Contrary to the general perception, babies have a strong sense of hunger and know a lot more about their diet than they are given credit for. It is important to realize that feeding is a great joy for babies; it is where they get their first ideas about life. So instead of trying to feed him as much as prescribed by feeding charts, it is important to look for his satisfaction. Trust the baby’s instincts, when he wants to stop, let him, even if there is a little milk left in the bottle. If a mother constantly tries to urge her baby to take more than he wants, he is bound to become uninterested in feeding and might develop an early idea about life as a struggle. In the words of Dr. Benjamin Spock in Baby and Child Care the baby might develop the idea that “those people are always after you. You have to fight to protect yourself.” On the other hand, if you give the baby as much as he wants it will lead him to developing a positive attitude towards life. The baby’s satisfaction with the amount of feed taken can be noticed when he is groggy with pleasure and falls asleep, when he makes sucking motions during sleep and his countenance is blissful or simply by his attitude of contentment during the gaps between feeding times.
But there must be some way to assure that the baby takes the amount of feed required for his age. For this, hospitals often give diet-charts that prescribe how many ounces of milk and water should be mixed and what times, e.g. 6 a.m., 10a.m., 2 p.m., 6 p.m., 10 p.m., and 2 a.m., should the baby be fed. These amounts and timings have been derived by doctors after calculations of what the babies generally need at a specific age and weight. Sticking to some kind of schedule might be a good plan but it is also important to remember that the baby is not a machine. Every baby is unique and knows how much milk his body needs and what amount his digestive system can handle.
It is important to be regular but flexible with a baby’s feeding schedule. During the first half of the twentieth century it was a common practice to keep babies on very strict and regular schedules, to force them to have the prescribed amount of milk at prescribed times, regardless of their own will. The generally held idea was that severe intestinal infections were caused not only by contamination of milk but also by wrong proportions of irregular feedings. Thus by keeping them on a regular schedule, doctors tried to avoid these infections that plagued thousands of children yearly. Doctors were also of the opinion that irregular feeding would spoil a child thus the child must be ignored at all times except the prescribed feeding times. Even though strict regularity worked with most of the babies, there was a percentage whose stomachs found it hard to hold four hours of milk.
It took many years for doctors to start experimenting with flexible schedules and their results showed that flexibility did not lead to diarrhea or indigestion and did not spoil the child either. It is observed that if babies are fed on demand, they fall into quite a regular pattern themselves too. According to the CNN Health Library: Most newborns breast-feed eight to 12 times a day — about every two to three hours. Within two to three months, your baby may be satisfied with six to eight feedings a day. Eventually your baby will fall into a fairly predictable feeding schedule, taking in more milk in less time at each feeding.
It should also be kept in consideration that a baby does not take the same amount of milk at all times. He may want more milk during ‘growth spurts’- often at 10 to 14 days after birth, as well as at three weeks, six weeks, three months and six months (ibid.)
Keeping the baby on a self-demand feeding schedule or a regular one is not a strict condition. Some young parents, in order to be progressive, take self-demand feeding to the opposite extreme, thinking there is something fundamentally wrong with scheduled feeding. The purpose of following any kind of feeding practice is not to make it a religious or political conviction, but to find convenience for yourself and the baby, which means getting down to a fairly (not rigidly) regular routine and omitting the night feeds as soon as the baby is ready. Parents need their sleep to keep up their spirits in order to look after their child.
Self-demand feeding may work perfectly if the baby is a rather calm one, the mother does not have very strict schedules to follow herself and does not mind being woken up in the middle of the night. If a mother feeds her baby irregularly for a fairly long time it does not nutritionally harm the mother or the baby, the doctors’ only concerns are that a mother might end up giving up too much of her own life and activities for the baby. This attitude, in the long run, is psychologically harmful.
The main consideration for the baby is that he must not have to cry for long periods because of hunger. Follow the baby’s early hunger cues (such as stirring and stretching, sucking motions and lip movements) and feed him. However, babies have a tendency to fall into a regular feeding schedules themselves and their schedules can be conveniently managed by the mothers with a little guidance. As the baby grows older his stomach grows and his capacity to drink milk increases and his intervals between two feeding times can be prolonged. The trick to that is that mothers should not start feeding as soon as the baby stirs and whimpers only a couple of hours after the last feed. They should hold back a few minutes, distract him with a toy, and accustom his stomach to longer intervals. If the feeding is started promptly the baby will only be accustomed to short intervals and small feeds.
Most babies who are relaxed and are good feeders fall into a fairly regular four-hour routine a month after birth. Those who are listless, restless, fretful wakers can be smoothed into this routine slowly if the mother keeps working gently towards more regular feeds.
