It’s a Sunday afternoon, and you’ve popped over to a friend’s house for a quick catch-up. As you walk through the door, she offers you a cup of tea, which you gratefully accept. As you sit down, you realise that it’s only been an hour since you had lunch, and so you quickly update your friend that you won’t be able to join her for a cuppa as you’re not due anything else to eat or drink for at least another 2 hours. It sounds mad, doesn’t it? And yet, this is how many parents are encouraged to look at their new baby’s feeding schedule.

As a small challenge, for the next 24 hours, write down the times you eat or drink anything. Literally, sipping on your water bottle, having a snack, eating a full meal, or grabbing a bite off your partner’s plate as you walk by. I can almost guarantee that you will have more than eight entries on your list. If you think further as to why each of those entries exists, there will be a multitude of reasons; thirst and hunger will be there for sure, but temptation, socialising, and boredom may also feature. As humans, we do not eat and drink merely to survive; we use it to connect, to socialise, to entertain, to soothe, and for a variety of different reasons. Our babies are not robots; they are simply very small humans!

Why are three hourly feeds sometimes recommended?

There are a few misconceptions around this common recommendation that I want to clear up. Firstly, the 3 hour figure was never designed to be a goal but rather a safety net. What does this mean? It means that if three hours have passed and our babies have not asked for a feed, we will insist that they have one. This safety net has been designed to make sure that babies who are struggling to adapt to the outside world are not left to sleep through their own feeding cues. The three hours are measured from the start of feed to the end of feed.

Some babies are more likely to ‘forget’ to cue for food, and so we routinely keep all babies on this three-hour safety net until they have met three milestones:

They are more than 40 weeks pregnant (i.e., if they were born before their due date, that due date has now passed).
They are back to their birth weight (most babies will lose weight in the first few days of life, and most should be back to their birth weight by around 2 weeks of age).
They weigh more than 3kg (low birth weight babies can struggle with the stamina to wake up for feeds without help).

Once they have achieved all three of these milestones, we can relax on the insistence that they eat at least every 3 hours.

Does this mean I can now move to a schedule?

Once they’ve hit this milestone and you are no longer clock-watching, we can move into the more baby-led phase of feeding. In this stage, we acknowledge that it is our role as parents to provide suitable feeds (breastfeeding or formula) whenever our babies are cueing. It is their responsibility to decide whether to feed and how much to take.

Like adults, there are many reasons why babies would ask for a feed (especially breastfed babies). What may feel frustrating initially is that sometimes a 20-minute feed is followed by a 3-hour sleep, and sometimes a 90-minute feed is only followed by a 20-minute sleep before they cue for more. Both of these situations are normal (although admittedly, one of them is more comfortable for the parents!). Our babies are the best judges of their own needs, so we continue to feed on demand for at least the first few months.

The trouble with a schedule is two-fold:

Firstly, a breastfed baby who is fed on a strict schedule is at high risk of not getting enough milk over the course of the day, and restricting access to the breast may lead to a lower supply over time. If you go back to article 8 (should I feed from one side or two?) there is more information about why there is huge variety in feeding patterns from family to family.
Secondly, babies are born with an inbuilt appetite mechanism that allows them to regulate their own intake. If we are feeding in a baby-led manner (easily done with breastfeeding but needs to be carefully managed in bottle feeding; see episode 26 of this package), they will build a lifelong habit of eating when hungry and naturally stopping when full. However, if we regularly ‘override’ this mechanism through adult-led bottle feeding (encouraging larger feeds less frequently), then this can lead to challenges in later life in managing appetite and regulating food intake.

When may a schedule be relevant?

It is rarely relevant to introduce a strict schedule of feedings for a breastfed baby, simply because they are meeting so many needs (outside of hunger and thirst) through breastfeeding. We cannot always know what needs are being fulfilled by this feed, and so usually the simplest and kindest option is to continue to feed on demand.

Bottle-fed infants are slightly different. Since the sole purpose of a bottle feed is hunger or thirst, we can be more comfortable instigating a schedule once the baby is at least a few months old. The best way is to watch for any predictable patterns starting to form in their feeding behaviours and to build the schedule around these behaviours. Milk needs (in volume) remain static from around 6–8 weeks of age. At this point, babies need in the region of 750–1000 ml of milk every 24 hours. Although some schedules recommend very large feeds only 4 or 5 times per day, it is healthier for your baby to watch their natural appetite cues and to build your schedule around the volumes that they find comfortable taking in at any one session. For reference to the biological norm of breastfeeding, typical breastfed babies max out at around 120–150 ml per feed.

Should I feed my baby on demand or stick to a schedule?

Should you schedule breastfeeding or do it whenever your baby’s keen? Unii Expert Wendy Lever knows.