To blame extended bf for poor sleeping

[3mma35]

Posting here for traffic and opinions!

I have two DC. Eldest DC is a poor sleeper, the other, by comparison to eldest DC, is great. However in comparison to other children they’ve never settled easily and they like plenty of bedtime cuddles.

Both were exclusively breastfed to 6 months followed by extended breastfeeding.

The only other mum I know IRL that did this also has children who take (a lot!) ‘more’ settling.

Left me wondering if perhaps our children are actually normal but in a minority because exclusive extended breastfeeding is rare in the UK.

YABU - it’s just poor sleep
YANBU - feeding style has an impact on sleep

Extended breastfeeding to me would be past at least 4-5 years. Most women I know breastfed to 2+ years, probably more at night. The longest in my close circle was to 7 years but they called it natural term breastfeeding. I have three friends currently breastfeeding children of 5 years plus. Maybe I am an anomaly.

I only breastfed two of my dc but both to different ages and I have a bottle fed “control”

The ‘regular term’ (?!) breastfed Dc was the worst sleeper. Breastfed to around 15 months, didn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time until 5 years and did the first 8 hour stretch at 7.5years.

The bottle fed from birth DC was the second worst, sleeping 6 hours here and there by 2 but took to 3 to get to 8 hours.

The longest breastfed DC was the best sleeper as they were only waking once a night by 8 months and continued that for a long time but actually once was OK..l.in fact we were thanking our lucky stars by that point…

I latest i ever breastfed was about 20-21 months and I feel like it was far too early to stop and I took something away from them. I still feel sad when I think about it.

From my own anecdata I feel like it’s the other way round and you bf longer because they’re poor sleepers. DC1 was sleeping through from 8mo and I stopped bf at 13 months once I was back at work full time. DC2 only ever woke once per night but didn’t sleep through until about 16mo and that’s when I stopped bf. DC3 woke every 2 hours until she magically slept through at 18mo by which point I packed my boobs away for the last time! I wouldn’t say you’ve made a rod for your own back, I think you are deploying nature’s baby sleep aid! It’s not always easy though. Having lived somewhere where extended bf and cosleeping were the norm people had different expectations about how babies are “supposed” to behave so maybe not comparable.

Really interesting conversation - got my own thread going at the moment of how my BF DS seems to be a worse sleeper than his (mainly FF) peers.

I feed to sleep. I feel maybe this makes it worse. I don’t know.

My middle guy basically slept in my bed for a year and then we did sleep training. He was also attached to my boob for 12 months. He now gets himself to sleep the best. My youngest was a little dream. Extended feeding but was never as attached. Didn't really co sleep. Sleep trained around a year and fairly self sufficient now. My eldest was a Gina ford dream sleeper baby. Formula fed and woke and fed and slept like clockwork. Always a slightly early riser. He's 6 now and a night owl. He'll be away another 45 mins I imagine and will either be up at 6.30 (non school day- or 7.15 school day) so my 5 year old extended feeder who coslept is doing great- I will say we coslept in the night, he was always put to bed in his cot, albeit fed to sleep sometimes.

Fwiw, I breastfed all three of mine until age 4. Absolutely amazing sleepers! All super confident, got to sleep easily on or off boob (despite being boobie monsters otherwise!). I seem to have quite a high percentage of friends and family who did EBF and none of them had issues either. Tbh, I suspect it has very little to do with it and more to do with the individual child, the activities you do during the day, bedtime routine, and a whole host of other things, because you will find a huge amount of anecdotal 'evidence' for and against either way.

Both my 2 have been pretty bad sleepers. DS1 especially. DS1 was breastfed way beyond a year and I hope to feed DS2 that long, ideally to 2 years.

DS1’s sleep improved substantially within days of night weaning him. We’ve just started the process of gently breaking the feed/sleep association with 8 month old DS2 and improvements are already clear. I’ve had friends doing all the types of feeding (direct BF, feeding EBM via a bottle, combi feeding, EFF) and the direct BF babies, have, most definitely, been a lot worse without sleep training than the others.

