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 also think as mat leave is now a year, those that dont need to hurry back to work have less pressure to get the baby to sleep through the night. I needed to get back to work sooner so needed my baby to sleep through as soon as possible, otherwise I'd have been knackered and not be able to manage it. If you have a year off, theres not as much pressure and you might think "oh it's fine, I dont need to be up and out anywhere, I will give him that bottle". .

Formula fed babies sleep longer than naturally normal because their digestive systems can barely tolerate the formula. So it’s not that breast fed babies are awake “ridiculous amounts” during the night but rather that formula fed babies are unnaturally fatigued and in a food torpor.

Dc FF from birth

Able to establish a fab routine between us, and literally slept through from about 8 weeks.

Obviously as dc stomach could 'barely tolerate the formula'

"but rather that formula fed babies are unnaturally fatigued and in a food torpor."

Never heard such ridiculous nonsense. Babies are so content and dreamy after a formula feed, no different to breastfed babies...they arent unnaturally fatigued. What an awful thing to say. You've obviously swallowed the breastfed mantra good and proper there!!!

@PlanDeRaccordement

Don’t make silly comments.

@TabbyMumz

Totally agree. I’m a SAHM and my approach would have been so different if I had to go back to work

Never heard such ridiculous nonsense. Babies are so content and dreamy after a formula feed, no different to breastfed babies...they arent unnaturally fatigued. What an awful thing to say. You've obviously swallowed the breastfed mantra good and proper there!!!

You're missing the point, which is that this is actually a much more justifiable framing than the idea that breastfed babies wake "excessively". And with the established link between formula feeding and SIDS, there is some basis to say that formula fed babies do in fact sleep "unnaturally" deeply.

Both my DC were FF from 2 weeks old as I produced the square root of fuck all milk. DC2 is nearly six and still sometimes wakes in the night. Until she was four she was regularly still up four or five times a night. She just hated sleep. Conversely my friend's BF baby slept like a dream from four weeks.

@ChainsawBear

I think it’s the way the message was portrayed in a possibly unkind manner

I've got three children, all bottle fed. Two out of three are terrible sleepers. I genuinely think it's your luck.

I agree that it is the other way round if you're going to make this point. FF babies sleep unnaturally more because formula takes longer to digest. it also depends on the baby. not sure you intended to but you come across as if you are attributing a negative trait (lack of sleep) to breastfeeding. as another pp there is actually evidence to suggest breastfeeding can help against SIDS. not to panic people who are formula feeding though - there are other things you can do to avoid that risk too

lower the risk*

What's unkind about it? If you do believe or wish to argue that method of feeding determines how much a baby is up in the night, then the only biologically sensible framing is to say that formula feeding causes babies to sleep excessively and that they sleep more than is natural.

I bloody wish formula feeding caused my baby to sleep excessively!

Well excessive means 'more than is necessary or desirable', so I don't think sleeping 10 hours a night or whatever fits that definition.

There are scientific research papers on this - bottle fed babies do sleep more deeply than breastfed babies on average (and that, in theory should equate to less disturbed sleep). It is the theory behind the increased risk of SIDS in bottle fed babies. Deeper sleep = less likely to rouse themselves if there is a problem with temperature/breathing etc

Example source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/plc/article/PMC3982898/

I needed to get back to work sooner so needed my baby to sleep through as soon as possible, otherwise I'd have been knackered and not be able to manage it.
The babies don't know we need them to sleep through, though. Plenty of parents just have to be knackered and manage it, whether they're FFing or BFing.

@burritofan

No. You don’t have to just manage it.
If being knackered is affecting your ability to function and therefore putting your job at risk, then something needs to be done.

@Pentium85 Personally I'm not so knackered I can't manage. I'm disputing the idea that if you need your baby to sleep through, they will. Even sleep training isn't a failsafe cast-iron guarantee. So yeah, if your baby wakes up and you can't stop it, you do have to manage.

"The babies don't know we need them to sleep through, though. Plenty of parents just have to be knackered and manage it, whether they're FFing or BFing."

They do know when you stop feeding them in the night. Needs must and all that.

There's a reason sleep training is a bigger thing in the US, and it's because women there are often going back to work full time after three months and have very little in the way of paid time off or benefits, unless working generally for bigger international firms.

I have a middle ground approach to this, really. I think if it's manageable and isn't affecting your physical and emotional well-being, then wake-ups aren't any issue. But if you are struggling, if it's making you dangerous to drive, depressed, etc. then absolutely I think sleep training is an appropriate option. Not everyone's circumstances are the same. I can be indulgent about DD deciding to play between 4 and 6am this morning because I knew my DH would take her at 6 and I could get back to sleep for three hours and I also don't have to go to work. I can make that sleep up elsewhere. I might be less able to deal with it if neither of those things were the case and it happened every night.

Personally speaking, DD was breastfed to a year but we never co-slept and I stopped feeding her to sleep around 5mo. So it's not as simplistic as 'breastfed v not' because not every breastfed baby is co-sleeping and latching on multiple times a night. DD has always slept in her own cot and been happy to take a bottle of EBM, so my experience will be totally different to that of others.

They do know when you stop feeding them in the night. Needs must and all that.
Yesssss but as this thread has shown, night weaning - whether from breast or bottle - doesn't necessarily equate to sleeping through. Anecdata and all that but I was EBF, fully weaned by 13 months, and gave my parents merry hell til I was 7.