Aibu to think it is impossible to follow current bf advice

[neunundneunzigluftballons]

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.

I found co-sleeping saved my sanity once I got over the fear of squashing him

Everyone is different though

Whatever. Works.

From your OP

most women do not find that they have to cosleep. You haven't answered me, what difference is there between a bedside cot and co-sleeping? Why would one make it any easier to BF for 6 months? Put baby down on one side of you in your bed, put baby down on other side of you in own cot. Same thing.

Ah kobayashi I see. What I was actually saying in the op was I hit the sleep regression at 4.5 months having followed current guidelines to that point with putting the baby back in his moses basket after each feed but I then hit constant wakings and I was looking at the possibilities for getting best sleep particularly as I was heading back to work a few weeks later. It seemed to me that it was no longer possible to follow current guidelines at this point as I was exhausted and and it seemed to me that the no co sleeping idea was based on ff babies who seem to go for longer stints between feeding due to formula being more difficult to digest. What I was wondering was it possible to get to 6 months exclusive breast feeding without co sleeping or did some women wean before then in a bid to not co sleep because I thought it would be impossible. I think the idea of providing national guidance to women that a woman cannot achieve is setting women up for a fall.

Personally I found a big difference between having the baby in bed with me and having him in a cot by the bed. I went back to sleep immediately he was latched on when we co slept, with the cot/moses basket I got up to put him back making my sleep was far more broken.

No co-sleeping is based on FF infants simply for safety - babies who are not breastfed are more likely to die from SIDS.

It has nothing to do with frequency of feeding or how long milk takes to digest.

Women can breastfeed and not co-sleep. Many find it easier to have the baby in bed. Many formula fed babies sleep better in their parents bed too.

Ds was ebf. Slept 7 hours from 6 weeks, 10 hours from 10 weeks. Not only in his own cot but also in his own room.:)

I don't think there is such a thing as best practice though.. guidelines are fairly, well, guideliney, they're not rigid. The NHS has never given out such rigid advice as "exclusive breastfeeding only until 6 months, no solids until 6 months, never co sleep." I don't know if this is the case in Ireland.

I agree there's a big difference between co sleeping and having a cot by the bed. I used to barely wake up to latch DS on so I didn't really have disturbed sleep at all. Whereas if I'd had to stay awake for the whole feed, change position etc it would have been much harder to get back to sleep.

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

Yes this is possible. Depends more on the baby than the feeding method.

Everything depends on the baby!! Your third might might be a worse sleeper because he is bf or he might just be made that way ! I hear what you 're saying though and for me (bf and still going at 9 months) the answer was co sleeping with a bedside cot . Couldn't have kept going if I'd had to sit up awake for every feed. Throw in CS recovery as well and there was really no better option for me. But everyone's different. If what you're doing isn't working, change it! I highly recommend co sleeping and it does go hand in hand with breastfeeding but its not for everyone.

Arguably here we are more dependant on breast feeding advice from health visitors than you probably are given our absymal bf rates. I literally knew no one who had breastfed when I had my first child and considering the extent of my family - think everything you have heard about irish catholic and add a few people it is monsterous - that is saying something. We are then relatively dependant on good advice from health professionals and in this instance and frankly many others the advice gives very unreasonable expectations for breastfeeding in my opinion but I see others have managed. For what it is worth I did not last 6 months without solids because I wanted to start him before I went back to work so he started at 23 weeks.

But I do agree with the olids advice though because it is founded in good science co sleeping does not appear to be.

Have EBF 3 babies. Yes, in early weeks, a bit of dozing off with them on the breast but by 2-4 months (different babies, different rules...) they were sleeping through in a cot.
By all means FF if you prefer but good sleeping and BF are entirely possible!

My best friend EBF her 3 DCs and Contented Baby Booked them

I've had a rake of babies in Ireland and ebf them all. I never got much useful advice from my HV, but there are bf clinics, support groups, la leche groups all over the place, baby groups for the AP type etc etc....it's not nearly as bad as you make out.

neun I Co slept with DS 1, started with a 'sidecar' cot but ended up properly co sleeping, touching, add gee woke every two hoursfire about nine months and would only feed to sleep. I was working full time from very early on (in USA, no maternity leave) and went quite loopy!
He is nearly three now and still not really a good sleeper, gave up his nap early at two and a bit, had to have a very very calm and dimly lit bath and story time, etc. it's just who he is, really stimulated, finds it hard to wind down. With him, I could never have managed breastfeeding without co sleeping, but neither formula nor solids really made a difference, he just grew out of it.

