Re: Need advice on spacing out feedings, co-sleeping.
My suggestion: stop talking to your pediatrician about feeding and sleep. Your pediatrician should confine herself to giving MEDICAL advice.
Are you happy co-sleeping? Is your baby happy? Is your partner okay with having a family bed? If so, there's absolutely no reason to stop co-sleeping, provided you are co-sleeping safely (no mounds of soft bedding, no waterbeds, no couches, chairs, or recliners, no gaps/voids in which baby can become trapped, adults must be non-smoking, non-drinking, non-drug-abusing, and mom must be breastfeeding). Your baby is only 1 month old, which is way too young to be thinking about weaning your baby from co-sleeping. It's the time to focus on maximizing the amount of sleep you're getting- and if that means co-sleeping, so be it!- and about getting baby to fall into a rhythm of being more awake during the day and more sleepy at night.
In a couple of months, come back and let's talk about sleep training! Until then, pick up a copy of Elizabeth Pantley's book "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" for a realistic look at infant sleep and some gentle techniques for getting a baby who is >4 months old to sleep longer and more independently.
Your pediatrician's advice on feeding and "snacking" was simply idiotic. Babies should be fed on demand throughout their first year- and I am not making this up! The American Academy of Pediatrics says that "the best feeding schedules are the ones designed by the babies themselves". There is NOTHING wrong with snacking. Breastmilk digests quickly, and baby tummies are tiny. This means that many babies require small, frequent meals, a.k.a. snacks. Also, "snacking" keeps a baby's blood sugar nice and even, and allow a baby to set his own feeding schedule and listen to his own hunger/satiation cues may be why breastfed babies are less likely to become obese as adults. Finally, imposing an artificial schedule on baby's feeding can result in lowered milk supply (supply = demand, so restrict demand and you lower supply) and also in a baby not getting enough calories to grow.
Don't let someone make your baby and his needs into a problem when he's obviously doing fine, and so are you!
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to the ped. What wrong advice. 
he will space them out when he's ready. But he's a newborn still.
1-15-06 
and 
for Gavin, born with an incomplete cleft lip and incomplete posterior cleft palate 
), that's what you do. As he gets bigger, his feeding pattern will change, and will get quicker and more discrete--instead of grazing all day, he's likely to nurse for a few minutes and move on to bigger and better things, like whatever is catching his eye. 
Nursing is a lot more than food, and he is still very little--comfort is just as legitimate a reason to nurse as hunger is, and it will make your life a lot easier (it sounds like it already has! 
Originally Posted by @llli*aprilsmagic
April 2014
