Friday, June 8

That Time Again

I've done one or two of these before... it's a blog hop from The Slacker Mom.  This week's hop is about how often you nursed.  


The old rule of thumb for breastfeeding a newborn is some where around the 20 minutes per side mark, with feeding every 2 to 3 hours.  It's been so long I can't recall Turkey's nursing schedule; but I can tell you when Monkey was small he would nurse for 45 minutes or better per side; every one to three hours.  He was a marathon nurser.  I remember when he was admitted to the hospital for jaundice, at 3 days old, the floor nurse told me there was no way he was nursing that much; that he must just be "snacking".  The nerve.  These are the same people that tried to get us to nurse on a schedule while he was there; that didn't work.

I've always followed his lead, and have nursed on demand.  When he went through growth spurts he would nurse every hour.  Then he went through the "cluster" feeding phase and would nurse a lot in the later afternoon; actually he still does that.

By the time he was 3 months old I had an oversupply; and had to regulate it with block nursing.  This has nothing to do with how often I fed him; but rather which side I nursed on.  I would nurse him only on one side for time blocks of 4 to 6 hours.

These days, at 15.5 months, we're still nursing on demand; with a dream feed (that I demand, LOL... ); but on days I am in the office we do nurse on more of a schedule.  6:30am, 5:30pm, 7pm, and 10pm.  When we are together we nurse more often; but usually at those times as well.


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