Baby sleep and compulsive eating

[Faradalla]

I have a 10 month old baby. When she was very small, she wasn't gaining weight well and so I got into the habit of feeding her as often as I could. Now she can't fall asleep without being on the breast. She eats solid food well, loves her grub but is still breastfeeding a lot.

She sleeps terribly. She sometimes wakes every hour, or every 20 minutes, sometimes stretches to 2 hours and 3 if I'm very lucky. She will go back to sleep after about 10 or 15 minutes on the breast. I give in because I'm exhausted and because her crying wakes my other 2 children up.

I tried to get her into a predictable routine. It worked for a while but that initial sleep at 7pm only lasted 20 minutes and she would be back up again, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Her naps during the day are totally erratic and unpredictable due to me breastfeeding her to sleep. Some days she just has mini naps all day Nd then won't sleep at night.

I am properly on duty all day and all night and I'm so fed up. My husband works hard and does a lot with the other kids so the baby is seen as my job as I'm on maternity leave. He gives me a break when he can.

In the evening, Im raiding the cupboard for sweets in a stress response even though I'm trying to lose weight. I've started feeling dizzy and sick during the day, and at night when she is waking me up over and over, I imagine putting my shoes and coat on and just walking out the door into the night.

Tonight I binge ate 3 bars of chocolate in a row just for some kind of stress relief as it's never ending. I'm so tired of always being on call. At the weekends my husband takes the baby to let me rest but he isn't able to help out too much during the week.

I live abroad and have no family support at all. I'm feeling so resigned to another awful night of terrible sleep, and now also have the added annoyance at myself at more compulsive eating when I can't get a grip on weight.

I'm not thinking straight and feel so, so worn out. It's just never ending. I've no idea how to night wean and feel quite lost.

Please help. Even a hand hold would be nice.
Thanks.

My 10 month old is similar. It’s so hard. Sending a hug, you are doing brilliantly. Sorry I don’t have any brilliant advice x

Thank you. It's just nice to know I'm not alone.my baby went a good few hours last night and I had a bit of alie in this morning. Hope you're doing OK too

Ahh OP. My two girls are all grown up now, but I wanted to reply as your experience sounds so like mine was with my first. The eating is not just stress IMO I think your hormones/blood sugar levels get all messed up when sleep deprived and that makes you crave a 'lift'.
You won't be alone, I promise, and it won't last forever. My DD started sleeping eventually - although not without reducing BF and lots of hard and sometimes very difficult work with sleep training.
Whatever you choose, go easy on yourself, take it a day at a time. 🌺For you.

Thank you so much Wilkolampshade. I'm anticipating some hard work but cannot fathom it at the minute. I'm just so all over the place! Today I felt such a combination of stress and tiredness that I felt shaky and tired and at one point weepy and nauseous. Just being on call 24/7, non stop, always on alert, very little down time isn't healthy.

You didn’t “get into the habit”, you fed your baby on demand which is exactly what you should do.

Thid is all very normal.

Her naps don’t need to be erratic - you should be following correct wake windows for her age, not just allowing her to fall asleep whenever she wants.

That is what will be affecting her night sleep, not the breastfeeding. Sleep is also developmental regardless of how baby is fed so they’ll learn to sleep through when they’re ready.

Highly recommend the huckleberry app for tracking awake windows and planning naps, I saw someone recommend it on mn and gave it a go really like it. I'm just using the free trial at the moment havenot decided whether I will pay to upgrade with the trial ends.

it tells you what time you should be aiming to get them down for a nap for before they get too tired and are harder to settle.

my lo is 3 months and had issues with weight gain so I'm feeding very frequently but I do like this app for helping to schedule naps a bit more

This is really helpful, thank you

She falls asleep on the breast a lot and has a quick power nap then wakes up full of beans. Next time I breastfeed her she does the same and this happens all day. I try to transfer her to her cot to encourage her to sleep for longer and she wakes up minutes later. I've tried putting her in the pram so I can get her back over to sleep for a longer nap in the day but it just doesn't work. How do I follow correct wake windows and not let her fall asleep when she wants? I literally don't know. My other children had established their own routine by this stage so I'm really not sure how to proceed.

Also I was meant to add, I completely k is where you are coming from with the eating I literally can't stop eating junk especially chocolate etc, I actually have my cravings when breastfeeding rather than pregnant. Can't help but wanted to say I completely understand x

You just don’t let her fall asleep. If she looks like she’s falling asleep while feeding then you tickle/gently jostle/entertain or delatch her.

My daughter was breastfed to sleep for most sleep and naps until very recently (she’s almost 2) and if she ever looked as though she was trying to sleep when I didn’t want her to I just wouldn’t let her.

Contact naps are fine - my little girl’s are mostly all contact.

The ideal wake window for a 10 month old is 3 - 3.75 hours. She should be on roughly 2 naps a day.

So for example if she wakes at 6, let her nap say 9-10.30. Then 1.30-3 with bedtime at 6.

Obviously that’s adjustable depending on her natural wake up time but wake windows are really important for establishing good sleep hygiene.

Thanks for that. I've been so tired I don't feel like I can think straight to plan things out. This is such common sense and my third breastfeed child, but I'm so exhausted I'm going minute by minute.

No worries, I get the tiredness as my little girl still wakes every 2 hours and she’s almost 2. Totally normal, but I wouldn’t be able to cope without my husband’s help!

