A moan: Getting a bit sick of people suggesting 'the bottle'

[moogdroog]

A shameless moan I'm afraid - my 5 mo DD has been sleeping horrendously recently (waking every 2 hrs at night - 4 month sleep regression I think), but it seems that I can't mention any problem without people suggesting that I put her on the bottle, including my mother, SIL and now DH.
My child is NOT hungry - she's chubby as anything and absolutely thriving on the boob!
A bit of history - I struggled (probably too much) to BF DS, and managed 4 months. He wasn't gaining weight, I was in pain and spending most of the day and night feeding him. I should have stopped sooner in hindsight.
This time around its a totally different story and I'm enjoying it so much. I feel so immensely proud every time I look at DD's chubby legs and love our BFing time together.
I really bloody hurts when those I think should be supportive suggest this (although I've nothing against FF). If she was not thriving I'd see their point, but she is. Aside from anything else, if I put her on the bottle I'd loose the greatest trick I have in my arsenal - magic boobie fixes everything! There's no guarantee she'd sleep longer anyway.
It's making my feel like I have no right to complain about anything, and feels like the implication is that I'm holding her back or cossetting her.
I'll give up when I (or she) is good and ready. I'd just like people on my side. She's only 5 MO ffs!!

Anyone else had this? What to say back to them? Sorry for the long moan.

There is nothing you can say tbh, you will just get a kind of glazed expression and you will almost hear them thing "moogdroog has got baby brain, is not talking any sense" and they will not listen, just rant on here

I get this too. At 4 am this morning ds was grizzly with teething and wouldn't latch on to comfort, DH suggested a bottle. My mum has never been supportive and nor has rest of extended family if I'm honest!! Think that's why I'm on here so much . I just ignore them now tbh. Say nothing and change the subject. They soon get the hint. No point stressing over it!! You know you'll have no regrets!!

all I can say to help is that my DS started doing the same thing at 5 mo - he wasn't nice & chubby like your baby ! but he still wasn't hungry, my HV said this is very common at this age (unfortunately for me it was just as I went back to work!!)
It is also likely people will want to get your baby on solids asap - again the advice I had from my fab HV was to persevere through it, it worked and he just grew out of it.

The other thing I found was when I did start to wean him onto formula my milk supply dropped very quickly & I found I couldn't do half BF & half formula, so beware when people try to get you off BF when it's too soon for you :)

hth

If people are suggesting bottles to help with sleep, you can tell them about this study: Breast-feeding Increases Sleep Duration of New Parents.

Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing. 21(3):200-206, July/September 2007.

I think if you put it into Google you will find it. Parents who used formula to get more sleep slept less than the fully bf parents.

One idea would be to tell people about this, and to tell them how much it hurts when they don't support you, and how much you love bf. They are prob trying to help when they suggest bottles - you need to spell out that they are not :)

My DD was FF from day 6 - I'd dearly have loved to BF and tried very hard but it was not to be. But that's another story.
Anyway, my experience and that of my friends is that it doesn't make a blind bit of bloody difference to sleep. Exclusively BF friends have had spells where their babies slept through. I've had spells where my DD slept through. We've all had spells of some sleep/ no sleep/ lots of sleep.
Teething, growth spurts and all sorts of other things affect sleep, not just boob vs bottle.

You love BF so pls carry on doing it. I'd love to have been able to do it and it breaks my heart when people who can do it are pressured into giving up by unsupportive friends and relatives.

Thanks for the support guys. I will carry on regardless. I struggled far too hard with BFing DS (and how I wish I'd known about MN back then!) to throw away a very good BF relationship with DD.

tiktok Thanks, I'm most certainly in need of some empirical evidence. I know they all mean well really, but would be great to blow away their misconceptions with some proper data.

Smile
Say 'mmmm, I'll think about that'
Nod
Ignore

My DD decided to go from sleeping through to feeding every hour or so during the night a couple of weeks ago. I only mentioned it to one person and they immediately said 'why not try some formula before bed?'. I just said I didn't want to and it would pass, plus I could sort of sleep while feeding anyway. I wonder though, had I been FF and DD was waking lots for feeds at night, what would they have suggested then?

