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.

Breastfed both of mine for years - one slept, one didn't.

My one who was bottle fed has always been the most difficult sleeper. My bf one was sleeping through a bit at 3/4 months and then relatively consistently from just before 2. He never had a bottle, not even of expressed milk. My bottle fed one never slept through until about 3.5.

I did everything exactly the same in terms of approaches to sleep, etc. I think it’s a personality thing. My bf one was more chilled and a better sleeper from birth. I think probably because he was easier, it was easier to bf him.

settle seems a bit of a ridiculous comparison to me..young children wake for all sorts of reasons and may need comfort for any number of things. not ideal but I'd rather my child be comforted and feel safe even if it does mean sometimes my sleep may get interrupted. not coming first is something you sign up for when you become a parent surely

I do think there is a correlation, and the research backs this up from what I recall.

For my two, my first was FF and woke up less times in the night, but often was awake for longer. Or at least a few times a week would be up for a few hours overnight. Was still having a bottle in the night until about 15m.

My bf baby wakes up a lot more, and obviously the wake ups are on me, rather than shared, but the tend to be quick feeds and back to sleep most of the time.

YABU
No breastfeeding mom is going to come on MN and start a post to tell everyone their baby sleeps through the night. People will only post if they need guidance! Not if things are going well!

Breastfeeding is the natural and default way for babies to feed. Why aren't you asking "AIBU to think that babies who are formula fed wake abnormally little?" (Whether there are actual stable differences is a whole other question.)

Great point

the research backs this up from what I recall

Research on this kind of thing is going to be done retrospectively and by self-reporting, which is never that reliable. Parents will have a vast range of what they think is "a lot" of night time waking, what they even class as "waking" (eg I would say my son "slept through" from quite young, because he wasn't awake, but breastfeeding several times in the night in his sleep), or even forgetting how many times their baby woke.

It's not disputed that formula is harder to digest than breast milk though, so that may be a contributing factor.

I've only one child. He was EBF and slept through the night from about 5 weeks.

I tend not to post this sort of thing because it understandably annoys parents of babies who don't sleep well.

But I recall telling the HV who was still making visits that I was waking him up for a feed at 2:00 am and she was "Don't wake him up! FGS let him sleep!"

I left him to it and just got up and expressed, so we had lots of frozen breast milk that DH could bottle feed him with (he took bottles just fine as well, sorry). I was more comfortable in the morning, if I didn't express in the night I'd be overflowing and in discomfort. So it worked out well for us.

And when I say he slept through, I mean he didn't wake up at all until morning, about 6 am. Fine for us as DH was getting up at that time anyway.

"there are loads of posters on here with 5,6 ,7 even 10 year olds waking their parents up regularly in the night. I think that is completely ridiculous."

My 14 year old still keeps us awake for hours every night. He was formula fed so that proves that formula feeding causes children to be awake during the night.

I’ve had friends with excellent sleepers that were breastfed and bottle fed and vice versus but I think all my friends with the absolute worst sleepers were breastfed first babies. I think it is perhaps easier to get stuck on feeding to sleep and sleep associations which are harder to sort with breastfeeding. That doesn’t include those with cmpa who all just had a crap time regardless of feeding.

Many of my friends with awful first sleepers have amazing sleeping second babies regardless of feeding method because they set up different habits from the start. As an example. I formula fed both of mine but baby no.1 only slept on me for naps. Baby no.2 was in the cot as I just couldn’t have done what I did for no.1 One of my friends (both children breastfed) )had a horrendous time with baby no.1 with interrupted nights until the age of 3. Baby no.2 was sleep trained early and slept through from 5m.

Mine were breast fed and both slept regularly for 8 hours after last feed at around 10.30 pm when they were around 8 weeks old. I think babies are all different. The trouble with mine was they never did go to bed early! They never needed more than 10 hours sleep! Even as toddlers and children.

I EBF and yes, babies digest breast milk faster, and so they are hungrier sooner. So they will wake more at night when they are very little ones.

Aside from growth spurts, when he might wake once, son slept through 7 til 5 (IIRC) from 5 months. But he was one of those babies who would feed, story, then sleep.

What might add to the problem is that women who EBF often sleep in the same room with the baby. We couldn't do this from 5 months onwards, so I don't think it is coincidence that he began sleeping through from then - literally from the first night in his own room. The disturbance of others in the room, maybe even the smell of breastmilk on mum, might encourage wakefulness? I dunno. I don't think it is all about being hungry though.

My first was bottle fed and second was breast fed but they were both sleeping through the night by six months and generally easy in the sleep department. Both had dummies. The breastfed child lost interest in breastfeeding relatively early and was only having a feed at night before bed by the time he was sixteen months, but never asked for it. He seemed a bit bored of it so was very easy to wean. Maybe other babies enjoy it for longer, I don’t know!

Nope. Bottle-fed mine - awake every 2 hours for the first 6 months, then every 3 hours for the next two years.

There’s no correlation at all.

Nope both of mine were bottlefed and both crap sleepers.

Wow, I can't believe how many comments are on here.

Clearly an emotive subject, and looks like I'm probably mistaken then. It does happen to anyone, regardless of how their babies are fed.

Thanks everyone.

my youngest slept through when i brought him home from hospital at about 4 days old and he was breastfed - he has always been very laid back even in the womb. i used a dummy with all of them , as they really just wanted to suck on something.

I don't think there is any correlation at all.

Both mine were breastfed, ds slept through from 8 weeks and dd from 10 weeks.

Breastfed both mine and first was a good sleeper, second took longer but also slept well after 3 months. I woke them before I went to bed and had a sleepy feed then slept through.
I think it is routine (consistent and strict at night, though I never left my babies to cry) and luck.

My bf children started sleeping longer at night when I stopped feeding them at night, but also their sleep was totally different - one was self settling after a couple of months, the other was up every two hours.

TheNoodles don’t apologise for your baby being a sleeper

My DC have all slept through once they stopped BF. Youngest is 19 months still BF and still doesn't sleep through usually.

I wonder if it's anything to do with breastfeeding being the biological norm and babies not sleeping being the biological norm? Babies don't sleep through as a protection from SIDS. It's safer for a baby under 1year to wake through the night.

This is not at all a formula bashing post btw my second child was only BF for 2 days.

Both of mine were BFed. DS1 started off with fairly normal feeding patterns and increased sleep until we could get a 5/6/7 hour block until he got to 5m... In desperation at being woken every 2 hours (including feeding time awake) we tried formula. He accepted it the first night then never, ever accepted it again. He broke out with excema over his entire body. We started weaning. He still woke for feeds multiple times per night. It was easier in the early days when it was more expected, when I wasn't so ground down by over a year of inadequate sleep (most of pregnancy), when the world wasn't telling me that he should be sleeping through by now and that he was just using my milk for comfort.

It was CMPA.
He did need me and my milk to settle his digestive system. Any non-prescription formula would have made him very ill.

DS2 I don't really remember. I did master co-sleeping and letting him feed with minimal disruption to me
When I RTW when he was 10m, he refused to drink any milk not from source and he caught up out of hours including in the night and I did call it game over on night feeds at 18m.

The convenience of BFing made the night feeds more tolerable. DS1 would have struggled anyway.

Hell yeah
And I BF both mine