I’ve spent a lot of time researching baby sleep 😂

Arghh this is what my middle child did and it was terrible. Having to go to work on such broken sleep was dreadful and I think part of my stress is knowing how bad things might be and for how long they might go on for 😫My husband doesn't help at night while I'm on maternity leave but he will have to muck in when I'm back. Another thing is my daughter doesn't have a natural wake up time as she has to get up to bring the other kids to school and I think this has an impact on her sleep too. It adds to the over tiredness and the cycle continues 👎
I'll see how I get on holding her off on the mini naps tomorrow.

He absolutely should be helping at night, it doesn’t matter that you’re on maternity!

Always being EBF my husband would take our daughter in the mornings so I could lie in and take her for naps too so I could nap. Now she’s a toddler he can do whole nights with her so that’s nice.

Being woken up as opposed to having a natural wake up isn’t a problem - just base your timeline around that. So if you have to wake her at 7, just do 3 - 3.75 hours after that and go from there 😊

She shouldn’t be overtired if you’re following wake windows etc. Good luck!

No it wouldn't work for us if he was up in the night too. I actually don't mind and know he would help if I asked him to but there would be a knock on effect for us all. His job is really full on (we do the same job and it's horrendous on broken sleep) whereas I can take things very easy the next day. He gives me breaks where he can and often takes the lead with our other kids etc

Anyway, baby slept all night! I'm feeding her now and she is semi-sleeping again but I'm over the moon! I needed that!!!!!!!!

Thanks for all the advice 😀 will start afresh tomorrow 👍

I’m so pleased she slept all night 🥳 all I was going to say is does mat leave end in 2 months and does that mean you need to consider sleep training/ having a formal plan for being able to return to work and getting some sleep? But if she’s settling without you having to that’s amazing!

I know! Thank you! 🥳 🎉 🪅
And I'm lying here wide awake as I've had so much sleep haha!
My maternity leave officially finishes in 2 weeks but I've requested a few months unpaid leave as I'm a zombie and really not ready to go back yet. I haven't heard back from HR yet, but I literally cannot go back yet! Totally open to a formal plan of sleep training.

I think you might need to enlist your dh help on the sleep training- does he have any annual leave so he’s not a zombie at work? Friends whose babies have struggled to might wean have left their dh to settle over night - offered a bottle or cup of expressed milk for thirst and then done a couple of nights to break the habit. It’s tough especially if mums are there and hear them being unsettled but does work… fully appreciate you might not feel ready for this!

Am getting very close to that point and can work something out with my husband. Went back to sleep and got another few hours under my belt. My older two got up with my husband but my son has such a foghorn voice that it woke me and the baby but we are well rested and feeling human again. For now!

Today was a major success. I managed to get baby to nap from 11.30-12 then 3 to 4.30. I put her to sleep at 8 and she woke up 27 minutes later. I spent 1.5 hours stupidly trying to put her to sleep as I was so desperate to just have a cup of tea In peace and tune out. My husband was out for a few hours and I just wanted some quiet. Baby is now just crawling around the living room full of beans. I raided a cupboard and shoved loads of chocolate into my mouth and now I feel doubly rubbish. It’s just gone 10pm and I’m fed up.

@Faradalla OK, so that was yesterday. Don't beat yourself up. You're doing an incredible job, one we weren't designed to do on our own as it's only very recently and particularly in the West that we've live in such tiny unsupported social groups. Your contemporaries will have some great advice and I can see you're going to take it on board, well done, hard to hear anything clearly when you're so ground down and reaching out for help is a brilliant and intelligent first move. You should be so very proud of yourself for that.
You say you live abroad, do you speak the language OP? Are you able to find parent and baby play groups? Nothing too formal, not necessarily baby yoga or music stuff, but other (exhausted) parents sitting around comparing notes over tea? It was an absolute life saver for me. I had awful PND with DD1 and just finding other people in a similar situation helped beyond words. Madam's sleep didn't improve as a direct result, but it gave my mental health such a lift I was much more able to cope. Xxxxx

Thanks for your lovely message. It really meant a lot and gave me a little boost.
To be honest, I like my quiet, low key days at home especially now it’s winter. I love being inside and cosy with the baby, chilling out, watching tv and having cups of tea when I can. The days are lovely. The evenings seem to be when my stress spikes. After dinner when the baby won’t go down, or stay down, I start feeling the need to binge on sugar. Then the night isn’t much better, with the frequent wake ups feeling more and more intense throughout the night. I’m sorry you had PND and it sounds like you came out the other side.

I went out for an hour with a friend, no baby and am now home and have just put her to sleep. Hopefully I get an hour at least.

I was in a really similar situation with my DD (also my third, also living abroad!) who is 15 months. I went back to work FT when she was 12 weeks and I was so tired at points I honestly googled ‘can I die from exhaustion’.

Will they take a bottle (either expressed milk or formula) and if so, can your husband not do a few nights just to help break the habit of your baby constantly waking to breastfeed?

That sounds horrendous. I don't know if she would take a bottle. She hasn't had one since she was tiny and I haven't tried her since. I might consider it though. Good idea though!

Hi OP. Could you afford to pay for a sleep consultant? We had three sessions over zoom with someone last year when we were in sleep deprivation hell (a then-10 month old, like yours), and it was a game-changer. Having someone experienced listen to your own circumstances and then work with you to make a plan makes such a difference. It wasn't that she suggested anything ground-breaking, but when you're so tired and everything feels out of control it's hard to see the wood for the trees. In short, we night weaned and then sleep trained (Ferber). It wasn't that bad. Now she sleeps through the night and is much happier in the day because she isn't so tired. Good luck. Whether you do anything or do nothing, this horrible phase WILL pass.