From observation, friends who bottle fed had to work much harder to develop strategies to get their babies to sleep in the early days as they couldn’t just whack a boob out at every hint of upset. I suspect that’s why, beyond 6-12 months, bottle fed babies sleep better on average than their BF counterparts. They’ve just had a lot more practice at independent sleep and self soothing. They never developed the feed/sleep association in the first place.

read the title and wondered what an extended boyfriend was😂

DS was bottle fed from like 1 week, he's nearly 3, only just getting a handle on his sleep, he now only wakes twice a night on a good night, 4 on a bad. He needs cuddles to sleep, and is a very cuddly kid. Loves sitting on your lap twidling your hair. Every other moment he's running round like a loon so ill take the cuddle time tbh

I think it's just who they are as people, he likes cuddling, some kids don't really care for it.

@MummyFriend
totally get there will be anecdotal ‘evidence’ either way, (or anecdata - that’s a new one for me!) that’s pretty much why I started the thread to hear other experiences as I felt mine was quite limited and I think it’s great to share and learn.

Although if someone came along with links to studies that would also be very interesting!

If you don’t mind me asking, as you have a high percentage of friends and family who
ebf do you think you potentially had a different shared definition of poor sleep / sleeping issues?

@Aozora13
that’s an interesting viewpoint, I hadn’t thought that you bf longer because they are poor sleepers.

Mine- 15 months, is a terrible sleeper, wakes at least every 2 hours and always has done since about 4 months! We Cosleep, bf and he is always waking up looking for milk/ comfort. He will certainly wake up if I’m out of the bed for too long and I have to mission impossible style my way out of the bed if I need the toilet in the night. It’s difficult. I’ve set myself up horribly for many years ahead haven’t I 🤣😭

Also to add absolutely a big fan of the magic boob here! First time DC1 fell over after I’d weaned him I felt so helpless and bewildered I shouted for my own Mum to help me! 😂

I think if extended bf means nursing in the night for a long time, yes, it does create poor sleepers. That was my experience with my own kids anyway, it was only after I made the switch to insisting on no more night nursing that their sleep patterns stopped them being up multiple times a night.

However, they did all become good sleepers after that.

I'm not sure how you'd study it though as defining sleeping through or a good sleeper is so subjective!

I've seen one friend tell people in a FB group that her EBF pre-schooler sleeps really well and they're well rested. She goes to bed with them for 12 hours every night co-sleeping and BFing on and off but manages to fit in sleep around that. But most families aren't set up for the mum to spend 50% of every 24 hours for years in bed!

And others reassure in groups that the baby will sleep through eventually or will get to sleep on their own when I know from conversation with them that they woke multiple times per night for years (it's usually at least four years!) and the kid is still a nightmare to get to bed at eight or nine. But that's their "normal" and they're used to not having an evening.

I did extended breastfeeding with my 1st (14 months), 2nd (18 months), 3rd (nearly 2 years) and 5th (2 years 3 months) and bottle fed my 4th from birth (expressed milk for 5 months, then formula). My 4th was the best sleeper by miles. All my others were bad sleepers but 3rd and 5th were the worst and still don't sleep through the night.

I did ebf with my 2 sons. My daughter I just did for 6 months as she started biting me and laughing when I cried out in pain. None of mine were good sleepers.

Both my kids were equally horrific sleepers. DD1 was ff from 6 weeks old and dropped milk over night at 13 months but DD was ebf and continued to feed until she was 3 1/2 yrs old. Neither slept through until they were over 3 years old.

I bf Dd until she was 3. She was a horrific sleeper until 18 months where I did a gentle sleep training with her and since then (she’s now 7) she’s slept brilliantly 7pm-6am consistently unless she’s ill.

i breastfed both my girls (no bottles at all) u til 2.5 years old. My son has been ff since 4 weeks old. Girls were waking every hour for 2 solid years! My son has slept through the night since he was about 10 weeks old. Because of my experience i feel ff babies are more settled which adds to the convenience of formula..however i don't think babies are meant to sleep through, it's not the biological norm, and still believe breastfeeding is best for a child nutritionally.

I have the extensive experience of one child, lol. Exclusively breastfed for 20 months, she self weaned. Slept through the night between 8 weeks and 4 months. Woke up 2-6 times per night until 10 months, when we changed from co sleeping to her own room where to slept through every night after the first week. So, no I not think breastfeeding has anything to do with sleep and settling from my experience.

