Routines ...

Mrs BB:

1 My latch is really good too and my supply is Plentiful so perhaps I could try... Should I get HV to ok it first do you think?
BG - good point - she hasn't been in the car yet so I'll find our. If I walk her in the pram could ge the same story?
She does sleep well at night (touch wood) so I'm not moaning about her mega feeding. She's just dropped off so I must sleep now too! Thanks again all x

It's not recommended to express before 6 weeks because it can easily take that long for you to get a good steady supply and expressing can interfere with that.  Also it can be very hard to express much in the early days and at the start it may take you a few days to express enough for a feed. There is also a risk of nipple confusion and the baby may prefer the bottle which is much easier to get milk from.  There are of course ways round this like regularly expressing at the same time every day, not expecting to get too much to start with and cup feeding rather than using a bottle.   Personally I would speak to a breast feeding counsellor rather than a HV as it's their area of expertise and for a HV it's such a small part of their jobs.

Hopefully she will sleep in the car to make your travelling easier. 

As to your original question by about 4 months with both of mine I could predict a bit better when they would want a feed.

I suppose we had a sort of routine at 11 weeks when C started sleeping through.  I'd spend most of the evening on the sofa feeding him between short naps, then give him a final feed when we went upto bed about 10.30, and he'd sleep until about 5-6am when he'd BF again.  Throughout the day it was all a bit random though.

Re expressing, I started at 4 weeks and gave him occasional bottles of EBM from then (once or twice a week).  Luckily he wasn't bothered where his milk came from so didn't have any problems with that, and my supply seemed to cope with it fine. x

Think we found a routine a few weeks ago so about 12weeks I think. I let D take the lead. She's still not sleeping through so I'm sure I'm going to end up on the MINOS bench but for now I'm coping.

My mum did say to me that she might be ready for solids She's only 15weeks old. I've sent her the guidelines and everything but still not getting through to her. Sorry, Rant over.

Like GB said she might sleep in the car. D definitely does all the time. It does soothe her.

Routine? What's that?

In all seriousness we've never had a set feeding routine for either, except a rough time with E's actual food now but even that isnt set. J tends to be fed about every 3-4 hours but we dont have set tmes because it's so dependent on when he wakes up, how much he takes at each feed etc. Same for E.

We never had any routine and didn't even when we switched to FF.

by three months, R was feeding every three hours ish, obviously we have days when its a bit more, growth spurts just a bit more hungry but usually now at four months he is feeding every three hours and having two naps a day, one morning, one afternoon and goinig to bed in the early evening.  I always think about 12 weeks is a big turning point, but others say 6 weeks (just no one told my babies that!)

Not at all Mrs BB!  It's what i had to do.  Spoke to the breastfeeding midwife at the clinic and she didnt see a problem in it.  It's working for us at the mo.