If at all????

We are demand feeding DD - in the early days/weeks I would feed her when she was hungry and she has had great weight gain, always weighs in the 95 percentile.

I have no idea how frequently she fed in these first weeks, I was not timing as we weren't trying to enforce any routine or 3 hourly feed concept or anything like that.

Around 6 weeks I started noticing she was naturally developing a feed-play-sleep routine, she would wake hungry and crying, I'd feed her and then she'd play and then get tired.

My problem now is how this fits in with demand feeding. She now wakes and sometimes is hungry and crying but sometimes she is quite content to chat away, sit and be cuddled, play with her toys, before looking for a feed. But if I offer her the breast as soon as she wakes, she will feed - she is just not "demanding" it in the strictest sense.

If I feed her at the start of every feed-play-sleep cycle, she ends up feeding every 2hrs, as she is only awake for an hour or so and asleep for about the same.

If I feed DD strictly only on demand, she may get to the end of her awake time and then get hungry and grizzle for a feed and I end up feeding to sleep. Which sometimes doesn't work as she just gets overtired and then needs to be rocked to sleep.

So how do these two ideas fit together? Do they at all??