Will giving my breastfed baby a bottle help him sleep through the night

[Cupcake08]

Our 6 week baby boy feeds every three hours and will not settle without being held or cuddled,which is quite normal, my husband is fine sitting up for the first part of the evening with him while I get some rest and generally he (baby that is) will fall asleep after his midnight feed. The main problem is when he wakes at 3am, he will not settle and normally I don't get back to sleep, our 4 year old daughter wakes at 5.30am and at the moment she is having to deal with a tired and cranky mummy. Would giving a bottle at midnight help him sleep through and could it mess up my milk supply

There are no guarantees that giving him formula will make him sleep through the night. Plenty of breastfed babies sleep all night and plenty of formula fed babies are up several times. Is your ds sleeping alot throughout the day? Research does suggest that supplementing with just one bottle of formula can effect your supply. Could you increase the frequency of feeds throughout the day?

At the moment I am pretty much feeding on demand, so I would say not.

DS doesn't seem to have a sleep pattern during the day, its the usual problem of only sleeping in the car or if he's cuddled or in the sling, with our four year old DD its never that long before he needs to be put down and will wake, his longest sleep is early evening after DD has gone to bed and either DH of I can sit and cuddle.
I can cope with most of day but we are trying to come up with ideas as I need to increase my sleep from just 3 hours per night and hoped the formula might be a solution, any other suggestions welcome.

It won't necessarily help and could make his sleep worse - formula when used to breastmilk could give him tummy ache and wind.

I think as he is still so tiny you need to modify your routine slightly, hopefully it will only be for 4-6 weeks then he may well sleep a little longer.

Can you go to bed yourself after your DD does, with or without DH, then you should have say 3 hours from 9 til midnight, then his feed, then another few hours until he wakes. Either co-sleep, or let him sleep on DH whilst you sleep deeply. At least then you will have had about six hours sleep which isn't bad (I appreciate it's broken sleep but it's still 6 hours).

Also why is DD waking so early? Have a look at that - is she hungry or thirsty, is her room getting light, is she wet, cold, hot etc. Mine all went through phases of waking early (before 0630 is too early for me!) and every time I treated it the same as I would a night waking and put them back to bed, with a cup of milk or water if necessary.

Hope it's better soon!

5.30 is early for a 4 year old to wake. Has she got a clock? By that age they should really be playing in their room until its time to get up and not waking you up.

Also, why can't DH get up early with her? Is it always you? Think it should at least be in turn.

As for supplementing I agree with Harverina, I was ff and never slept, my sister was bf and slept through from 6 weeks.

Could you express in the morning and give this after the feed before bed?

Also, make sure you eat enough protein as that can help to satisfy the baby IMO.

It is early days and it won't last long

Formula probably won't help and as Sidge says can also upset their tummies if they are not used to it so could have the opposite effect.

DS2 gets woken up all day long because life is so busy.

I would feed him all day long, offering the breast for the slightest squawk and then go to bed with him nice and early so that he can feed feed feed.

I'm afraid i bottle may well affect your supply at this stage, I did it with ds and regret it as it messed up bf for us and he ended up fully ff at 5 months and I wanted to do a year

6 weeks is still v unpredictable, I think you need to tackle your 4 year old waking up so early as it's not feasible to let that continue. The whole family will end up wrecked.

I've found that if I breast feed every 2-3 hours during the day and then make DS wait a little bit longer for his last feed in the evening (i.e feeding at 7 and then again at half 10/11) then he takes a fuller feed and lasts longer through the night.

Also expressing from both breasts and giving that helps as he always falls asleep at the boob within a few minutes and then I can't get him to latch on to the second breast.

My dd is eight weeks corrected. What we do with her is feed as much as possible in the day (usually every two hours). She is fairly active in the evenings so our bedtime routine is quite late. She is fed at eight, then at nine she gets a kick w her nappy off, bath, feed and bed. She's generally asleep by ten and sleeps through anything from two to once five am. I go to bed w her so generally get a decent chunk of sleep.
For us it means we don't get an evening to ourselves but I am willing to give that up for some sleep.
Hope that helps, might be worth a shot at bedtime. My dd doesn't sleep during the day unless being cuddled or in the car, and the routine seems to have taught her the difference between night and day.

My DD had a night time bottle of formula from 3 months old given by my DH as I was completely exhausted and unable to express enough for a feed. It made no difference what so ever to the length of time between feeds but allowed me to get a longer stretch of sleep. I sort if regret it as I had intended to exclusively bf for longer but I was so tired. It didn't harm bf at any other time of day though.

have you tried co-sleeping? My DD2 generally falls asleep in her moses basket at 10 then wakes again anytime between 2-5. When she wakes I bring her into bed with me, latch her on with us both lying down side by side, and then go back to sleep. Sometimes I wake up and she is asleep so I put her back in her basket, other times she stays with me til morning.As long as you follow the guidelines, keeping pillows, duvet etc well away from baby, co-sleeping is perfectly safe and at that age they can't roll anywhere.

Agree that DD should be able to sleep a bit later... we ignore DD1 age 2.4 if she wakes up before 7. Then DH gets her up and gives her breakfast before he goes to work.

good luck whatever you decide.