How often are your LOs nursing these days? Everything I read seems to be about newborns, and I'd love to get a sense of schedules/patterns for slightly older babies.
My eight-week-old son is still eating 8-10 times a day. He's only getting up once or twice at night, which I love, but it means lots of frequent feeds in the evenings. I'm starting to look forward to being able to cook and eat dinner again without taking a break to feed him. I still have trouble with my babe's hunger cues at times, and I suspect sometimes I'm giving him the breast when really he just needs to be cuddled or helped to nap, and his dad could be doing that sometimes instead of me!
Breastfeeding is starting to feel like such a pain, even with a relatively "easy" baby. I'm feeding on demand and not too interested in CIO or very precise parent-led schedules, but I'd love to look forward to less frequent feedings in the coming months. How often do your babies eat? Do you do anything to encourage longer stretches between nursing sessions?
Re: Breastfeeding frequency
Eta LO is almost 10 weeks
It's doing wonders for my mental state. I had been fantasizing about switching to formula just for the sake of being able to have time to myself and share childcare more equally with my husband, but I'm feeling a lot more positive now. Hoping his good moods and good weight gain will stick around.
Edited to add he was just over 16lbs at 4 months!
I feel dumb admitting this, but I'm having trouble reading his hunger cues now. He's always chewing on his hands/toys/blankets, but I think that's just about exploration at this point. And the sounds of his cries have changed, so he doesn't do the cute little newborn "neh" anymore, which was a dead giveaway. He never quite turns down the breast (though he does the bottle), but if I offer it very frequently (which I was doing when we were out and about in hot weather over Memorial Day weekend, because I was worried about dehydration), he'll take a few sips but be very distractable, popping off all the time to look around. I make sure to offer whenever he wakes up or if it's been three hours since he last ate, but honestly, he rarely seems to fuss out of hunger except mid-bottle when DH pauses to burp him. He's gaining steadily and having plenty of wet diapers, so I'm not worried, but I feel kind of silly for not being able to read him and mostly following the clock instead. I didn't really mean to be scheduling his feeds, but we've kind of fallen into that. He is happy to take more expressed milk from bottles now when DH is watching him (usually 4-6 oz now versus just 2 or 3 before), so maybe he's just ready to space out his feedings even more and I've been feeding him before he gets especially hungry?
https://www.nancymohrbacher.com/blog/2014/1/17/infographic-on-breast-storage-capacity.html
@fishee333 I actually really like the schedule! It suits my personality to have a more predictable structure for the day. I just feel self-conscious about not feeding about demand. But it's not like I try not to feed him when I know he's hungry!