DS 2, by contrast is thirteen weeks old and ebf, usually only wakes once or twice in the night, sleeps for 4-5 hours, and sleeps so well in the sidecar cot we aren't really co sleeping at all. I do get up to feed him in the rocker, as he can't seem to get the hang of feeding lying down, but I burp him, put him in the cot, swaddle him, and if he is still awake, which is about half the time, I offer him a dummy and he drifts off quite happily! I had intended top canaletto but it seems.unnecessary, without planning to I am almost following Irish guidelines!

It's all personalities, IMO. I was glad to co sleep with my first, my second never has had formula, and sleeps better at three months than my first did at six months.

All babies are different, all mums are different. As long as your baby is thriving and not neglected do what works for you both. Sleep regressions are common. My DS was sleeping for about six to seven hours straight at ten weeks, then he stated teething early and it all went tits up. He's bf and I quickly realised that he didn't need feeding every time he woke. Sometimes he was just chewing my nipple for comfort so now , at four months, I just pop a dummy in if he wakes early in the night and usually only give one night feed (unless he's genuinely hungry which i can usually tell as he has a particular hungry cry). Probably totally against bf best practice but he's gaining weight well and we all get more sleep.And in a few years time some new research will come out and 'current best practice' will be revised anyway.

YANBU but I had assumed it was more to do with personality with my two. DS1 FF slept in a cot, fed 3hrly during the day, 4hrly at night. Slept full 12hrs by a year old.
BF DS2 woke every hour until he was 8 months old, has never slept in a cot (he just won't sleep unless next to me) and at one year old is still waking 5 or 6 times a night. I'm exhausted and just want my bed back and a full nights sleep. I never wanted to co-sleep but it was that or not sleep at all.

I exclusively breast fed and did put my baby in his cot. Most times. :)
Only the cot was next to my bed and I could reach a hand to him.

My DS is now 8 and he still prefers the comfort of my bed, meaning of sleeping next to me, though. Even though he will sleep well in his own bed.

blackcurrant I would have gone stir crazy if I hadn't co slept while working I had the cot set up as a side car but once he got into the bed to feed I went back to sleep and never put him back in because I was asleep within seconds but I always felt bad about it because in the early days I had been adamant I was going to do the 'best' and I had been able to do it easy enough before. Most women I now know who breastfeed started off trying not to co sleep and most women I met through my health clinic gave up early.

fromeggheadtopreghead we tried a soother in the early days as ds had the worlds dogiest latch which was causing problems but he could not coordinate his suck it would have been a god send if it had worked for other reasons.

Lueji this is the irony the 2 that were never in our bed as babies are in it all the time now still thankfully the bed we have accommodates at least 2 children at a time.

I know many people are saying different baby and I do agree with that but I think there is an expectation and I personally think it comes from ff I see others disagree here that babies will sleep longer stints so you are not up every couple of hours to feed them and that works fine for putting a child back in a cot but if you are up hourly and even now at 15 months he has 3-4 feeds at night because I am back to work and not feeding him during the day I think it is unreasonable to provide that advice to women.

I am sorry koybashi but I am actually annoyed by your last post. Don't get me wrong I am glad that was your experience of breastfeeding in Ireland but it was certainly not mine of trying to breast feed 3 children and giving up on 2 and given our stats it is not many womens. I find the advice given in Ireland from the top down to the nurses on the ground to be shocking. I still think and so do many women here that for many co sleeping is the answer to sleep issues with many bf babies but in Ireland it is considered bad practice by our health advisors. I was totally dependant on health visitors on my first, new area, no family experience, first of my firneds to have a baby and so I took what they told me as gospel I was a bit busy with breastfeeding issues to look to far into it. I think some of that advice is ill thought out because it puts women of feeding which I do not think is a good thing.

As an aside it was not until I spoke to a lactation consultant on my third (the one I went to hadn't even started training on my first I do not actually know if there were any 8 years ago) that I finally got answers. As it happens on my second I went along to one of the groups you mentioned and the posterior tongue tie all my children had was never even mentioned as a possibility but that is not an issue for this thread. That tongue tie would not have been cut 8 years ago anyway since the one doctor now doing them in the whole country had not started yet so Kobayshi in my opinion breastfeeding in Ireland has a really long way to go but I do always take heart when I hear it has gone well for others.

