8 wk old being "lazy" at night feeds

[AngeChica]

My DS is 8 weeks old and for the last few nights he often does not take a good feed every time he wakes at night. I always offer the breast but he will fall asleep after a few minutes - nothing I do can keep him feeding longer. He can wake after an hour if he only has a small amount. However if he gets a good feed he can go 3 hours to the next one. In the daytime it's every 2 - 3 hours but he takes a good amount of time on each breast and usually drains both sides over the course of an hour.

He was nearly 11 lb at birth. I had a CS and lost a lot of blood and was very anaemic. The hospital topped him up with formula at night because they said he was "hungry" and my milk took ages to come in. I worked really hard for over 2 weeks to achieve exclusive BF after this shaky start and it has been going OK, though I get paranoid about my milk supply, and doing anything to jeopardise it. He lost weight first 2 weeks but has been gaining fine and is now just over 13 lb.

As he is a good weight I wonder if he is on the verge of dropping a feed and only waking for comfort / habit? Often when he wakes he is "shouting" for attention from his cot, not crying with hunger...

How can I get him to stop this habit? I find it difficult to express, I try every day but only get about an ounce out. I save this up and give the odd bottle of EBM at night and this seems to get him to sleep a longer stretch, I'm just so exhausted if he has a night where he wakes lots....

[lilyloo]

Hi ange , sympathys for the tiredness , does he have a dummy ? Not sure how you feel about them but can be used to offer comfort rather than feed as if he is just topping up every hour or so then he probably isn't hungry enough to have a big feed.

[moopymoo]

As above. I hated dummies but introduced one for ds2 as he was waking every hour at this age for a quick suck on the breast for comfort. he continues to be a pretty rubbish sleeper but it did help get through this stage.