I combi fed my first due to him being in NICU when first born. I bf for the first 6 months then just switched completely to formula. He was a terrible sleeper.
I ebf my second fir 15 months - bottle refuser. She generally slept through from about 8 months, but even before then she would feed very effectively during the night and self settled very early on.
I didn't co-sleep with either. IMO that doesn't help with sleep when moving them to their own beds/rooms.
But ultimately, it all depends on the child, not the method of feeding.

I don't think it helps to frame it as feeding choice= sleep behaviour to be honest.
The problem is that some people find a book they liked, followed a rigid method and then think that parents who don't find things easy/babies are a little more fussy/babies who nurse in the night are only in that situation due to inferior parenting.

Most of the time parents are responding to their baby's needs and babies are different.

Mine loved being in a sling. Some of my friends' babies hated it and would only nap in a cot. Neither of us was right or wrong. We were doing what was right for our babies.

Possibly controversially I think too many parents get hung up on the idea that a "good" baby should behave like clockwork and not put too many demands on their parents. It means when babies don't do that parents think they're the ones doing something wrong, which makes them feel rubbish. The best thing about parents feeling rubbish is you can sell them books, resources, services, and products to 'fix' things.

If when breastfeeding you use breastfeeding to try and solve every issue, including every night wake up, then yes, extended breastfeeding may well equal 'poor' sleep. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, although I personally would have found that too difficult/draining.

Breastfed both DC, first to 15 months (they chose to stop), and 18 months (I chose to stop). but both were used to feeding before their night time story and by just over a year were down to 1 feed a day. So their Dad going into them to settle, or put them into their cot for the night wasn't an issue.

I don't blame a sleep deprived mum for doing the easiest thing, especially if there isn't a hands on partner to help out, but I do think it can make things harder long term. Saying that, the 2 pre schoolers who I know that don't sleep through the night were both bottle fed. But I don't think that is BECAUSE they were bottle fed.

I think it is a shame though, as I think some very tired mothers are put off of breastfeeding, or think a bottle will solve their sleep problems, but it certainly is possible to both breastfeed and sleep (past the newborn stage).

I don't like the "poor" sleeper thing because I think it's a bit judgemental and implies you should have done something to prevent it/should fix it when really it will sort itself out on its own even if you don't.

Anecdotally, I live in Germany and there doesn't seem to be this expectation for children to be sleeping through the night by 4/6 months old, and there is sort of an expectation you'll still be breastfeeding up to around 2 years at least. When I started my youngest in childcare at 16 months they asked how he gets to sleep at home, I said I breastfeed him, braced myself for judgement but they didn't react - it was a normal thing, and wasn't a problem for them. They either got him to nap in a buggy or they would sit with him while he fell asleep. After a few months he got the routine and would go off on his own. Likewise when I worked retail and I went in tired and explained to my colleagues I had been up at night with my 2 year old, they weren't surprised by this, it seemed totally normal to them, even the younger ones who hadn't had children yet.

Paediatrician is not worried either and when the youngest had a bit of a flat head on one side he advised us to alternate sides in the cot, I said we have a cosleeper-cot so he can only be one way up and he said aaah OK then just make sure you always hold him or put him down facing the opposite way, during the daytime.

Looking at German parenting websites, the discussion about sleep is worded differently - there is an article with suggested ways to help babies/toddlers fall asleep "When the breast no longer works" and I found one which referred to "bad sleep associations" as being carrying the baby, or sleeping only in a moving car or pushchair, or a baby who likes to pinch or pull hair to comfort themselves. Bedsharing, rocking or feeding to sleep didn't seem to feature in the list of things to avoid. In fact they list sucking as a positive association but suggest a dummy if you don't want to feed them to sleep. The health info site suggests that sleeping "through the night" is usually possible by 12 months but cautions this means a 6-hour stretch. Whereas the NHS states babies "may no longer need" night feeds at 6 months.

I did feel that there was a judgement/expectation in the UK but I might be out of date because the baby that I had in the UK is 15 now. Like a lot of my NCT friends wanted to wean at 4 months to try and get their babies to sleep through, and it was met with great pity if your baby wasn't sleeping by 8/9 months and past a year? Well then the judgement was clear that something was very badly wrong. I spent a lot of time in attachment parenting circles, both online and offline, which ran counter to this and it was a bit confusing with the lurching from one attitude to another!