Please tell me how you cope with breastfeeding at night...

[gaelicsheep]

.. because I'm not coping at all. For the past couple of weeks, DD has had a bottle of formula at night and I can see that rapidly turning into two bottles. I am just so tired for much of the day and night that I cannot function. I cannot get comfortable breastfeeding in bed and I am finding feeding at night to be absolute torture. If I try I usually end up in tears with sheer tiredness and frustration (DD is not an easy feeder) and begging DH to make up a bottle. I've tried feeding lying down and it just doesn't work with DD's latching issues.

I don't understand why I'm so tired. I barely slept at all for the last two months of pregnancy and I was never this knackered, so it can't just be sleep deprivation. DH takes DD in the mornings anyhow to let me sleep so I'm not sure I'm that sleep deprived.

How do other women cope with breastfeeding at night, or with breastfeeding fatigue full stop? Is it like this for everyone? DD's 5 weeks tomorrow btw.

Congrats on your DD.

It is exhausting and relentless at first but honestly does get much easier quite soon.

I was so tired I felt I could fall asleep walking down the road.

I honestly know how you feel, as do a lot of people on this board I would think! I ebf twins who both had latching problems and I felt exactly the same as you, lots of tears 'throwing' babies across the bed at DH, not comfortable, couldn't latch lying down etc etc.

In your last couple of months of pregnancy it's quite possible that you were getting more sleep than you thought, now you know you are not getting sleep!

Can you express? For those terrible feeds that had me in tears I would give a bottle of expressed milk (usually at night) rather than struggle on which would have us all in tears.

It will get better, I promise! It seems like a phase that you are stuck in forever, but if you can persevere things will get easier and easier. Then the first time you get 4 hours sleep at once you know you've cracked it and you'll feel like a new woman

One word. Co-sleep. It is the only way I coped (and still cope) with DS's incessant feeding at night.

I feed sitting up with lots of pillows cause I couldn't get the hang of feeding lying down either but once he is asleep I shift him to the side and go back to sleep. When he wakes up for a feed again in 2-3hrs I pick him up (half asleep) and latch him on (no longer need to switch light on but did in the early days) and doze while he feeds. It wasn't easy to begin with but now I find that I sleep more than I feed most nights and I make sure that DH takes DS for an hour or so in the mornings before going to work so that I can at least get some uninterrupted sleep

Congratulations on your baby! Have you asked your GP or HV about your exhaustion. You may be anaemic, for example in which case a course of iron tablets might help. Also make sure you eat plenty and rest as much as you can when your baby sleeps.

Breastfeeding is very draining particularly in the early days. My first son was a non stop feeder in the early days and I would end most days in tears but it does get easier as ther baby is able to go longer between feeds.

You don't say how often your baby feeds or how long for, but I found a dummy really useful in spacing out the feeds and bringing a feed to an end when he went to sleep so he would stay asleep, as I found that often he was sucking for comfort rather than hunger. Your HV may have other advice if your baby's patterns are different.

Good luck! These tricky early days don't last for ever and hopefully things will get easier for you.

I would like to express the milk for night feeds, but I have a very active 4 year old and DD is attached to me all day like a limpet so I just don't know when I can actually get the opportunity. I did feed EBM at night for a while, but could only achieve that by giving a bottle of formula earlier in the evening instead which made DD sleep for a few hours without me, so that's clearly no solution.

I am incredibly run down. I've just recovered from a bout of mastitis treated with ABs and now I appear to have a throat infection. Sleeping when DD sleeps is an absolute joke with a young child to look after. DH is at home much of the time but he's taking on so much he's knackered too and I can't let him take all the burden of DS (and he is a real burden at the moment).

I have worked so hard to re-establish breastfeeding with DD after all the problems we've had with her latch and her going on strike (I have two other threads on the subject). I really would like to finish the job by cutting out the night time bottle(s) and I certainly don't want to risk my supply by increasing them. But I'm going slowly mad here! I'd really appreciate any practical tips to combat the fatigue. I found exactly the same with DS - breastfeeding nearly killed me. Sleep deprivation I can cope with (as I did with DS, who was also bottle fed at night), but not with breastfeeding as well.

MummyBerryJuice - I have tried co-sleeping but concluded it just isn't safe because I am sleeping way too deeply. I really scared myself a couple of times when I realised just how deeply I'd slept and how potentially dangerous it could have been. Plus DH is a smoker so has to be relegated to the sofa - I don't trust him not to squash DD in any case - so co-sleeping isn't really a goer. We have a bedside cot from DS so when the Grobags arrive that we've ordered I'll be ditching the moses basket and trying that.

