Aibu to think it is impossible to follow current bf advice

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I formula fed my first 2 and always put them in their own cot from day 1. With all that baby expertise? I decided I would always put my 3rd breast fed baby back into his cot after feeds like I had done before. however ds did not sleep for prolonged times at night between feeds and after a decent stint of good sleeping he had a sleep regression. I came to the realisation I either needed to give up best practice and formula feed or else give up best practise and keep him in the bed or maybe give him solids early against best practise. So my question is are women able to exclusively breast feed for 6 months and never bring the baby into their bed and if so is it at the expensive of their own well being. I think it is unreasonable to give advice that is totally impossible to put into practice but maybe I am unreasonable. By the way ds is still coming into our bed from his cot once he wakes up for a feed in the night at 15 months so that was the shortcut I chose.

Cosleeping is the best thing for bf. if done safely, there is evidence that Breastfeeding and cosleeping lower SIDS. Quite the opposite to what most people think.

There is a good article on the dangers of scaremongering cosleeping here:

www.analyticalarmadillo.co.uk/2011/11/dangers-of-demonising-bed-sharing.html?m=1

And here:

neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/21/cosleeping-and-biological-imperatives-why-human-babies-do-not-and-should-not-sleep-alone/

I am currently pregnant with number 2, and planning on co sleeping this time round, and have already had one person come into my bedroom and say 'is this the bed you are going to suffocate your baby in'. It's about time current guidelines were updated IMO. Then less parents would fall asleep exhausted on sofas with their babies.

Most parents - ff or bf - co-sleep at some points. This is shown in Helen Ball's research into what parents actually do. You can find more info at www.isisonline.org.uk

It is safe to co-sleep if you follow the guidance and are not a smoker.

Co-sleeping is not essential for bf, but it makes life easier for many :)

I think it does depend on the baby. Both of mine were ebf until 18 weeks. One slept in cot all the time and slept through the night from 10 weeks. The other was still up at night at 18 months, and only coslept from last feed before morning until DD1 was awake. V difficult to do ebf / co sleeping with older siblings. My DD2 now wakes in the night wanting to come into bed especially if DD3 is co sleeping.

I never co slept or had any desire to but ebf ds for 5 months until I introduced solids. He slept 4-6hours at a time from birth, only fed once a night when we started giving him a 7pm bedtime a nd slept through from 4 months. He was always in his own bed and we made a lot of effort to get him to self-settle from aroundaround Uund U8 weeks . So yes I think it's perfectly possible to follow the guidance and have a baby who sleeps well

I think co sleeping is more likely related to how well your child sleeps than how they are fed. Most people I know have had their children in their bed when they have been sleeping badly - regardless of how they have been fed.

Also remember that co sleeping is safer if you bf than ff (according to NHS, FSIDS) so you might see more co sleeping bfers than ffers for that reason to.

Moses basket next to the bed when BF'ing was fine for us, I accepted tha baby would wake every 3/4 hours for feeds.

Ireland has very low rates of breastfeeding, doesn't it? So health advice is probably aimed at the majority (co-sleeping is not safe if you formula feed) rather than at a small majority who exclusively breastfeed and can co-sleep safely.

Yes Ireland has atrocious breastfeeding rates we make the uk look like Norway by comparison. But this advice is given and insisted on by health visitors for all babies bf or ff. I personally believe this advice is based on the ff experience ie babies feed less often because the milk takes longer to digest and certainly my ff experience meant that these expectations were more realistic because babies only woke up to feed once or twice a night at most. But to do this 7-8 times a night and get up for the school run in the morning would be a total killer. Whereas by co sleeping I found I was really well rested and could dose off as ds slept and I was never overtired.

Midor the link says on the breastfeeding part "It?s safe to feed your baby in bed as long as you put them back in their own cot to sleep."

This is the advice I question as being realistic for most breastfeeding mothers.

Bedside cot!

The no co-sleeping advice is nuts.

Various studies with wildly different methodology get combined and wildly high risks reached. I believe if you take out babies sleeping alone in adult beds, babies in with parents who smoke, smoke, drink, take drugs(legal or not) or were co-sleeping out of shear exhaustion, the risk is tiny.

Im not sure any significant risk has ever been proved for BFing babies.

I did it, but only because DS was a stubborn bottle refuser (believe me we tried ). We were both very definite about not bringing DS into bed at night, partly because my sleep would've actually been worse with a snuffly, wriggling baby beside me.

So my question is are women able to exclusively breast feed for 6 months and never bring the baby into their bed I accept I am unreasonable to the women who followed this to the letter and there have been a lot more than I expected and I think these women are fantastic because it is something I could not have done. However some women are posting that they introduced solids before 6 months and then still saying I am being unreasonable on thinking the current guidance is itself unreasonable.

startail if you take out those circumstances, the evidence shows no elevated risk of co-sleeping. You are right - messy studies with poor definition cloud results. Some studies lump in SIDS with clear cases of suffocation. Some studies lump in sofa-sharing with bed-sharing.

More info at Isis online, linked to before.

You're right, it's harder to get up to feed than it is to have a baby in bed with you although it's maybe easier to get up and whip out a boob than to prepare a bottle - perhaps only marginally if you use pre-made or whatever I suppose.

