How To Create A Baby Feeding Schedule

Hi. I'm Mars Lord, a duly UK recognized Doula. I support women through pregnancy and childbirth and post birth.

You can find me at mammydoula.co.uk.

I'm here today to talk about pregnancy, birth and infant feeding. How to create a baby feeding schedule? Do you schedule the way that you eat or do you eat when you're hungry? With a new born baby, it's very difficult to schedule their feeding. A new born baby who is breastfeed will feed on an average every two hours.

You wouldn't restrict food from your baby because you need one, to improve your milk supply but two, to allow the baby to be settled and happy. So creating a feeding schedule is a difficult thing. If you formula feed a baby then you'll find that these babies will be fed at set intervals.

But even then, if you feed according to your baby's cues you may well find that you don't have to stick to a formal three or four hour thing but you can actually just feed little and often the way breastfeeding babies are fed. When you move on to complimentary foods, you'll find that because their stomachs are small, a baby going through toddlers' stage will grow rather than eat three large meals a day. What we do in attempting to create a schedule is we try to recreate ourselves in our babies.

So watch your baby and look for the hunky cues. That's when you feed your baby. Feed your baby little, feed your baby often.

Don't worry if they don't take huge amounts of food but also don't panic if they seem to eat more than you would like to eat. The feeding on schedule is something that happens as the child grows. For now, feed your baby on demand.

Your baby is simply learning to survive and eating to live rather than living to eat. There is no real way to feed a baby by schedule. And that is how you use a feeding schedule.