To think there is a correlation between babies that wake a ridiculous amount in the night and breastfeeding?

[toomuchpeppapig]

I've seen quite a few threads on here over the last year or so that I've been on here about babies who wake constantly in the night and will only feed to sleep etc. It seems that virtually all (if not all) of these babies are breastfed.

I bottle fed my 2 DCs and although my oldest has never been a great sleeper (now 16 months old), I don't remember him waking as much as many of these posts say. Is it because bottle fed babies sleep better or is it just coincidence?

NB - I have nothing against breastfeeding. I personally tried and failed, and my thinking is that fed is best. This isn't an anti breast feeding post. I'm just wondering if my thinking is correct.

I suspect that you get more people on here complaining about how frequently their babies wake if they are exclusively breastfed as the mother then cannot share the night wakings.
A formula fed baby can be waking just as frequently but if the parents are sharing the wakings then the mother will only have to deal with half the number that she would if she was breastfeeding. That’s probably a lot easier to cope with!
Obviously, plenty of parents don’t share wakings and some people are single but it will have an impact.

I think it's easier to pick up bad habits for independent sleep if you're breastfeeding. I never let dc1 fall asleep on the bottle but would regularly if not exclusively feed dc2 to sleep out of exhaustion. So the issue wasn't breastfeeding or milk so much as every time he'd wake thats how I'd settle him so he couldn't settle without it.

I think babies who aren't allowed to self settle and are rocked / fed to sleep are poor sleepers

I think 'self-settling' for babies is a cultural thing. It's not seen as a big deal in Italy and Italian kids also sleep through eventually!

My bf baby was a much better sleeper than my combi fed baby.

Also made the difference between night and day obvious, so lights would be dimmed, noises turned down, a story would be read and baby would be tucked in. Again that was from very early on, certainly from days old.
Of course those of us with bad sleepers have been keeping fluorescent lights on all night from the first day, blowing an air horn for every night feed, doing the conga at bedtime and hurling the baby on to a pile of cold Lego from days old, then wondering where we're going wrong. FFS. Should I not be using the vuvuzela as her white noise, or...?

I think babies who aren't allowed to self settle and are rocked / fed to sleep are poor sleepers. I also think it's distressing for them later when parents are struggling and try to implement 'sleep training'.
You've got your cause and effect the wrong way round. Poor sleepers need to be fed and rocked to sleep from birth. Good sleepers can naturally self settle from the get-go, or naturally go through the night from early on. (Though I agree sleep training is distressing and don't plan to do it, I'm just waiting for DD to grow out of her 8 million night wakings. Which happen despite making night/day obvious from day one.)

(Absolutely zero chance of bedtime stories and tucking the baby in from days old, what with being in hospital and then weeks and weeks of colicky evenings screaming the place down.)

I've wondered this. DC1 was a terrible sleeper from 4mo to 10 mo, at times waking hourly.
I stopped BF at night at about 13 months, stopping completely (i.e. his bedtime feed) at 14.5 months. Within a month, he was sleeping through 12 hours rather than waking 2/3 times which was his average when I stopped altogether.
I'm expecting DC2 now and wondering whether there is anything to be gained by not feeding to sleep i.e. feed, nappy, settle, rather than nappy, feed, sleep like I did with DC1. Or whether DC1s sudden sleeping well was developmental. I'm slightly anxious that DC2 will be the same as that 6 months of such broken sleep nearly broke me.

Mine was breastfed and slept through from birth, I don’t see how the method of feeding would really affect sleep patterns?

Fed is best? Fed- the alternative to starving? Well yeah fed is better than starving your child to death 🤷🏻‍♀️ By that logic you'd be better giving your baby McDonalds or dog food rather than nothing. Such a stupid line rolled out by people trying to make themselves feel better about not breastfeeding. You do you and try to justify why your choice was right...but the science shows breastfeeding is better than formula feeding. And as you can see from the responses there is no correlation between good and bad sleepers because of it.

Frequent waking is a normal evolutionary response. People have silly expectations of baby sleep patterns.
I’m EBF and bed sharing- the night are easy, just stick boob in as required and continue sleeping

I don’t think it’s true of small babies, but I do think frequent night waking seems to be a common problem for breastfed babies who aren’t night weaned once they get to about 9-12 months +. It’s a comfort thing, I think.

My EBF child was my far, far, far better sleeper. He is 4 now. His brother is 7 and was bottlefed from 2 weeks old. Dreadful sleeper and still is.

I am still breastfeeding 2.5 years on. DS slept through from birth.

I'm willing to admit I gave my daughter a couple of night feds, while she coslept, until she was 2.5 years. There would have been no way I would have got out of bed to get a bottle though... But quick 2-3 minute feed, it was easier than not feeding her. So it was probably laziness... But I hadn't had a full night's sleep since I was pregnant with her elder sister.

So I think the ease of breastfeeding Vs bottle feeding at night probably pays a part too.

