AIBU to think ff babies sleep better than bf babies?

[Scrumptiouscrumpets]

It seems blatantly obvious to me that ff babies sleep better than bf babies. Just take a look at the sleep board on here, the bad sleepers under a year old are more or less all bf (and many of the older ones too!). Yet nobody officially seems to acknowledge this, all bf info I can find on the Internet states that bf mums actually get more sleep than ff mums because it takes more time to make up a bottle etc. Well maybe that's true during the first three months but definitely not later on when the ff babies start sleeping in long stretches while the bf babies start to wake more and more often!
I have a 4 month old who is ebf and I love bf, but I am seriously considering switching to formula.
Am I just imagining things? Are all these bf blogs right and bf mums actually get more sleep?

My kid slept well for the first 6 months with breastfeeding and pretty well when I switched to formula (cutting teeth is the only thing that really makes an impact).

The only real difference I've noticed is an individual formula feed is quicker for me (10 mins in the night compared with 45 for a BF)

DD was exclusively breastfed and slept 7pm-6:30am by 14 weeks.

DNephew was mixed fed and still woke in the night a lot until he was 18+ months.

DS was also ebf and didn't sleep through the night at all until way beyond 12 months and in fact woke most nights until he was five YEARS old.

True. It's the worst kept secret of parenting.

Also (and I realise that this doesn't apply to siblings who were treated the same way), there tends to be a different pre ting emphasis from parents who formula feed from the start and those who breast feed until much older. More ff parents will sleep train from an early age and put the baby in their own room from day one, than bf parents.
Yes I know this is a generalisation but I think it is true. Bf mothers tend on the whole to tolerate night waking a bit more, perhaps because it is easier to get them to sleep with a feed and also perhaps because they don't have a dummy they are more likely to wake.
Yes yes I know - not true in all cases, but I would say indicative of a trend...

Pre ting = parenting

My ff baby slept great. My bf was a nightmare, he also had reflux, then pneumonia at 10 months (the whole year was pretty bad).

I don't believe FF parents are more likely to do CC than BF parents, thats just a thinly veiled dig that FF parents do things a 'harsher' way.

Formula does fill them up more......this makes them sleep deeper.......which increases the risk of cot death. Why would you want to feed your baby so much they go past the light sleep designed by nature to keep our babies safe? And I've fed a baby each way. Yes the formula fed baby slept better, no I wouldn't formula feed again just for that!

True for me. My FF was sleeping 10-5 by 10 weeks and is even now (aged 4) an amazing sleeper.

He was express fed from day 3 to 6 weeks, mix fed 6-8 weeks and we moved 100% to FF in week 8.

BF child has never gone more than 6 hours and she is now two

Maybe it was nothing to do with how theye were fed but to me it's been completely true, FF baby slept better. Saying that I'm still feeding my 2yo and have never been tempted to FF her so it's not the be all and end all.

I thought they probably did. I changed to ff earlier than I planned to because I thought she was hungry and very unsettled (in hindsight she was fine, gaining weight etc and feeding wasn't painful)

I ended up with a ff baby who still didn't sleep. Well over 12 months before sleeping through even occasionally ie once or twice a month if that .

Second time round I carried on with bf. That one didn't sleep either but I knew it wasn't the food.

Littledragon I wasn't really aware of the problem with bottle feeding bf babies because DS1 took a bottle at 7 months corrected age, when he hadn't had one for 5 months. I did give DS2 a bottle occasionally in the beginning but then stupidly left a 3 week break when he was 6 weeks old, and he's since then been completely unpredictable with the bottle.

Aren't you eventually supposed to cut out formula at night anyway for dental health?

Breastmilk is just as bad for teeth as formula.

The bottle may make them sleep longer than they would have done but of course we don't know how they would have slept with a different feeding choice.

My worst sleeper was the one who had the least amount of time breastfeeding but if he had remained breastfeeding he may have slept even less.

I don't think the sleeping longer and deeper is necessarily a good thing, as other posters have said, BF is linked with a reduced risk for SIDS, whether that is linked with sleep length and death - I don't know.

I suspect co sleeping is more common alongside breastfeeding and that definitely helps with sleep although it can bring its own SID risk if not done correctly.

Depends on the baby. I have 2 DDs, similar birth weights, same house/nursery for both, same routine. EBF both, DD1 to 15 months, DD2 just stopped at 20 months.

DD1 took teeny amounts, faffed about and needed a lot of support to go to sleep. DD2 glugged it down and immediately passed out for 4 hours. Both started sleeping 6.30-6.30 at 10 months.

