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Don't stress about a schedule!! Just enjoy baby and let them eat and sleep when they want to. With my lo the 4 month sleep regression messed everything up anyway so just enjoy baby!

Congratulations! I will echo what I assume most people will advise, which is, don’t worry at all about a schedule at this point.

I think if you want to, 2 Months is probably the earliest I’d do a schedule and it would just be an eat, play, sleep for me. By 3 months that’s the schedule I did although sometimes it didn’t work because crappy crib naps were occurring. I don’t worry about max feeding or wake times because both my kids have exceeded max wake times from the day they were born so you have to do what your baby wants to do. My daughter stayed awake for four hours when she was a week old and it was in the 8am-noon time range. She wasn’t grumpy and then she slept fine at night and for her naps being held. They both sttn by 6 months old.

I think it just causes stress if you try to adhere to a schedule too soon.

The only thing I will say about long nursing sessions is that can sometimes indicate supply problems (which it sounds like you’re exploring), however at a really young age it can be normal for some babies and not be an issue.

And for cluster feeding, sometimes it’s not even a choice for you, or doesn’t feel like it is anyway. Both mine clusterfed every early evening for the first month at least.

Enjoy! It goes super quick.

That early on my LO naturally had an every 2-3 hour feeding routine. I did a mix of breast and bottle and at 5 weeks exclusive breast. He didn’t fall asleep at the breast, but definitely slept a lot as a newborn.

My daughter was eating every 2-3 hours at that point except in the evenings where I think she ate every hour practically. During the day I tried to follow a rough eat play sleep line of thought but in the evenings I basically just sat with her at my boobs. She would sometimes fall asleep sometimes not but was definitely up more than the suggested 45 min, hell even during the day sometimes she was up longer then that suggestion. I tried to follow her cues as best I could while also still maintaining my sanity and helping my supply. If I wasn't paying attention my daughter would get lazy while eating and could be on a side for forever only sucking every now and then so I had to rub her back or tickle her feet to help her stay focused. She still eats better at night if she is stripped down to a diaper, thankfully during the day she is willing to eat with clothing on.
We had to supplement early on and at first it was offering a bottle after every feeding, now its just a bottle top up after bed and any middle of the night feeds. In the evening though I just went with the cluster feeding so that my body would get as much of the message as it could that I needed to produce more.

@gingerbebe: I can see that happening too. I personally love a schedule for the kids and once they can successfully get into that groove, I am all about doing the naps and bedtime and even feedings down to the minute. Haha. That being said, when things go off schedule I have a really hard time managing my disappointment I guess and it causes me stress. I find that at he beginning it’s really hard to have a successful schedule so that causes me stress. So even though I’m not a go with the flow person really ever, I’m mostly go with the flow for the first two months of a baby’s life. However, I also have kids who don’t sleep a lot when they’re babies so perhaps that factors into scheduling difficulty in the beginning. When everyone else’s newborns are all sleepy and doing 20 hours per day at the beginning combined mine were doing about 14 per 24 hours. My second had fairly strong jaundice that lasted over a week and that didn’t even make him drowsy. My first slept pretty good at night from the get go and my second ran me through the ringer at night for the first four months. I did the same with both of them except for holding for long naps with my first as I couldn’t with my second, but fed every 2.5-3.5 hours for both kids.

Congratulations! I think you're getting conflicting advice because there's no *right* answer, just what's right for you and right for your family. I loved having the Eat, Wake, Sleep routine for my LOs and started on it early. I've told friends how great it worked for us and they've said they find it too stressful and would rather do on-demand until baby is older. One thing that seems to work well is looking at the reviews for parenting books on amazon. They pretty much all have mixed reviews because people can love/hate the advice or parenting styles detailed in them. If you read the reviews and find yourself agreeing with the positive people's perspectives and think the negative reviewers sound like nutters then that would likely be a parenting style (and guidelines) that would work well for you.

@periwinklebee: At that age just feed when they seem to want to eat, they do a lot of growing and sometimes can’t go very long. That said my DD was like your LO..if left to her own devices would nurse for well over 45 minutes. We worked with an LC who did weighed feeds and what we figured out was that she wasn’t a very good sucker and had to work really hard to get milk which meant she would use up a lot of energy nursing, pass out for 45 minutes and wake up and want to nurse again.

