Snacking 4 Month old

Hi, I'm a long time watcher, but this is my first post.

I was wondering if anyone had a baby that snacks like mine and how you have managed it. My 4 month old DD is fully breastfed. She'll feed beautifully (chowing down) for about 15 minutes on one breast and then refuse anymore, pushing away and crying if I offer her a second breast. After about 1 hour she can be grizzly and will take the second breast. (Plunket advise was to do this). Exception is in the evenings when she wil happily feed for 30 mins on both breasts.

She usually last up for 1 1/4 - 1 3/4 hours (although will last around 2 1/2 hours in early evening) and will sleep about 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours for 4 day sleeps and then sleeps from around 8pm - 7am, with one 15 min feed in the night.

Am trying to avoid her snacking, but sometimes if she doesn't top up she won't sleep during the day. I end up feeding every two - 2/1/2 hours. Ideally I'd like to have her feed fully every 3 hours. Am I being realistic, or should I just go with as she seems happy and is growing?

HippyMama wrote: Just go with it, trust what your instincts are already telling you, which is that if baby seems happy and healthy then you are doing fine. I think it is great that you are meeting her needs for both nutrition and comfort, and personally I wouldn't call it snacking - that kind of feed pattern sounds pretty normal to me. I feed my DD2 roughly as often / 2-3 hourly (or whenever she asks), and feel really blessed that she sleeps as well at night as she does (and is usually a very happy baby during the day).

I completely agree with this. My DD feed every 1.5-2 hours roughly during the day till she was around 6mths. Now at 8mths she still feeds 5-7 times throughout the day (12 hours) and usually once overnight. Just go with it, after all its only short time in the big scheme of things

Thanks all. Its nice to get a bit of a boost. "trust your instincts", is a pretty good mantra. We had a bit of scare a while back when we weren't feeding her enough at night and she didn't put on a lot of weight (she's a little baby to start with), and its made me a bit a paranoid. So I have adopted theory that if she's crying she's usually hungry and I'm right 95 %of the time. I guess I just have to look at her smiling and laughing to know she is ok.

Sounds fine to me. Both my girls have fed anywhere from 2 to 3 hourly. I was recently reading some stuff that suggested breastfed babies should move to a 4 hourly feeding schedule at around 4 months but I just can't imagine that working for most babies.