They both also had a dummmy and a lovey and a strict bedtime routine. We also never took them out of their bedroom once put to bed, all cuddles and feeds were done on their room in the dark, in the cot where possible when soothing them. I think all this was far more of an influence than where their milk came from

Both of mine BF for 2 weeks then onto formula.
Baby 1, sleeping through by 8 weeks. Self settling. Perfect.
Baby 2, constant waking, no self settling. Still up through the night at almost 2. Little sod

I think it's the baby!

Purple fizz, not a dig at all. My opinion is that in general that is the trend between different parents.
I didn't say cc, I said sleep training - which can be done gently as far as I am aware. I didn't do it myself but in any case who is to say it's harsher (I make no judgements either way - actually undecided myself) - sleep is very important for health and development and a few nights of gentle sleep training may be more beneficial. (Again I don't make judgements I am merely suggesting other reasons).

From my experience I would say it is the case, but of course there will be excellent breastfed sleepers and poor sleeping FF babies.
I have breastfed my DC to 15 months and DC2 is now 11 months and I'm still going. They've both been appalling sleepers. DC1 started to have 'blocks' of sleep longer than an hour or two at 9 months. It is a very recent thing for my 11 month old.
My friends/acquaintances who have FF have all got Baby into a routine early days, given a big feed at night and have to wake their baby in a morning.
It has made me want to quit BF but DC1 was allergic to formula and the GP just told me to carry on despite the fact it was making him very ill. Luckily I still had some milk supply and could carry on breastfeeding.
I do have VERY large and hungry babies though.

kellymom.com/ages/older-infant/tooth-decay/ breastmilk is not as bad for teeth as formula. Plus feeding helps reduce the risk of wonky teeth.

Babies are bloody exhausting, however you feed them.

hmmm
untrue.

I have 3 kids.
the eldest was formula fed. he was a terrible sleeper. Still is.
the middle one was mixed-fed (some boob, some bottle). He was a good sleeper with only 2 wakes a night. He still wakes at least once.
the youngest is breast fed. She sleeps wonderfully, only 2 wakes.

it's down to each kid's physiology and needs, not what you've fed them!

Well my experience and the people met back this theory up also. Plus alot of the sleep threads are from people having to bf stupid numbers of times a night on babies and toddlers who are more than old enough to go more time than they do.

You couldn't pay me enough to ever attempt to bf again.

However I do realise my small sample is by no means definitive and even if it was backed up no one would say as bf is obviously etter for the child nutritionally.

Ff fine of course though

Untrue, my friend who's DS was born a couple of weeks after my DD was formula fed, I breastfed and ours were equally shit sleepers! Every baby is different and it doesn't matter how they were fed. Out of my NTC group of 7 about 4 were good sleepers and they were all breastfed

Untrue, my friend who's DS was born a couple of weeks after my DD was formula fed, I breastfed and ours were equally shit sleepers! Every baby is different and it doesn't matter how they were fed. Out of my NTC group of 7 about 4 were good sleepers and they were all breastfed

oh, and all 3 were fed on demand, and none of them were thumb-suckers nor had a dummy

I don't know. Breastfeeding babies feed for comfort at night, not just food, and I'd imagine breastfeeding mums are less likely to use a dummy, so maybe those all contribute to babies waking a little bit more.

In my experience though (which is anecdotal and not scientific) the two of my friends in my antenatal group that formula fed had babies with awful colic for the first couple of months and had a bad time with sleep. Their babies do sleep a lot more than the others now though and the mums share the night feeds. One friend was mix feeding and the colic went when she stopped bottle feeding.

Sleep isn't a good enough reason for me to formula feed though - no matter how many people suggested it when ds was going through a bad sleeping phase just before Christmas.

Breastmilk isn't as bad for teeth. It's actually preventative on clean teeth, it can be very corrosive when food remnants are present though. Plus a breast doesn't keep dripping after the baby stops sucking so you don't get nursing bottle caries.

I'm not a fan of the term bad habits for things like feeding to sleep. They are habits yes. Bad is subjective. Unwanted would be better if you're trying to express that you want to reduce reliance on them?

I had lactation failure with my dd so had to switch to formula. She didn't sleep through until she was 2.5 and never napped in the day for longer than 20 minutes. She had colic. I think it very much depends on the baby, not the way it is fed. I'm 38+5 this time and hoping breastfeeding works. What I did last time didn't so I'm trying the opposite. I can totally understand why the op is tempted to try formula when breast isn't working.