We ended up using a supplemental nursing system for a few week to help her improve her sucking and she eventually shortened up her sessions and consolidated feedings

Had the LC done a weighed feed for you? We took my DD in and they weighed her with all her clothes off, then would set a timer for me to nurse her for 10 minutes and then they would weigh her again. They had a very sensitive scale that I think went to a thousandth of a gram

2 things:

1) don’t let conflicting info stress you - let it liberate you! It means that there’s no right answer, just what’s right for you. The things that are a hard and fast rule you’ll know - like, kid has to be in a car seat in the car. Don’t leave baby alone in the bathtub. But sleeping and eating and minutes on the breast and how to sleep train and blah blah blah - you’ll hear a ton of advice because there’s no hard and fast rule.
2) you might want to consider what your main priority is (breastfeeding exclusively, a schedule, sleep, etc) and make your decision based on that. For example if EBF is extremely important to you and your main goal, then I would follow the advice to just feed on demand and not worry much about a schedule, falling asleep at the breast, or wake times etc.
If sleep is most important (I desperately needed night sleep for myself and time to recharge during naps, so sleep and schedule were most important to me) I would focus less on feed on demand (maybe allow supplementing, for example) and more on max wake times, not allowing daytime sleep to exceed 3 hours, and getting into a routine like EASY (for now) which will develop more into a schedule in a couple/few weeks.

Does this make sense??? It does in my head but I may not be articulating clearly. Basically take in all the conflicting info, decide what your priority is, and distill that conflicting info down to what helps meet your priority.

@ElbieKay: ah love the advice buffet! that's such a good way to look at it.

@periwinklebee: this may or may not resonate with you, so big grain of salt, I don't want to be another piece of conflicting advice. my kid was doing what yours is (the endless sessions) and our ped told us he was using me as a human pacifier if we went that long, and to cut the sessions off after 20-30 minutes and then nurse again later on demand (like, not much later... if he wanted it, which he often did, 45 or 60 minutes later). She told me it would give me a chance to refill and wouldn't affect my supply negatively because the frequency of sessions was still so high, and that most of the milk was gone after the first 20 minutes. I remember I literally cried from relief in the doctor's office when she told me that. Limiting the *length* but not the frequency of sessions completely saved my sanity, I was pulling all-nighters one after another of these crazy marathon nursing sessions and was basically losing it from sleep deprivation. someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that nursing on demand does not mean you are a slave to unending nursing sessions. if you need a break or he is just totally not sated, I think here and there a supplement top-off after a session is not a crime. I didn't have supply issues so I don't want to issue bad advice, but my impression is that it won't sabotage your efforts to get your supply up if you're really nursing that much around the clock.

I can only speak from my experience but I’m a creature of habit so my kids naturally just “routined” themselves around the rhythm of our household once they got out of the newborn phase. I do believe that most babies and kids thrive on routine but it doesn’t need to be strict or especially time based, it’s more about having some structure to the day (little things like napping after breakfast or having a nap after lunch).

One thing that did help me survive the newborn days was to have three things I did everyday - take a shower, make the bed, and have breakfast - and I’m still following that mantra now that my oldest child is five!

@periwinklebee: I don’t remember what the amount was that she wanted in a 10 minutes period but it was less than 200 mls transferred so she said it would have taken the baby too long to transfer a full feed. Try and look for someone who is an actual IBLC. Even though my DD was full term she struggled to nurse the first little while

@periwinklebee: My ped had me breastfeeding at the beginning of each feed and then feeding 2 oz of breast milk if I had it or formula if I didn’t via bottle immediately after. Every time I fed a bottle, I was told to pump for 10 minutes (which got saved for the next feed - so to answer your question, I was pumping at each feed every few hours). Once we got to the point where we saw a steady weight gain, I then was able to drop the bottle/pumping part of the feed. I emphasized to my ped that I was happy to supplement but wanted to make sure I wasn’t jeopardizing my breastfeeding success down the line and she was really helpful in coming up with a plan that worked for us.

@periwinklebee: also, just remembered that I didn’t pump during the night even though I probably should of if I was supplemetnting. Decided to roll the dice and give myself a break. Just breastfed and went back to bed and my supply still was fine.