Tips for Feeding a Newborn Baby

Before you can leave a hospital or birthing center with your newborn baby, you have to have at least one thing down: baby feeding. Whether you are breast-feeding or bottle-feeding, newborn feeding is an essential skill. Here are some newborn baby feeding tips, from my own experience as a mother of three.

Accept help. Nurses and lactation consultants at the hospital or birthing center will help you get started with either bottle-feeding or breast-feeding. Even if you think you know what to do, let them help you! And especially if you are new to breast-feeding, it is good to have someone help you learn to position the baby and get her to latch on correctly.

Newborn babies need to be fed regularly. And perhaps more regularly than you think. The old advice was to feed babies every four hours. This may happen with a formula-feeding baby, but not with a breast-feeding baby. Doctors recommend that breast-feeding newborns be fed every two hours, and in my experience it was often every hour to hour and a half!

Use your instinct. If your baby seems hungry, then feed him. Don't worry about the clock too much. At the same time, don't let a newborn go too long without feeding! With my first baby, she was feeding every one and one-half to two hours, but then she started sleeping 4 hour stretches during the day, before she was even a week old! I thought this was great for me, but then she developed jaundice because she hadn't been feeding enough. So I knew after that that it's better to wake the baby after two hours, just to make sure she's eating enough. When the baby's a little older, it's all right to wait longer between feedings.

Newborn babies are usually fed in smaller amounts but more often. If you're formula-feeding, a newborn baby may only be able to take an ounce or two of formula at one time (probably every 2-3 hours). If you're breast-feeding, you can't measure the milk in ounces. You can measure the time the baby is feeding, but this varies a lot. A newborn feeding might last 5 minutes or 40 minutes, every two hours (or less).

You'll probably feed the baby from both breasts at one feeding. Nurse the baby from one breast until he pulls himself off or goes to sleep, and then switch to the other side. He'll probably take less from the second breast, so for the next feeding you start on that side. Many mothers make a note of which side they started on last!

Again, trust your instincts. Your baby won't be the same as anyone else's - learn your baby's uniqueness and work with it!

SOURCES
AskDrSears.com, "Bottlefeeding," http://askdrsears.com/html/0/T000100.asp
AskDrSears.com, "Breastfeeding," http://askdrsears.com/html/2/T020100.asp
Breastfeeding Essentials "Breastfeeding: Starting Out Right," http://www.breastfeed-essentials.com/goodstart.html