6mo still feeding 2 hourly?

DS is still feeding 2 hourly pretty much around the clock. he also feeds to sleep most of the time so that often means a couple of extra feeds during the day for his naps. he was in the 97th percentile for weight & 90th for length at his 4mo check up so i guess i've always put the frequent feeding down to his size. but now i'm wondering whether i'm overfeeding him? he's demand fed & most of the time i offer a feed - he just never seems to say no!

he's never wanted a dummy so i think some of the feeding might be comfort-related but he does genuinely seem hungry/thirsty most of the time. he's started on some solids in the last month but that hasn't impacted on his feeds at all (we're doing a mix of BLS & some purees so i guess he's not getting heaps of calories from the food just yet).

i guess my question is - am i doing the right thing? is it 'normal' (for want of a better term) for a 6mo to still be feeding so frequently? i don't plan to stop bfing, i guess i was just hoping that i'd be getting more than 1.5 hours of sleep at a time by now!

Cant overfeed a b/f baby hon...so put that query to rest....
What you and your DS is doing sounds perfectly normal to me - my DS is 7 months, and last night we were up every 2 hrs......for boob....:D. Usually he will do 3hourly feeds. We're fully onto solids too , and this has not decreased the night feeds.... I would say its comfort sucking, bit more of mummy in the night etc etc.
Can you pop him into bed with you ??? I find around the 4am feed - where ive already been up twice, i cannot keep my eyes open, i pull him into bed with us...give him a feed......i doze off, and so does he....

GL....i know the sleep depo is hard.....but it will pass. They go thru a growth spurt at 6-7mths too...maybe he's climbing that mountain at the moment.....

thanks mbear :)

yeah, after his sleep getting worse & worse in his cot (5 re-settles in two hours) i just sleep in the spare bed with him. it's helped in that he's straight back to sleep after each feed (except for a recent cheeky habit of staying up for 45m-1hr after one feed each night) & he seems much happier & i'm def getting more sleep this way! i do miss my DP though :( oh...and i miss my bed :lol:

You are doing a fantastic job so a huge congratulations for that!! Your DS sounds exactly the same as mine. He is stilling feeding every 2 -3 hours but last night he fed every 1 1/2 hours - it nearly killed me but he must have needed it. It is stinking hot here at the moment (up to 43 and still low 30's over night) so he must be needing it for extra fluids too. So it could be that he just feeds that often, needs some extra fluids in this heat or having a growth spurt.
Keep up the great work!!

Sarah, you sound like you're doing a great job.
My DS fed 2 hourly for 8months or more -and he's a little pipsqueak. My DD was down to about 4-5feeds a day at the same time.
Still now at 10.5months we are sometimes 3hourly (ok well more often than not lol).
Hang in there hun. :hug:

:hug: That's hard work Sloane but well done you! :clap:

My DS wasn't feeding 2 hourly round the clock at that age but he was feeding 2 hourly all afternoon (from lunch time to bedtime) and sometimes into the evenings too.

I went with it for a long time cause I figured he knew what he needed better than me and I was happy to feed him that often even though lots of other people thought I was mad. My DS was a shocking sleeper in the daytime though, all he did was catnap all afternoon, getting progressively more tired as the day wore on. After a while I thought it might have been related to his frequent feeds so I spaced them out a little bit, gradually and he gradually began to sleep for longer than 40mins and to go down without being fed to sleep (sometimes!) so we got into a 3-4 hour cycle during the day rather than a 2 hour one. It seemed to work for us.

I reckon that if you're happy, bubs is happy and he's sleeping fine then its all good. FWIW, my DS still wakes 2 hourly sometimes at night and feeding him back to sleep is what I do.

thank you everyone :grouphug: it makes me feel a lot better to know that this is a fairly standard feeding frenzy!

kaz - that's really interesting because DS is a catnapper as well. i've been trying to extend his sleeps to a second sleep cycle by patting him through it but maybe i could try extending the feeds a little.

I feed DS back to sleep overnight because it is just so quick plus he doesn't really wake up properly either - works for both of us. During the day I settle him in his cot and then keep settling him t the moment so that I can help him extend his sleeps. These little ones sure are keeping us guessing. Even with my second I'm still as clueless as with DD, LOL!!!

they sure do like to keep us on our toes! we had about a month of one 5 hr stretch at the start of each night & then just when DP & i got used to having dinner together & some quiet time in the evenings, DS decided it was time to change again!