Can babies overfeed?

futuremum

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Hello!!!

I was wondering if babies can overfeed. Last night, Thomas drank his milk from my breast then 10 minutes later was asking for more food so I gave him a bottle of expressed milk and he drank 80 ml of that but then threw up most of it. 30 minutes later he was asking for some more food and fed from the breast. It is not the first time it happened and it is most of all before bed time he does that!!!

Can they overfeed to make themselves sick?
 
Brody has done that as well.
I mentioned to my HV that he'd been a bit sick the night before and she said "oh? was he being greedy?" so I guess it's pretty common.
Brody will really stock up in the evening so I'm expecting him to be a bit sick now and then.
Disheartening though isn't it?
Just when you think they'll be nice and full and ready to sleep loads, it all comes back up and you're back to square one!
 
Hi futuremum...
I believe you can overfeed baby, especially when breastfeeding on demand. So easy just to plug them in, isn't it?
I made that mistake with Oscar in the first week and it made him VERY unsettled. I read that it takes a baby 3 hours to digest breastmilk. Now, I take him for a walk to get a break.
I really recommend for you to read the routine for babies in the Gina Ford book. It has been a wonderful purchase for me and has made a great difference to myself and Oscar! It gives you excellent guidelines, but you don't have to follow her entire regime. Make it your own, but if you do follow it, I'm sure you'll be complimenting it soon.
Just a thought - hope it helps. :wink:
Emilia
 
Apparently Gina Ford has never had kids...
So i would be a bit dubious about her books - i've heard alot of negative things.

My boy is breast fed on demand and i find that in an evening he will increase the frequency of his feeds - some times he will feed every hour - when he was younger he used to bring alot of this back - but i think it was mainly due to trapped wind, and to much milk.
 
i have got mother and baby mag today and it says a breast fed baby cannot over feed they will stop when they r full so feed him when he wants it
 
Hypnorm said:
Apparently Gina Ford has never had kids...
So i would be a bit dubious about her books - i've heard alot of negative things.

She hasn't :!: :roll: :shock:
 
I really think that Gina Ford is getting a raw deal on this forum. I know she hasn't had any kids, but that doesn't make it impossible for her to know the workings of bringing up kids. She has been a maternity nurse and has worked in childcare for many years. Does is also then mean that you won't be leaving your children with a teacher that hasn't had kids as she/he will not know HOW to teach your child? :?
My personal opinion is that if your struggling, keep an open mind and try a few pointers from others. It's all trail and error, but in the end it could save you alot of grieve and sleeplesness nights, frustration and baby blues.
If the name Gina Ford puts you off, just imagine it was written by Joe Brand...... :lol:
Big hugs
Emilia xx
 
Does is also then mean that you won't be leaving your children with a teacher that hasn't had kids as she/he will not know HOW to teach your child?

Good point Emilia. I've read Gina Ford, and though I wouldn't have attempted to put a newborn into such a routine, I have now put Maddie into something similar, and in addition to the routine she has a lot of insights into issues that come up.

I heartily recommend Tracy Hogg's baby whisperer book though - there are fantastic 'trouble shooting' sections which really help you understand your baby's cries and body language which is important early on as if you keep misinterpreting your baby, all his/her cries will eventually become the same!

Regarding 'overfeeding', as I understand it, it's easier to do if you feed by bottle. In my experience, whatever Maddie doesn't want/need, she thows up afterwards. However she is also sick if she drinks too quickly from a bottle, or if she's fed when she already had wind....!

Good luck

LBxx
 
sorry - just my midwife and health visitor said to avoid her books as they were too regimented and were causing alot of mums to become very depressed as they were unable to get the baby to follow the routines. and some mums have become so obsesive about the books that they were missing out on other things bacause it was babys nap time.
 
Gina Ford may have a great deal of experience with babies and children, but I think it's different when it's your own child. A maternity nurse can step back and say 'the baby isn't hungry or in pain, so I'll let it cry for a bit', but I think that's harder for a new mum to do.

It's certainly worth reading books and getting what you can from them, but I rather doubt that any one book can have all the solutions for any new parent!
 
Personally I've found Gina Ford and Tracey Hogg both to have their good and bad points. Hogg was no help at all when things were hysterical at the beginning for us (advice of what to do when you get home with your baby- give a house tour, not terribly helpful or realistic- I had a lovely and totally unrealistic impression of what having a newborn would be like after reading her book) but neither do I agree with the crying out method of Ford or that all naps should be in the cot (when do you ever go out in Ford's routine? She puts a 45 min walk into the middle of the afternoon but other than that I can't see where you'd meet other people, shop, cook etc). I like Hogg's section on body language and I think Ford says some very helpful things about feeding when you're bottle feeding (most other books mention it as an after-thought as it's assumed you're breastfeeding.)

I think a lot of it has to do with knowing what sort of people you are and your baby is. We get very upset without some kind of structure, we both like a rough routine so trying not to have one made us both unable to function rationally- we got upset and angry with each other and felt totally out of control. With a vague 4 hour routine we have felt better able to deal with everything and when it doesn't work we don't beat ourselves up about it but just go with it. Some of Ford's advice has been much more relevant to us because we are routine based and I have to admit that from tomorrow we're going to try an adaptation of one of her routines as we have realised that his crying after 7 is because he's overtired and it's got so bad that he then won't sleep until 1am because he's too wired to sleep BUT Elliott will only sleep 11 hours a day anyway and he's 11lbs and has started sleeping longer after midnight and between feeds so on one hand her routine as she has it won't fit him sleep-wise as he won't sleep more than 11 hours and on the other I think it is reasonable that being his weight we can expect him to go a fair way through the night like she says. My friend has a little girl who is 3 days older than Elliott and she's only 8lbs, sleeps 16 hours a day and has reflux yet the routine would have her doing the same thing as Elliott when they obviously have very different needs at the moment so I think some adaptation is needed- all books deal with an average baby and no one has an average baby!

Elliott seems happier when we are in a vague routine too- today it got thrown out by him sleeping too much during the day yesterday and he's been upset and all over the place all day today as a consequence. Right from the beginning he tended to do things at similar times before we'd even started a routine so I think character-wise he's well suited to structure. I'm not going to do anything that feels like forcing him though, I kind of want to find a happy state where it's neither baby led or parent led but a happy family led thing because if you're not happy baby won't be happy and vice versa really and it seems to me like you have one school that think the baby should rule and one that says the parent should when neither is totally healthy.

I don't know- just my thoughts on the matter so far! I think the really important thing is not to get too upset about it all one way or another and to do what feels right for you. I can see how not fitting Ford's routine if you tried it could make you depressed but likewise not having any routine as my HVs would have it was making both my husband and I too stressed to cope which wouldn't have done him any good at all- it's just a case of knowing all of you and finding the best solution for all and not worrying if that's different to everyone else.
+++
 
Hypnorm said:
sorry - just my midwife and health visitor said to avoid her books as they were too regimented and were causing alot of mums to become very depressed as they were unable to get the baby to follow the routines. and some mums have become so obsesive about the books that they were missing out on other things bacause it was babys nap time.

This is my feelings too, aswell as what Skidoo said. I couldn't live by a book written by someone with no practcal maternal experience. I don't doubt her ability, maybe it's just another one of my 'things' that don't fit with me. I like routine, and Damien is sure in one (feed every 4 hours, change his bum beforehand, burp for so long, etc) but Gina's seem a bit 'unpractical' for me.

BUT, it does work for some people and that's a good thing - whatever helps you bring up your baby in the way you would like to is a brilliant thing.
 

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