Non stop feeding at night

[ashley1]

Our baby is 7 days old. We are breact feeding on demand. The last 2 nights she has beeen wanting to feed from 12 midnight to 5am constantly. Is this normal. We have then had to wake her at 11 am for another feed. This is getting my wife down, is this normal, any advice?

very normal - it will get better - baby is trying to establish your wife's supply - the best thing she can do is go with it and sleep when baby sleeps. And your job is to do everything else round the house and keep visitors to a minimum! A six hour stretch (5am-11am) is actually really good at this age, at least you can sleep then! You may get some people advising you to wake baby sooner as this is a longish stretch, however if nappies and weight gain are ok then perhaps not an issue - check with midwife. Your baby will get a better idea of day and night eventually _ I know lots of afternoon daylight can help with this. Good luck and congratulations!

Congratulations! :)

Yes this is really normal, so don't worry that there is anything 'wrong' with what you/your wife are doing or with the baby.

Nighttime feeds are really important for establishing milk supply because of increased hormone levels during the night - thanks Mother Nature!

Hang in there and it will get better, although you will see this pattern repeated several times during the first months when your baby has a growth spurt.
It can help to make sure that you take the baby outside during the daytime, but it does take babies a while to sort out night and day.

This is a great website [[http://www.kellymom.com/ kellymom], it has very good info about all aspects of breastfeeding.

Oh - and tell your wife to sleep whenever the baby is sleeping. :)

kellymom

here is the proper link - whoops.

Totally agree with Zimm with everything, totally normal behaviour for a 7 day old, she should sleep when the baby does and it's so your job to do everything else .

If she is worried about it at all you could get her on here, ask her to talk it through with a Bfing Counsellor on one of the helplines and see if she is ready to start going to a Bfing Support Group. It's still early days though, I didn't leave the house with DC1 for 2 weeks.

Congratulations on your LO and it will get better

Also agree with Ali about getting LO outside. Could she feed DD when she wakes around 11 am and then you change her nappy and clothes at take her out to give your wife time to have breakfast and a shower?

ashley1 how are you all getting on now?