I can see why people pretend their baby sleeps through tbh, people seem to think it's so unacceptable for babies to wake for comfort/food at night. Strange.

Thank you! Nearly cried with relief when I saw this. My BF twins slept through the night for a couple of months and then stopped a few weeks ago (teething/growth spurt/4 month regression). Am still breast feeding when they wake as its the quickest way of getting them back to sleep and as they feed each time I guess they might actually be hungry.
Most people are supportive but I'm not talking about it too much now as I nearly lost the plot with someone who advised solids (based on Gina Ford).
Lots of evidence on Kellymom BTW about bottles/solids making no difference to sleep (solids may make it worse).
Off to recover my sense of humour now!

I think people just want to give you an answer - actually what you want them to say poor you, give you some support and say you are doing a fine job which sounds like you are

My 5 month old DS has also lost the ability to wake only once a night and is now up 3-4 times. I mix feed and he has his bottle before bed so FFing doesn't make any difference for him!

My own personal theory is that people suggest formula because a lot of people give up BF at 6 months when babies naturally start to sleep a bit better. So the credit for improved sleep is placed with the formula. I have no basis for thinking this other than blind hope that DS's sleep will magically improve [fingers crossed emoticon]

With my first, I argued the case and put forward my evidence. I got rather annoyed at how many people thought that bottles/ formula/ weaning was the answer to seemingly any problem I had and even more annoyed when they didn't seem to listen to my arguments regarding why they were wrong.

This time, I've adopted the smile and nod method of dealing with it. For example, when MIL suggested starting my 4mo DD (3mo adjusted age) on baby rice last week, I mumbled something non-committal about thinking about it and changed the subject. This was far less stressful than the alternative!

IME, most people have good intentions so I just try to remember that they are trying to help. Then I carry on doing what I'm doing!

I have a 14 month old, but had a similar sleep regression at a similar time- trouble is it was followed by a cold, then a tooth so sleep was an issue for a while--- but bottle fed babies also have teeth and colds...

I refused to give a bottle as helpfully suggested as a miracle cure... I was perfectly happy breastfeeding and we got through those difficult nights - so stick with it (if that is what you want) - it will get better-- I generally just fed back to sleep then and her sleep went back to normal... I am really happy I carried on breastfeeding... SO keep it up- this will pass.

I have absolutely no idea if this will work for anyone else, but it has worked brilliantly for us right now!

DS is 5 months old, EBF since a week after birth, and around 3 months was going down for 6 hours for the first part of the night. Then approaching 4 months it got less and less until it was every 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours and from 5am onwards, we were co sleeping/dreamfeeding otherwise he kicked off and was cranky for the rest of the day. We decided to do something about it, with DH attempting to give a bottle feed to help me out during the day. DS had rejected bottles about 3 months old and it had been about 4 weeks since our last try - amazingly DS took the bottle straight away. During the feed DH heard lots of air bubbling into the bottle, so just decided after 5 minutes to wind, a burp came up instantly so straight back onto the bottle. Again after 5 minutes more, more winding, another almost instant burp. DS then fed for 5 mins more and 5 oz were gone. We talked about this and decided that we would try this every feed, letting DS go for no more than 5 minutes without a winding and have found his feeding is now 15 to 20 minutes each time, where as it was never longer than 10 to 12 before. Within 2 days he stretched his feeds out to every 4 to 5 hours, and last night put in a 9 hour stint from 4:30pm to 1:30am. We're still working it all out but it is a definite change and certain improvement. Tonight DH is going to dreamfeed a bottle at 11pm (very soon then!) and see if that will give us a complete night.

I know everyone says they have done the winding thing, but so had we, just not at very regular intervals throughout a feed, just when he came off after about 10 minutes. You never know it may work and at least, its worth a shot as it isn't going to change any routine drastically, and not resort to using formula!

Good luck!

Forgot to add that when we tried the above when breastfeeding, after he had fed from one for 10 minutes I was switching sides. I do have a fast flow and when I express I don't tend to get any more than 4 oz out of one side, hence the thought to swap after 10 mins based on the average that each feed should be around 6 ozs for our DS's age/weight.