HELP!!
I'm a new mom and I'm so confused because I keep getting conflicting advice from books, my pediatrician, nurses in the hospital and pediatrician's office, etc.
My new DD is just 9 days old, formula fed, and sleeps all day long and eats fairly regularly - every 2-3 hours, about 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 oz a feeding. Then once bedtime comes, she refuses to eat much at a single feeding, often eating 1/2 ounce if that, and then after changing her and putting her in the crib, she's hungry again. The result is I'm up all night and losing my sanity. I'd have no problem with getting up every 2-3 hours like the experts say, to feed her. In fact that seems like a luxury. Sometimes I think the issue is she just wants to be held because once I pick her up she's often fine and then she'll easily fall asleep in my arms, but again the minute she hits the crib, she's crying again.
My pediatrician's nurse advised me to limit each nighttime feeding to 15-30 minutes, and if at the end of that she refuses to take more, change her and put her to sleep and basically ignore her cries for at least 1-1/2 hours or so, so she'll learn that feeding time is feeding time and she shouldn't dawdle. I just can't ignore her cries for that long through - she gets more and more upset. I think last night I might have slept through her crying out of sheer exhaustion and I felt so incredibly guilty when I woke up and realized it had been 5 hours since her last feeding! And of course a lot of folks say that a newborn should be fed on demand, but in my case, that would mean literally getting no sleep, and I fear she would end up overeating.
Anyone with experience with this type of situation?
Any advice would be much appreciated!