Moajab - the GP took blood for a full blood count and I haven't heard any more so I can only assume that iron levels are OK. I had no appetite at all for the first 4 weeks and assumed that was the reason for my tiredness, but I'm now eating fine and more tired than ever.

DD is feeding probably every hour and a half to 2 hours during the day, for up to an hour at a time. She'll go for one long period, usually early evening but only if I'm holding her (she's asleep in a sling just now, and I was dozing too until about an hour ago). DD did accept a dummy while we were having our issues. Now she's discovered the pleasures of the boob she is now refusing the dummy and comfort sucking on me almost all day. Some nights she cannot be put down at all and DH generally stays downstairs with her to allow me to sleep. Yet I'm still so darned tired!

Spatone iron supplement. Good BF pillow, have you got one?

Can you get any help with ds, so you have maybe one or two half-days without him (grandparents, nursery place?) Sorry have not seen yr other threads, maybe not poss.

Expressing: agreed it is hard to find the time with an older child to care for. I sometimes manage it inthe evening when toddler is asleep; baby is either sleeping or dp can take her for a bit after we eat. I just do one breast usually. Not massive amounts but it's something.

Drink masses of water -if you are at all dehydrated you will feel worse.

I should add that I've always had fatigue issues since getting a virus followed by post-viral syndrome about 10 years ago. I'm also really badly affected by hormones. I get completely knackered around the time of my period and early pregnancy was an absolute killer. With DS I assumed it was the breastfeeding hormones that were the culprit. We only lasted a week before moving to mixed feeding with mostly formula - for many reasons of which fatigue was one.

Oh and get a bedside cot! Or just take the side off a normal cot and put it beside bed - match mattress height if poss, you can maybe drill new holes to adjust -- sliding the baby across is massively easier than getting up and down to fetch him/her from normal cot or crib. We got a Cosatto one, is fab, wish I had known about them with dc1. Has made a real difference to nights.

Wrt your comfort at night, have you enough pillows etc to prop yourself up? Work on the setup off stuff around you, see if different types of pillow or cushions at yr back make it easier.

Sorry, lots of xposts!

Is a breastfeeding pillow worth it then? I have difficulty using a normal pillow for feeding - it just gets in the way. I'd assumed they were just an expensive gimmick tbh.

I'm probably not drinking enough if I'm honest. I've never been a big drinker but I am getting a lot of headaches so am probably a little dehydrated.

We've got the Cosatto cot too! I agree they're fab. Neither of my two have got on with the moses basket.

Am feeding now btw and will then be attempting to go to bed!

gaelicsheep - I co-slept with my ds's in a single bed as dh needed his sleep and he stayed in our bed. (he did lots of stuff the rest of the time but I was in charge between 11pm and 6am!) Is it possible you could set up a single mattress for you and your dd in another bedroom - need not be for 5 months. You can still prop yourself up to feed, but lying close to each other might help (and if she's asleep on a blanket, you can pick her up in it for a feed and if she falls asleep on you, you put her down with the blanket already around her so she doesn't get the shock of a cold bed). And if you're in charge at night, will make it easier to ask your dh to help out say in the early mornings (6-8?) when you might have a chance of a couple of hours of sleep.

Do check up on your blood count and ask gp if you think you are unusually tired (hard to tell, I know). I've recently had well woman check where gp said haemoglobin count ok but size small (something along those lines anyway) - so I still needed iron supplements.

And if you've not slept well for two months before birth, then I suspect that you're just worn out, the 5weeks post-natal lack of sleep will just have been the icing on the cake as it were.

She will calm down with feeds, it will start to work out but in the meantime good luck, best wishes.

Unfortunately DD's bedroom to be is an ex kitchen with a broken window that's currently DH's workshop and general dumping ground. There's no other bedroom to use. I really do worry about co-sleeping for the reasons I said before - I don't think I trust myself tbh.

That's a good point about the blood - I'll ring up on Monday. It's hard to know if I'm unusually tired for me or not as I've always had spells where I'm so tired I end up in tears. I have often had problems being on my own with DS because I literally can't keep my eyes open - in the daytime. You're probably right that I'm suffering now for the sleep deprivation in pregnancy. I was working full time up to a week before giving birth as well.

