him wanting to go to bed earlier, we might even need to make this 9 instead. He was taking 150ml but now upped to 180ml. Sometimes he’ll take less but that’s general. Since we started the feeding schedule, because he’s taking more in the day, he’s not waking and sleeping from 10/10:30 to 6:30/7 x

@Samantha I could have written this myself. Exact same scenario with our little one ☺️ (Was going to type a response out but you’ve done it for me 😂)