My Baby Doesn’t Eat Every 3 Hours

Are you freshly home from the hospital and now your baby does not want to eat every 3 hours? Are you wondering what happened to that schedule? When you have a baby in a hospital (in the United States) we typically see nurses pushing for a frequent feeding pattern of every 2-3 hours. As a Lactation Professional, I think this practice needs some tweaking. It’s a more realistic goal to encourage our families to wake and attempt to feed our babies every 3 to 4 hours and even THAT can be unreasonable. Especially in those first few days when we go from a sleepy infant, to one who won’t stop waking to eat every hour. 

The best feeding schedule for our breastfed babes is actually not a schedule at all, but more of a pattern. No matter if you’re new to parenthood or a seasoned veteran you likely know now that plans rarely go AS PLANNED. Let’s instead think of our breastfeeding journey as a pattern, where we have a model for success to guide us.

Our pattern will not look the same everyday which can be frustrating at first. As a hospital based consultant I always educated my parents on making the switch from scheduled (3 hour feeds) to a pattern based feeding method called feeding On-Demand. On-Demand feeding patterns can;

  • Increase Mother’s milk supply

  • Help avoid mastitis

  • Help avoid clogged ducts

  • Regulate milk supply to avoid over/under supplies

  • And that’s just to name a few…

Now that we know the benefits let’s discuss how to make the switch (which is the easy part).

1) Turn that damn timer off on your phone that’s labeled as “feed baby, or time to breastfeed.” With this pattern you’ll no longer be victim of the clock!

2) Instead you’ll want to learn your baby’s feeding cues. Infant feeding cues can be; sticking their tongue out, licking their fingers or hands, or looking around the room with a wide open ‘baby bird’ mouth. So anytime we see those cues, we’ll feed our baby(s). It’s that easy!

Once you make this switch it can be handy to jot down the times that you feed for the first 24 -48 hours so that you can identify the natural pattern your infant will create. Feeding On-Demand doesn’t mean your feeding constantly, and there can still be patterns but now, they’ll be naturally developed by your baby.

Things to avoid with On-Demand feedings

1) Letting baby sleep past 6 hours

If it’s been more than 5 hours without infant waking and showing cues on their own,  it’s time to unswaddle, undress, change diaper and burp them. This process can help wake a sleepy infant. We’ll want to breastfeed before we hit the 6 hour mark as to make sure we don’t inhibit our milk supply. If we regularly go longer than 6 hours without milk removal we’ll signal to our bodies that we do not need to make more milk. Yikes!

2) Panic and pump

If our babe is sleeping past the 3 hour mark, or even the 4 hour mark we may be tempted to revert back to our hospital thinking of every 3 hours. It can be easy to think, ‘Well she didn’t wake at the 3 hour mark but I still need to remove the milk!’ but this is our old schedule remember? Try to avoid this thinking and remind yourself of our new On-Demand pattern where we wait for baby’s cues. If we panic and revert back and add in a pump session we can disturb our new pattern by creating an over supply of milk that will have to be managed. This can be a slippery slope that leads to breastfeeding AND pumping/bottle feeding. If your goal is to breastfeed exclusively, remember our basics of On-Demand feeding.

3) Listen to advice on sleep training your baby

There are MANY popular sleep training books and methods on the market that promote restful nights for parents, scheduled feedings and '“easier” parenting. Does that sound too good to be true? Well, it is to some degree. Sleep training can be a great tool for parents who are exclusively pumping or formula feeding or for older babies. However, sleep training and breastfeeding do NOT pair well together. Sleep training creates a rigid schedule that we create for our babies and train them to adhere to. But, remember what we’ve learned about breastfeeding On-Demand? Scheduling feeds for our infant’s is not optimal once leaving the hospital.