Hi Gaelicsheep, You are doing well you know I've just read through your thread, and I know you probably won't read this now till tomorrow, but all the same,

I totally agree with the spatone whether the gp says you need it or not, if i'm even slightly low in iron I feel exhausted, spatone is the best. I would also take a decent vitamin, something like solgar prenatal nutrients, very easy to digest.

I've night breastfed all 4 of mine, and some were easier than others. I found a few things helped me get through.

1, I put the cot right next to the bed so I didn't actually need to stand up at all.

2, At night before I got the hang of cosleeping with no 3 and 4 I would sit up on the edge of the bed, lay a thick pillow next to me and lay the baby on the pillow, this way I could sit upright and under arm feed the baby. I found that I got a really good feed into all of them like this and very quickly too, I was able to slide them back into the cot without waking them and got a few hours.

3, I don't recall what age I started doing it but I put a few drops of lavendar near the cot and it seemed to have a very calming effect.

4, I also used to eat before I went to bed, I know this isn't ideal on the weight loss front but quite frankly it helped me to wake up when I needed to during the night.

5, lastly, one of the things that got to me with night feeding was the feeling that everyone else was getting a good night sleep but me. It wasn't until later that I realised that most babies wake to be fed at the same time, there were actually lots o mums all around my house feeding their babies at the same time, it made me feel a part of something and much less alone.

Hope you're ok

Still here and still feeding! Thanks for the tips and respect to you for managing it four times!

i agree you are doing an amazing job! Bfing is really hardwork and 5 weeks is something to be proud of.
My ds is now 9 weeks and i had a similar scenario, v sore nipples and tiredness meant we were giving formula at night. As things got less painful, i gradually cut out the formula- express whenever you can even if only for 5 min and hardly anything comes out, it will build up your supply. The other things which really helped me were;

Pillow; my brest friend, from amazon worth every penny, improved my latch and posture

Bedside cot

EAT! Lots. Cake. Dried fruit. Drink tons of water.

A visit from NcT bfing counsellor to give advice and confidence

A supportive partner, which it sounds like you have!

Keep going, it really does get easier and im so glad i didnt give up.

kAQ- thanks for the lavender tip, will be trying it!

First of all, you are doing great. I was v. similar at that point and managed to keep going for well over a year....5 weeks was about the hardest time. Here's what helped for me:

1. a Boppy nursing pillow. Expensive and worth every cent.
2. A big glass of water with whatever you need to put in it to drink it faithfully every single time you nurse. For me, lemon and ice helped it go down. Had to force it for a long time but really helped with the fatigue, BF can be very dehydrating.
3. Eating. When exhausted it's hard to bother, but it is a vicious cycle, BF takes so much out of you. Keeping a container of cut up fruit in the fridge makes it easier.
4. Possibly the key to my keeping it up - I broke down and put an old lazyboy recliner right in DS' beautiful new room. Old because I didn't worry if milk/spitup/etc. got on it at 3am. It fit me and the Boppy pillow wonderfully. At night, I would semi-recline it and just being so comfortable was a huge bonus for me; but the semi-sitting position kept me from dropping off to sleep. It also allowed me so many comfortable positions to feed DS.

Good luck, it is going to get much better very soon! It is worth persevering, and you are doing great!

i agree you are doing an amazing job! Bfing is really hardwork and 5 weeks is something to be proud of.
My ds is now 9 weeks and i had a similar scenario, v sore nipples and tiredness meant we were giving formula at night. As things got less painful, i gradually cut out the formula- express whenever you can even if only for 5 min and hardly anything comes out, it will build up your supply. The other things which really helped me were;

Pillow; my brest friend, from amazon worth every penny, improved my latch and posture

Bedside cot

EAT! Lots. Cake. Dried fruit. Drink tons of water.

A visit from NcT bfing counsellor to give advice and confidence

A supportive partner, which it sounds like you have!

Keep going, it really does get easier and im so glad i didnt give up.

Sorry I didn't come back. Thanks for all the encouragement. I'm still finding feeding in bed incredibly uncomfortable, and it's such a pain shifting all the pillows to sit up and then to lie down again. I need to work on solutions to that.

I'm still giving a formula top up overnight but I do try to breastfeed her first to get the stimulation. Otherwise she would be snacking all night and I'd get no sleep at all.

The good news is we tried the bedside cot last night and it was a vast improvement on the moses basket. She settled much better and I could at least doze next to her, if not sleep much, for most of the night.