Bed sharing with a formula fed baby doesn't help with night feeds although it may help with keeping a baby asleep for longer (or rather, help a baby to settle back to sleep when they wake because they know you are there and they're not alone). I don't like to say "formula feeding parents shouldn't bed share". I prefer to say that formula feeding mothers are less likely to have the same instinct of knowing in her sleep where her baby is than a breastfeeding mother does, so there is a higher risk of a FF mother overlaying her baby than a BFing mother. But who am I to say to an individual mum that she personally should not bed share just because she FFs? She may be super aware of her baby. Over a community fewer FF mums than BFing mums will be, but individuals are individuals.

The advice in the UK is to exclusively breastfeed to 6 months and to look at whether your baby is ready for solids then. Some babies may be ready at 5 or 5 1/2 months. Other not until 7 months, sometimes later. Babies are almost never ready, from a gut maturity point of view, at 4 months, although they may appear to be hungry - more milk is a safer option.

Bed sharing makes breastfeeding (and nights, generally) easier for many people although of course it doesn't suit some. It's perfectly possible to breastfeed to 6 months without bed sharing for many mother/baby dyads, but it can really make it a lot easier for many.

What is perhaps unreasonable is for advice in your country to not be keeping up with the research. However it is the same here in the UK by virtue of the fact that unless Health Visitors go on ongoing training they keep spouting out of date research, and nowadays to go on training they usually have to pay for it themselves and use their own holidays to boot. Now THAT is unreasonable.

If you have to get up numerous times at night, you must be very unlucky. DS was EBF and woke one or twice a night but often went for stretches of 3 to 5 hours without waking. Then at 8 weeks he slept through! It only lasted 6 weeks but in that time I felt very rested and a couple of night feeds after which he was put back in his cot did not cause a problem. Worse was at about 9 months when he woke at night wanting to play - nothing to do with feeding - thankfully that did not last long.

So my question is are women able to exclusively breast feed for 6 months and never bring the baby into their bed

Yes, but most people bring their babies into bed with them regardless of how they feed.

And most people who introduce solids before 6 months do so for reasons that have nothing to do with how and where their baby sleeps. Introducing solids doesn't generally affect how "well" a baby sleeps.

I exclusively bf, and my DS has been in his own cot since day one, and his own room since 2 weeks. He has slept through since 2 weeks and we are now doing blw which is working well. So I am one of those very lucky people who the advice is spot on. But I think everyone should do what ever they want. Loads of people love co-sleeping, ff etc. none of that worked for us, they don't judge me and I def don't judge them. Plus when the baby is 16 you won't know which are ff, co-sleep, blw or purée. It makes no dif!

Lots of FFeeders co-sleep, definitely.
Controlled Crying, Ferber's book did not become a world-wide hit because breastfeeding rates are so very high in the industrialised west.

It sounds a bit like you just want a reason to stop breastfeeding, OP.

A lot of this is about sleep not feeding as well. Feeding a baby every hour in the night is a choice, feeding a child in the night after about 9-12 months is a choice etc - some parents find it works for them and some don't - it doesn't really matter if they are breastfed or bottlefed.

I think one difference is that breastfeeders are more likely to use feeding to get their baby to sleep, so they are more likely to need to be fed back to sleep in the night. Though I know lots of bottle feeders who are giving 18 month olds multiple bottles of milk in the night, or spend hours rocking and bouncing babies to sleep - not that any of this is a judgement on right/wrong ways to do things, it just illustrates that good sleep/poor sleep has more to do with the child/families sleep preferences and habits than about how they get milk.

It sounds a bit like you just want a reason to stop breastfeeding, OP. As I said he is still bf at 15 months so I am not sure where you are getting that from.

Your leaflet looks exactly the same as the FSID leaflet which is distributed in England and Wales (and possibly Scotland and NI).

Nobody can always follow best practice absolutely to the letter, even on safety advice. Do you always have your hands at 10 and 2 o'clock on the steering wheel when driving?

I agree with you though that it's very difficult to BF excluively and not co sleep - I wouldn't have managed it. And DS helped himself to solids before 6 months.

I agree with you though that it's very difficult to BF excluively and not co sleep - I wouldn't have managed it. And DS helped himself to solids before 6 months.

Ok after reading the posts here I am surprised by that so is the NHS guidance not UK best practice then? Other people seemed to think best practice had changed at the start of the post - has it not? I also would have found it impossible not to co sleep.

I know this place is full of what people consider to be cynical AIBU posts on bf and ff but the only question I wanted the answer to was should the current best practice advice change to allow for co sleeping in Ireland but looking at Bertie Botts post in the UK too?

I am very surprised by some of the responses I got but hey ho this is aibu.

I really don't know what you are talking about. Of course it is possible to follow "best practice", what is the difference between a cot right by your bed and having the baby in your bed? You do whichever you like, whatever works for you, but what the feck has that got to do with how long they sleep or whether to wean early?

You do whichever you like, whatever works for you, I do I have said that upthread but my issue is setting up women for unrealistic expectations by National Guidance saying that you should not cosleep as it is not good practice when most women find they have to and their end objective is to improve breastfeeding rates.

but what the feck has that got to do with how long they sleep or whether to wean early? I really do not know what you are asking here or what it comes from in the thread can you clarify?