Both my children were breastfed. My daughter slept through at 6 weeks and my son at 10 weeks.

Of course those of us with bad sleepers have been keeping fluorescent lights on all night from the first day, blowing an air horn for every night feed, doing the conga at bedtime and hurling the baby on to a pile of cold Lego from days old, then wondering where we're going wrong. FFS. Should I not be using the vuvuzela as her white noise, or...?

You joke but when my mum had DD overnight for the first few times she kept texting me how hard it was to get her to sleep in the evening. She was a pretty good sleeper overall so this surprised me, until I found out that my mum was skipping our soothing bedtime routine in a dimly lit room and trying to get her to sleep in the living room with all the lights on and the tv blaring Obviously not to blame for most bad sleepers but there’s clearly some that do it!

I think in the days of yore it might have been the case because on demand bf wasn't promoted and even bf babies were on routines. (I'm talking 30-40 years ago) I was bottle fed and apparently slept through from 8 days old.
DD was bf and slept through for the first time when she was 4.

But that's a sample anecdote of 2.

Maybe a slightly different way of looking at it... I breastfed DS1 until he was 3 (although he self night weaned at 2) and DS2 who is 7mo. I also co slept with them both. I have no idea when DS1 first 'slept through the night' as he would wake to feed several times a night, or not but I often slept through him waking and feeding and even if I did wake up enough to notice I wouldn't necessarily look at the time so his first feed could be 1am or 6am.

I got a Fitbit type watch for Xmas which tracks sleep and waking and it would say I woke 3 times (presumably as a response to DS waking to feed) but had no memories of waking. So if I don't remember waking and feeding, does it even count as a waking? They have obviously had the odd bad night and I've had trouble sleeping occasionally but I don't recognise the constant tiredness a lot of parents talk about.

Comparing this to people who bottle feed during the night who would have to fully get up, put light on etc to make a bottle, by which time the baby is fully awake and will take longer to settle back down.

My dc4 was bottle fed and my others were breastfed. Dc4 definitely slept for longer but he took longer to feed so I was up from 2-4am every night with him. With the others it was several times a night but not nearly as long.

It’s not that bottle fed babies sleep ‘better’ it’s that formula is harder to digest and their bodies are in a deeper sleep due to trying to digest it.
We seem to be stuck in a way, thinking that babies should sleep in the same way adults do/want to ie all night but their stomachs are tiny

Babies are meant to wake frequently especially when very young. Breastfeeding reduces the risk of sids

Another thing I've noticed from giving DD bottles - when bf if she woke at night i was in her room within a minute feeding her. Going and boiling a kettle to warm a bottle of EBM takes at least 5 minutes, by which time quite often she has actually gone back off.

'Also made the difference between night and day obvious, so lights would be dimmed, noises turned down, a story would be read and baby would be tucked in. Again that was from very early on, certainly from days old. '
Of course those of us with bad sleepers have been keeping fluorescent lights on all night from the first day, blowing an air horn for every night feed, doing the conga at bedtime and hurling the baby on to a pile of cold Lego from days old, then wondering where we're going wrong. FFS. Should I not be using the vuvuzela as her white noise, or...?

this reminds me of when a few people a knew whose children talked early seemed to attribute it to the fact that they talked to their children all the time so that's how they were so verbal. What did they think I was doing with my son? Sitting in silence with him all day. When DS walked early I was tempted to say 'well that's just because he sees me walking around all the time🤷🏻‍♀️ '

It's only ridiculous if you regard waking at night as something wrong that needs to be fixed.

I co-slept and nursed during the night (I was working full time so that's when they caught up with their breast milk). Sure, it was tiring, but I didn't regard it as ridiculous, more just what they needed at that time in their lives.
They got there in the end.

My twins were formula fed, I couldn’t breastfeed as they were premature and my milk never really came in. DS usually a brilliant sleeper and has been from the off. Until around 13mo I had to deal with multiple wakes with DD. So I don’t know that it’s a BF thing, but I will say that when I pumped what little I could for the first few weeks of my DTwins life I was far more exhausted than when we had to move onto formula! That’s probably because my twins were in NICU at the time though (though one of their nurses did say that breastfeeding was exhausting for her too).

YANBU
I do find the threads re: bf toddlers waking 5/6 times in the night mind boggling, and the people who refuse to sleep train and still co sleep with their 4 year olds....both of whom are usually asking for advice they inevitably wont take.

In my case I think my kids would have slept longer stretches if I bottle fed, because I need my sleep and always chose the easy option to get them back to sleep quickly. It is so easy to bf in a dozy state / cosleeping whereas getting up in the night to prepare a bottle wakes me up. Regularly I thought “dc doesn’t need a feed but I’m tired so I’ll just do it quickly”, and then my dc got used to feeding every few hours.

So yes, but it’s not the method of feeding the baby, it’s the attitude/lifestyle of whoever feeds the baby.