You are doing v well, especially getting the BF back on track after mastitis. But it is incredibly tiring- won't repeat what others have said, but eating properly and taking iron (maybe get GP to prescribe the gastroprotected pills, so they won't interfere with your digestion) will help (I speak from experience, as I had iron so low after the birth that the milk took 10 days to come. Not helped by midwives sending me home with only a third of the prescription!). In the early days I used to have lots of dried fruit in small boxes by my breastfeeding stations, together with glasses and bottles/jugs of water, so that whenever I sat down to feed I had something to eat and drink.

Like you, I found feeding in bed almost impossible until DS1 was about 4 months. For me, it was much more comfortable to get up and feed him in a rocking chair or on a futon, in both cases with a breasfeeding pillow (much easier to use than normal pillows). I had both "My BrestFriend" (expensive but v easy to use and v comfortable, especially on the sofa) and a Widgey baby pillow (so not the actual widgey breastfeeding pillow, but the small one they sell for baby tummy time). If you can, it might be worth popping along to a breastfeeding cafe/NCT breastfeeding support group and trying out the pillows they have. They sound expensive, but as DH put it at the time, they are not really if you consider that they will enable you to be more comfortable, relax and therefore be better disposed to enjoy the breastfeeding relationship with your baby. They will also help you breastfeed longer (if they help you be more comfortable)- not bad for £20/30!

It does get better- in the meantime have you considered going for a nap before the last feed of the day? In our case, baby used to eat around 8pm and then around 11pm, and I used to feed him at 8pm in my nightgown, pass baby to DH for burping, changing, entertaining and I would go to bed and sleep until DS asked for his next feed, around 11pm. After a bit he stopped wanting that feed and went instead until 3/5am, at which point life improved dramatically and I actually started enjoying the intimacy of the extra quiet 3/5am feed. That too got gradually later and now (6 months) he eats at 9pm and then 7/8am.

It does get better. Hang on in there, consider a BF pillow and find somewhere comfortable to sit up at night for the feed- it will get better soon!

I think the bedside cot will be a big help.

Have you considered having your vitamin D levels checked?

Re expressing, I found having a routine each morning really helped. I pumped on one side, fed on the other. It took only 10 minutes or so. Perhaps your DS could watch a little television while you do it. He will soon get used to the routine.

It is rough. All I can do is congratulate you for sticking with it all this time, and tell you that IME, this wave is hard but doesn't last long.

Best of luck.

Hi I highly recommend buying a breastfeeding pillow if you find it hard to get Comfy feeding. I have the mothercare multi purpose pillow which I think is roughly £22. I now take it everywhere with me. I'd rather be comfortable. Like you I cannot get comfortable feeding in bed. I was too drowsy and it hurt my back. I initially fed in bed but changed to feeding in the living room sitting up. Yes it means you have to get out of bed but for me it meant I could get a cup of tea and get in a comfortable position. The exhaustion that you feel initially is indescribable. I felt like I was floating but it does get better. Encourage your dc to feed as much as poss during the day so that she is getting the nutrients she needs during the day. Have you tried baby massage? I recently started this with my dd and saw a difference immediatly...she has been settling much quicker at night. I would recommend expressing early morning. My dd is usually up at 6am and I either express one breast while she feeds from the other or express as soon as the feed has ended. Have you been to a breastfeeding group? The support you get from them is brilliant. I love going to my group. Its become the highlight of my week. Finally, as other people have said make sure your drinking plenty. I try to drink a glass of water before ever feed. Even if your not getting alot me sleep try to get some time out every day, even just to have a bath or read for half an hour. Its amazing what a small amount of time to yourself can do. You round like you are trying really hard and doing a great job. Let us know how your getting on.

No advice, gaelicsheep.

Just wanted you to know you are not alone! I am up feeding 3 week old ds at the moment. He takes forever to feed at night, he falls asleep, I fall asleep, I can't get comfortable in bed, or chair. I have started coming downstairs and having a cup of tea, watching something skyplussed in order to try and make the feeds more efficient, but also there is something about feeding him in the bedroom for hours on end that just makes me feel desperate.

I didn't manage to b'feed dd1 and 2, and ds had a rocky start in SCBU being tube fed, I am amazed I have got this far tbh, and every night I start wavering, and fantasising about cracking open the formula, but then I tell myself,'one more day...'

I really hope that it starts getting easier soon for both of us. I will keep an eye on this thread for tips.

Good luck