Parker Day 11

Last week a midwife suggested that we let him tell us his schedule... so we gave it a try. It only took a day and a half for us to feel uncomfortable with the choices he was making. He would sleep for 6 hours, wake himself up and then eat non-stop for 2 hours, then be awake for 6 hours but unhappy almost the entire time, and repeat. It made me feel exhausted and worried about all sorts of things. How would my milk supply be affected, was he making himself sick by eating so much at once, was he eating enough, why was he so unsettled and unhappy while awake???

So, we are back to a routine of feedings every 3 hours... which means waking him up. We have a plan in place (parent directed feeding: a middle ground method between the extremes of scheduled feeding and demand feeding) for when he gets a bit older. All the books and experts say to feed a newborn whenever they are hungry. They talk about the importance of frequent meals to build milk supply and keep baby happy with a full tummy. They assume that all newborns will want frequent meals... we have not found any research or articles supporting letting a newborn sleep as much as they want.

So I pose a few questions: When can you start letting your baby sleep through the night? What were your newborns like? How often did you feed your newborn?