Getting your Newborn on a Feeding Schedule

When you have a new baby you are likely to feel overwhelmed about all of the things that you’ll have to know and remember. Many first time parents are so panicked every time that the baby gets an odd look or makes a wrong noise that they can easily forget about doing something like making sure that the newborn in question is on a feeding schedule. Your doctor should tell you about this, but it might not have been something that you paid a lot of attention to in the beginning with all of the other worries.

However, when you first bring your new baby home from the hospital, you’ll want to make sure that you feed it every three to four hours at regular intervals. Sometimes this may even mean that you’ll have to wake a perfect sleeping baby up during the middle of the night to get them to eat on time. While you may be worried about doing this to a child who is sleeping peacefully, it can be important to make sure that they eat at this specific time.

You may find yourself wondering why it’s so important to feed a newborn that you would wake them up in order to get them to take a bottle. The answer to this is that a baby’s metabolism can be somewhat fast and you will need to make sure that it intakes nutrition at certain periods so that it can maintain a healthy weight as well as keep hydrated. You must also remember that a small baby can only eat a relatively small portion of food at one time. It’s because of this small intake that they will need to go through multiple feedings to get the proper amount of daily nutrition. Too many times people think of newborns being hungry only three or four times a day like adults, but this is not the case and neglecting to feed them on a tight schedule can create problems later on.

It is also comforting to know that after the first month or two you can probably move them to a feeding schedule where the baby only has to eat every four to five hours. This is because the child will begin to be able to eat more and more food in a single setting, so they will not need to be feed as often as their bodies will process the larger amount of food over a longer time period. If you are thinking about changing your baby’s eating schedule, then you should probably consult with the pediatrician first to make sure that this change fits with their growth patterns. If your child is not retaining or gaining the proper amount of weight then it may be necessary to keep them on a feeding regimen closer to every three hours instead of four. At least until they begin to level off and things get a little more normal.