Nap time

[SchofeTee]

Help! This lockdown is stopping me speaking to other mums who are exclusively breastfeeding.

My baby is 12 weeks old and is exclusively breast fed but I'm just not getting enough sleep. He hates sleeping in the day so when it comes to naps there is no routine it is just go with the flow. I go for walks with the carrier and manage to get boob naps here and there. But I can spend ages walking him up and down and getting him to sleep for him to just wake up as soon as I put him down. At night he goes down like a dream after the night time routine. But I seem to get 3.5 hours as the longest stretch.

Night before last he went 5.5 hours for the first stretch and I thought we had turned a corner but tonight we're back to 3.5 hours. So my question is, are there any other mums who persevered with exclusive BF and got their little ones to sleep for longer stretches at night? Should I really consider a bottle of formula at night even though it eliminates their "virgin gut"?

If there's a light at the end of the tunnel i will persevere but if it's like this the entire time I might need a change. I'm a single mum who needs sleep!

You're not going to like my response but DD napped on me until she was about two and I just watched TV or played on my phone.

She slept through from about 7 months when she went to two naps, morning and afternoon. She had 3 hours between so I got her ready for a nap 3 hours after she woke up in the morning then lunch when she woke then afternoon nap 3 hours later. Bed time ended up being about 13 or 14 hours after she woke up and I was a slave to it til she went to one nap in the afternoon at about 18 months and we did more in the morning.

It gets better. I promise. It really does, but babies whether breastfed or bottle fed will change day on day.
I was a single mum with my first and yes it was hellish. I was isolated and alone (I lived in a city where i knew no one, it was like a lockdown). But it did get better. 12 weeks is so short even when it feels awful and long. I'm sorry it's so hard. But introducing a bottle won't necessarily be the panacea you need it to be.

I remember drinking a couple of glasses of wine (not giving a damn at that point and hallucinating from lack of sleep) and my baby fell asleep for like 8 hours. I think it was a lucky coincidence but I totally freaked out.