Feeding time

For those who don't remember or for those who haven't experienced, the first week of having a new baby is spent obsessing about the eating, sleeping, and bathroom habits of your newborn. As far as eating is concerned, the general advice from docs and books is that your baby should eat 8-12 times per day or every 1.5 to 4 hrs. Of course, being the numbers people that we are we noticed immediately that every 1.5 hrs would be 16 times per day and every 4 hours would be 6 times per day. Then they mention that your baby might cluster feed which means instead of waiting a minimum 1.5 hrs to feed, she wants to eat immediately after her previous feeding. I think I can sum up what the docs and books are telling us: `we have no idea how your baby is going to eat.'

Since we are numbers (and data) people, we have been recording the feedings just to see how it relates to the advice we've been given. Below are the feed times for Saturday, August 2nd:

1:10 AM	4:36 AM	7:36 AM	9:58 AM	12:06 PM	1:00 PM	1:45 PM
3:28 PM	4:35PM	7:10 PM	8:08 PM	9:11 PM	10:32 PM

She was also fussy between the 1:45pm and 3:28pm feedings which probably means we should have fed her. Keep in mind that feedings take 20-50 minutes, so feeding at 7, 8, 9, and 10:30 feels like constant feeding. From this data, it appears she had two cluster feedings, namely noon to 4:30pm (since we probably should have fed her around 2:30) and then 7pm to 9pm. During these times, you say to yourself `how can she possibly still be hungry?'