Are all bad sleepers breastfed?

From my massive sample size of one child: no it won’t make a difference. Exclusively breastfed for 2 years. DD started sleeping thought at 8 weeks. Started waking again at 4 months and returned to sleeping through at 10 months. Co slept from birth to 10 months. Fed to sleep until nearly 12 months. Always went straight back to sleep after a feed.

1st and 2nd were terrible sleepers- bf caused a lot of issues with gas - 3rd one exactly the opposite- slept beautifully fairly early- i think gut maturation is different for each baby

DD slept through the night by 3 months and breastfed exclusively until 6 months.

Nope. My bottle fed DS was a shit sleeper

Both of mine were terrible sleepers, and were breastfed for a long time. Youngest still is at 6, but he's autistic and sleep issues are common with ASD. Other child sleeps well but can take a while to drop off and would go to bed as late as possible. Partner and I are bad sleepers too, so maybe it is just in our genes. I know bad sleepers that are FF.

In my control group of 3 people..
I wasn’t breastfed-still a horrendous sleeper 50+ years later
dd breastfed till 6 months-terrible sleeper
ds breasted for a year -great sleeper

8 months of breastfeeding is a great achievement for anyone, if you feel you’d be doing a better job by stopping, then that’s what you need to do.

BF both. Both were good sleepers although younger went through a bad patch around 6 months.

This was DP rather than me (two mum couple), but I think with DC2 she didn't want to go through the difficulty of weaning off feeding to sleep, so tried to instigate good habits from the start. With DC1, she had fed to sleep initially, because you do what works, so it was a more difficult process. But essentially we followed advice in Alexis Dubief's book 'Precious Little Sleep', aiming to create a really solid routine and then move elements of it around, so that feeding was no longer the last thing in the routine. For DC1 I think we introduced a bedtime story, which would be after his last feed and with the other parent not the breastfeeding mum. We then moved from rocking to sleep (which was a bit closer to the cuddly part of breastfeeding) to patting to sleep instead. I'm not going to pretend it was a quick or easy process, but we got there.

For DC2, we made sure that feeding was never the last thing, and instead did feed-bath-stories-special song-cot. He now (nearly 2) just gets his bath, can take or leave the stories depending on mood, and if he's really tired he just asks for his special song so he can get in his cot.

I don't believe breastfeeding is the issue. My friend and I had babies at almost the same time - we both breastfed and her's began sleeping through the night at around 8 months but mine did not sleep through until over the age of 1 year.

I breastfed my first for 6 months and he was awake every 2 hours for almost 8 months. Even after I switched to bottles at 6 months it made zero difference. I had to bottle feed my second from the start for a few different reasons and I found him to be much easier to manage. There was no cluster feeding so i found I could put him down for naps and he went down easier after the bottles. I think it’s a bit of both. It’s the luck of the draw some babies are better sleepers than others regardless. But in my experience the lack of hours on end of cluster feeding with a bottle fed baby makes it easier. Plus you can hand them over to someone else for a proper break. I was sad I couldn’t breastfeed my second because of course it is the best for the child but in my experience bottle feeding is easier in a lot of ways.

DD1 didn’t sleep longer than 40 minutes until 7 months. FF.

DD2 was sleeping in 4 hour stretches after 2 weeks. BF.

I bf my DD for a year but never had either of my kids sleep with me. They had their own rooms from day one. I had a good routine from day one too and both slept well (second had reflux and was fussy to go down the first three months then fine).

The OP is wrong. You mean it the other way around.
And YABU. I BF 5 and they were all different.

The sleep will be more disrupted at first, but it doesn't need to be your problem as you're no longer the only one who can feed.

I don't think it will be a magic bullet, but if you want to stop, stop, and it does mean you can have nights off.

Personally, I kept going until night weaning because the thought of being up to prep bottles was even worse than breastfeeding. All mine were awful sleepers.

I think they studied it, and FF babies slept on average 10m more than BF babies?

I think FF babies probably have on average different sleep habits because they don't fall asleep on the boob and are maybe more likely to be put down to sleep routinely?

My son is probably the best sleeper out of all his buddies so far on average and I BF til 20m.

Sleep is a long game though - BF, FF, CF, they all have had different trends because they're different babies! The CF baby who slept through independently from 3 days now only cosleeps, and the sleep trained baby that usually does 8-8 and a 2h nap wakes regularly for 2h at the moment.

Can I ask how you stopped feeding to sleep?

I bf both of mine, co slept for part of the night, didn’t sleep train or have a schedule. Child one awful sleeper. Still doesn’t sleep well 7 years on. Child two great sleeper from the start, only has a bad night if she’s ill.
It’s definitely the child not what you feed them

I’m interested to hear what others have to say as I only had one child. Your answer is odd though as you’ve responded as if OP has asked a different question to the one she posed.

This was exactly my experience. Both breastfed. My first was a nightmare and I expected pretty much the same with his little brother, but no, he slept so easily and soundly.

I think it is easier sometimes to get a formula fed baby to sleep through because they’re less likely to have a feed to sleep association, the bottle is not a comfort like boob is, you’re not going to feed them again if they’ve just had a big feed, it’s a faff to do a bottle overnight so you’re more inclined to try other settling methods first and cosleeping isn’t as safe when not breastfeeding so you might persevere with the crib. So I think often you end up doing a sort of very gentle sleep training without really realising you're doing it.

But mostly it is personality. I don’t think I did anything different with my 2, they were both formula fed and I roughly followed the same routine but 1 basically slept through from birth (had to set alarms to feed her until she regained her birth weight) and the other always did a decent stretch but didn’t consistently sleep through until he started solids at 5.5 months.

Nope. It's the first thing MN will tell you to do when your BF baby is a bad sleeper. Based on nothing but anecdotal evidence.

I have three, fed differently, all shit sleepers.

The only advantage is if you have a supportive partner and they will get up in the night to settle the baby so you can sleep. If that is your situation then you'll get more rest as you won't be the person getting up. If you aren't in that situation you'll be getting up to settle a wakeful baby anyway.

I breastfed all 3 til 10 months, I stopped at that point so that they would reliably sleep through the night and it worked.

Both of mine were BF and both excellent sleepers.

My friends kids some FF and awful sleepers . I don’t think it makes a jot of difference

Unfortunately IMO at 8 months it's too late so you might as well carry on BF.

I think there is a correlation and it's to do with the way that it's easiest for parents to respond at night. If you're bottle feeding it's a faff to sort that out at night so you'll probably try other things first. And if you do end up feeding then it has an end point, after which you almost definitely won't offer more milk and if you do then it comes with a significant delay. If you're BF it's easier to stick them on the boob and you can do that indefinitely, so they can learn to hold out for it. While you can comfort them in other ways, it takes much longer and so BF tends to be the magic bullet.

I was too soft for CC type sleep training but with DC3 I cracked the idea of training myself if that makes sense - Lyndsey Hookway was helpful here too. I like her process of making sleep changes one step at a time.

Bear in mind a lot goes on developmentally at this age which tends to make sleep tricky in general. Separation anxiety, object permanence, learning to crawl, maybe starting childcare as well and teething, and this time of year with viruses going around doesn't help either.

I was bottle fed and my mum says I was a dreadful sleeper. Both my dc were ebf and both were dreadful too.