advice needed night time feed

[habhann]

My ds is exclusively breastfed, he is 19 weeks. We were co sleeping until last week and are now sleep training. He sleeps in crib now and Ds now has 2-3 day time naps and bedtime starts around 8pm, I breastfeed at this time and then wake for feed at 11pm. Ds has slept until 4.30am and then feeds for 30 mins. Ds did not go back to sleep after this feed. I did feel quite full at 4am. Question: can you go from 11 pm - 7am without breastfeeding, does that affect supply, how do you avoid engorgement, does your body regulate Supply overnight.
Sorry for so many questions but would like to hear how everyone does it ?? Tia

You can totally go from 11 to 7 without feeding, your body just adjusts. DS2 slept through like that from 8 weeks, I was a bit engorged/leaky the first couple of times he did it and then was fine (of course, he is now occasionally waking up again). If your supply is well established and baby feeds a lot the rest of the time it won't have an effect on supply, I don't think - certainly hasn't on mine.

19 weeks is probably not a great time to try and force a baby to drop that feed though as it's a) quite likely to be in the middle of a big developmental spurt/"Wonder Week" when babies can have odd/disrupted sleep anyway, also b) they may well be genuinely hungry at 4am.

Leedy - never thought of growth spurt..if he wakes at 4am , how would you get him back to sleep again, I don't want to co sleep as it has been really hard getting him used to crib. Btw ds is 19 weeks but corrected age of 15 weeks as born at 35 weeks .

I just feed him back to sleep again on my lap in bed then once I'm sure he's asleep or at least very sleepy transfer him back into his cot (beside the bed) and whack on the Slumber Bear white noise thing. It has worked thus far...

Corrected age 15 weeks could still be going into that 4 month spurt, I think it can begin that early.

Thanks leedy - will try that..wish me luck

Hope it works!

Well ds slept from 12mn - 6am. Did breastfeed at 11pm. I did however feel very full at 6 am. I hope this settles down

Well done your DS! If he starts consistently doing that 6 hour stretch (fingers crossed) your supply will definitely settle and you won't feel so engorged when he finally wakes up. It's fairly typical the first time a BF baby sleeps for a long stretch that mum wakes up anyway because she's so full!