How to get DS to take more at night feedings?

[BabiesNeedInstructions]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone has some pearls of wisdom about this. DS is 7 weeks and generally I think an ok sleeper for his age - but if anything he's too sleepy at night, because whenever he wakes up I have a hell of a job getting enough milk into him to last him a decent time. He's ebf and eats a lot in the day, usually every 2.5 hours for up to an hour at a time. His daytime naps are a bit hit and miss (largely because he seems so alert I keep forgetting to put him down early enough), but I reckon he gets 3 hours or so over the course of the day.

He seems to have settled into a routine of sorts at night whereby I feed him on the sofa on and off from about 6pm (he's extra greedy in the evenings) until we both go to bed at around 8:30. I sing to him a bit and feed him some more, and we both usually get to sleep at 9:30. He then wakes at 1:30, and appears to be ravenous by the way he jumps on my boob (and he's been over 4 hours by then so I believe him). But he only manages to guzzle for about 5 minutes before falling into a doze and coming off.

I've tried all the usual things - taking off his clothes, nappy changes etc, and these do wake him enough for a bit more food, but then he's also more awake and the whole feed ends up taking 2 hours. He usually falls asleep again around 3:30 and sleeps until 5:30, when he begins to wake up properly for the day.

So my question is, how do I get him to eat more at night without completely rousing him?

Any advice gratefully recieved, thanks.

What happens if you let him go back to sleep after a 5 minute feed at 1:30? You might find you only end up doing 1 or 2 more feeds before morning and it means you don't have to be up for long in the middle of the night.

Do you switch sides? When my DS falls asleep on one side I switch him over to the other, and sometimes I give him each side twice.
As they get older they tend to be a bit less sleepy on the breast so it won't be like this forever :)

By the way your nights sound better than mine and my ds is 5 months!

I don't usually manage the second side - I've been assuming its better to try to get him to finish one completely, and he's always zonked out too quickly to re-latch onto the second one. If I just give him a quick feed he only lasts about 30 mins, which I find more tiring really.

I know it could be a lot worse by the way and am certainly not under the impression that I'm in dire straights - he's only been doing it about a week and I'm typing this in a whisper in case I jinx it!

Well it's probably something that he'll grow out of in a few days/weeks, they change so fast at this age. But it might be worth switching side before he zonks out completely as the faster flow might encourage him to feed a bit more (works for me now but I don't know if it would've done when he was younger). Or I used to feed from one side until he was too asleep to take any more, then change nappy, then give him the other side until too asleep to take more