I'm a brit but have had both my boys in the USA. I have friends who ff from day one, friends who are still co sleeping and bfing a nearly three year old. . .there is no NHS here and so no one big governing body to tell you about best practice, but nearly all the breastfeeding support I have encountered, including the stuff attached to our doctors surgery, has had info about safe co sleeping. The big bland 'what to expect' books will say the sleep ABC (alone, back, cot) but anyone you speak to about breastfeeding trends to recommend co sleeping, including the nurses in the hospital this time around, after having DS 2!
I agree with you that the cultural perception, based perhaps on my mothers generation where formula was harder to digest, is that a baby will go 3-4 hours between feeds, which is laughable in my experience of DS1, and yet exactly what it's happening withDS 2 (touch wood nothing changes!)

there is no NHS here and so no one big governing body to tell you about best practice see I wonder if that is the issue here. I reckon we would nearly be better off not involving the health services here all because as I had found out over my experience they are often worse than useless and women or well at least a lot of the ones I know do turn to them.

I hugely admire women in the US who continues bf after maternity leave finishes. It is so difficult over there compared to Ireland and yet the bf rates continue to be far higher.

The USA idealizes (probably fair to say fetishizes) motherhood. Mothers are wonderful people, sacrificing, struggling, admired, lauded - every bloody thing except supported by maternity leave and fair employment laws! From the announcement to the baby shower onwards people are thrilled for you that you're pregnant - I've just had our second and DH's work colleagues, (whom I know and like but we don't go out to dinner together) sent TWO CAR BOOTFULS of presents home 'for the baby' - even though they all know it's our second, and we really don't need anything (you only really have one 'shower' and that's for your first). They are just so excited and pleased someone's had a baby. My cynical side would say that it's because America is oddly prudish about female sexuality, they have a real madonna/whore complex, as a nation, and mothers are firmly on the 'madonna' side! Still, I benefit from it - people are always leaning into the pushchair to coo, chatting to me in lifts about my lovely baby etc - it's absolutely sweet. Until my toddler starts acting up, of course! :)

An extension of that, I think, is that on a personal level I've never met anyone who wasn't extremely supportive of breastfeeding - would I like a cushion, did I need a drink - and while I hear horror stories about people ordered out of restaurants or shops for bfing, it's the polar opposite of what I've encountered in 2+ years of feeding everywhere.
Sometimes I wonder if it's because there's a strong immigrant/peasant tradition here, and the scramble to be middle-class that involved using formula in the 60-80s in Britain didn't do it the same way over here? But then, their birth process is highly medicalized (everyone sees an OB-GYN and has a baby in the hospital) .. oh, I don't know! Everyone's Irish/Italian grandma breastfed over here, and most women do for at least the first 6-12 weeks. Many then switch to formula, but many also pump. I was lucky to work somewhere that had designated lactation rooms, with fridges, magazines, somewhere to plug your pump, etc. If I were being cynical I would say that lactation/pumping support is a damn sight cheaper and easier for companies than maternity leave, but it DOES work.
Also, I think the internet makes a difference. My mum didn't breastfeed, few of her friends did, and she had no idea that, for example, cluster-feeds happened. My sister and sisters-in-law all did and so gave me useful and supportive advice, and then I had people like tiktok helping me out, even just by reassuring me 'this IS normal!' on the MN feeding boards.
And when I was looking for a doctor for my children (rather than a GP, they go to a pediatrician), I searched online for one that the local LLL called breastfeeding-knowledgeable and breastfeeding supportive. And he really is - lovely chap, his wife fed theirs for ages, was able to diagnose breast thrush etc. Which my UK GP couldn't do. But the internet gave me that power to find out, which my mother's generation just didn't have. They all did what the doctor said, automatically.

Definitely the internet has been a god send I only discovered parenting sites when my eldest was a few weeks old but they definitely help getting breast feeding advice. It must be really difficult going back to work so early we only had 5 months paid leave on my first but we could take un paid leave as well which was not so bad but 12 weeks is god awful. I was still struggling with getting feeding off the ground at 12 weeks with all ds problems I think I would have lost it if that coincided with heading back to work.