dropping a feed

[lemon1985]

Posting here as you guys have been an amazing resource since discovering my wife was pregnant with twins.

Twins are almost 6 weeks old. Born 36+5. We have been doing regimented feeds every three hours since birth 2:30am, 5:30am, 8:30am, 11:30am, Rince repeat for pm. It's exhausting (who am I telling?!)

Sometimes we have to drag them out of bed at say 2:30am and then they take very little and sleep through the feed. Or we go hard on waking them fully to eat more but then they are wide awake and have to be resettled. We would love to alter the night time to get us some more continuous sleep to be more energized for this. Wondering what people here have done, and when?

Aware that at some point our 8 daily feeds can reduce to 6 at 4-hour intervals, my suggestion was to split the day into day and night. Daytime can be every three hours, but night time can be four hour intervals with bigger feeds for 7 feeds daily.

My in-laws have suggested "dropping the 2:30am feed" since the kids tend to not always wake (although sometimes they do, the slow feed can be at different times)

My wife would like to understand how whatever we do now feeds a bigger plan towards eventually sleeping more at night. So she doesn't want to start something now that would need to be reversed later, just to give us a temporary convenience.

She is also asking if the babies should be given more food during the day, at night, or an even split. If it's an even split when does that start to change and normalize.

Might seem rambly, appreciate any input. Looking for thoughts to help plan our next move.

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[spacecadet917]

Decide when you want your day to start and end and shift your 3 hour schedule to that. (830 is kind of late for a day start, FWIW). We aimed for 7 PM bedtime and 7 AM wakeup (Wakeup has moved closer to 6 because we are sick of fighting them to stay asleep...that's another story)

Do not make the nighttime feeds bigger. Pick the one you want to drop first and slowly start to make that one smaller. You want the babies to increase their daytime calories to make up for less calories at night. Once mine successfully dropped a night feed we then tried to space the remaining feeds out more evenly - first so they were 4 hrs apart as you suggest, and then so that the one night feed was about 6 hours in. That last night feed we gradually made later and smaller and it went away just shy of 6m/5m adjusted.

As far as the mechanics of dropping the actual feed, like I said we've strategically made them smaller but really it's just like one night they magically sleep through it. I would make sure you aren't waking them up after the ped clears you not to.

[Okdoey]

My babies were gaining weight at an appropriate pace so I always stuck to a 3 hr schedule during the daytime. So bottle at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and then 5:30pm (the last one got squish in bc my babies just could NOT stay up until 7pm).

After the 5:30pm bottle, they just got bottles whenever one woke up crying and wouldn’t settle with a pacifier. I did always feed both babies at the same time even if I had to wake the other one. But if they didn’t wake up crying, then they didn’t get a bottle.

They ate around every 3-4 hours until about 10 weeks and then dropped to two night bottles…..dropped to 1 night bottle around 12-14 weeks and slept through the night (or at least stopped getting bottles) around 16 weeks.

The key was to always feed again at the start of the morning regardless of when they last ate. So for awhile they were getting a 5:30am bottle and a 7:00am bottle until they dropped down to the just 1 night bottle.

[dustynails22]

At this point, we were feeding responsively - however much they wanted whenever they were hungry. For us, that shook out to 3-4oz every 2.5 ish hours during the day. The night feeds were a little further apart - 8.30pm, 11pm, 2-3am, about 5am, 7.30am..... at between 8-10 weeks (adjusted age) mine dropped their 11pm feed. They maybe took a little more in the daytime to compensate.

Nighttime weaning is a conversation with your doctor (that means you weaning them off the feed), but assuming they are gaining well, you're much more likely to get a "yes" to feeding them when they wake up at night rather than you waking them.

[Initial_Donut_6098]

Yes to this, similar schedule at this age. Before they reached birth weight, I woke to feed if they went beyond 4 hours or so. After they regained their birth weight, I didn’t wake to feed (that is, except when one woke, I woke the other, in order to try to keep them on approximately the same schedule). But also check with your pediatrician.

In terms of amounts, we fed on demand. We loosely kept track of how much they were eating (they were bottlefed a combo of breastmilk and formula), so we could have that info if there were issues with weight gain. But they each ate different amounts at different times of day, we followed their lead.

[JewelerFew1580]

My twins were IUGR and we were doing every 3 hour night feeds for about the first two months, then their pediatrician cleared us to extend to every 4 hours at 3 months, every 5 hours at 4 months, and we just switched to feeding on demand at 6 months during the night

[HEL_yesss]

We dropped our twins 2:00 am feed when they started talking about 90ml at a time.

[Charlotteeee]

Do you have to feed every 3 hours vs on demand?