“Responsive feeding will make the difference between healthy feeding, providing too much or too little.” (Hetherington, 2017)

Reading my baby's hunger cues

In “Understanding infant eating Behavior-Lessons learned from observation” by Marion M Hetherington, she states that during the milk feeding phase, babies perform the following cues to signal to their mother their need to be fed, these include:

• Demonstrate agitation
• Display orientation toward the breast 
• Perform mouthing 
• Do hand movements to the mouth 

All of this progressing to more agitation and distress till the hunger cry is performed. 

It is a consequence then that responsive feeding has a great impact on an infant’s weight gain, a known causative factor that may lead to childhood obesity is maternal overfeeding. A care-giver must try to differentiate whether she is reading the correct hunger cues or misreading their infant’s signals. (Hetherington, 2017)

There are many more sophisticated ways of an infant displaying their cues and overtime with careful attention each caregiver learns their own special cues. 

A newborn should be fed every 2-3 hours, but this may vary for different babies. This frequent feeding is very important for establishing and maintaining a proper milk supply, as well as the provision of healthy nutrition for the baby. As the baby grows in age and size their stomach capacity increases and simultaneously the milk supply transitions from immature colostrum to mature milk and by this time the baby begins to suckle for long periods of time. 

It's important to note that every baby is different, and some may need to be fed more or less frequently than others. Some babies may also cluster feed, or feed more frequently at certain times of the day, which is perfectly normal.

Breastfeeding is a demand-and-supply system, so the more your baby feeds, the more milk your body will produce. It's also important to remember that it's normal for the frequency of feedings to fluctuate as your baby grows and their nutritional needs change.