Whether it is necessary to Wake the child for feeding

Many pediatricians recommend to feed the baby every 2-3 hours. If we are talking about night feedings, doctors often insist that a young mother would Wake my baby when he sleeps for a long time. Although actually, not so simple.

Instruction

1. Premature or weak infant. When a newborn was born prematurely and/or has a relatively small weight, it may not Wake up for feeding due to lack of power. In this case, to Wake a newborn really needs, perhaps even to do it more often than every three hours. Otherwise it will be very slow to gain weight.
2. With a healthy strong baby, things are different. Here the mother to better focus on their instincts and intuition than on the advice of others. Every child is different. Someone regularly wakes up every two hours to eat. And someone from birth, sleeping through the night 6-8 hours. To Wake baby for feeding is not necessary if: he is gaining weight, the mother's milk is enough. In case compliance with these two conditions do not need to worry. There can only be happy that the young moms have the opportunity to sleep and recover after childbirth. It is much more important than adherence to formal rules of feeding baby every 2-3 hours.
3. The weight gain of the infant should be assessed not by their subjective feelings ("he eats very little and not growing"), and on objective parameters - how many grams of added child, how many centimeters has grown. To assess the need sufficiently long period of time – a month or even a week. If the child is really small changes in weight with time and with almost no eating at night, you can try to Wake him up. However, don't go to extremes: if you regularly Wake the baby, and the chest he still does not take and goes back to sleep, it is not necessary to forcibly stir up trouble. A hungry child will eat. Otherwise, you simply risk to confuse the child by its natural mode of sleep and wakefulness.
4. When the young mother has not enough milk, the experts on breastfeeding are recommended to increase the frequency of feedings. It is especially important to attach the baby to the breast at night. It is in the dark when breastfeeding a baby in the mother's body produces a hormone that affects the amount of breast milk that is produced the next day. So if you have difficulties with lactation, and the baby sleeps all night without waking up, it is worth it to Wake and put to the breast as often as possible.