cluster feeding

[Pandospants]

I'm desperate for some help. Dd is 13 days old and bf. She feeds constantly at night from about 11pm until 5/5.30am when she will sleep for 3 - 4 hours.

Tonight I encouraged her to feed throughout the evening in the hope that it would move the cluster feeding to a bit earlier. All that happened is she fed from 9 until just now when she has finally gone to sleep.

She falls asleep on the boob and then wakes as soon as I try to move her. I don't want to co sleep.

All this has been fine whilst dh has been off for Xmas but I don't see how I'm going to cope when he goes back to work as we have a very lively toddler as well who doesn't really nap in the day any more.

Spoke too soon and she is now awake again. Does anyone e have any suggestions/advice/miracle cures? I know it is early days but I'm so tired. She won't take a dummy.

Oh love, I remember this. My only advice is that it will pass. It's hard (& I felt like I was going insane from lack of sleep and lack of ability to move) but it gets better.... Try and go with the flow, sleep when you can and
Make sure you have some good and easy food around. I'm heading to no. 2 and am expecting it again which hopefully means I'll be able to take my own advice this time.

This too shall pass

Hmm you may not want to hear this but I only got through this by co-sleeping. I also didn't want to but couldn't continue like that with 3 other DC to consider.

Hang onto the fact that the cluster feeding does pass - it wasn't that long lived for us but did reappear at 5 weeks briefly due to growth spurt (had to ship in family for this).

Can't help on the waking as soon as you try to out them down thing, unfortunate - 13 week old DS2 still doing it - am hoping things get easier when we don't have the mayhem of Christmas.

to you and congratulations on your baby.

White noise app helped settle for longer sleeps
Don't panic too much they change so much at this stage another night or two might bring a difference in the sleeping.
I d sit and feed on and off from about 7Pm nd let dh manage the toddler and see if you can move most of the cluster feeds to slightly earlier
It s hard work xx

Oh dear I can empathise both of my two clustered all night for the first couple of weeks and then it started settling down :(

I totally empathise! My first cluster fed every evening until 1130 until he was 4 months. It did end though. Now with !y second I am trying everything I can to prevent the same thing. Here is what I do and it works sometimes. Not last night tho.

feed as !much as I can between 4 and 7. Bed and 7
Natural light every day
Bath for him. Makes him hungry!

This did not work last nihht. After bed at 7 he was up a few mins after we put him down each time until 10. Worked the night before though. The worst thing the first time was I didn't know it would ever end but it did! It will end for you too. It's very early days.

Might be confused with day and night so definitely give some time outside during the day

Good luck!

Thank you all! It's nice to know I'm not alone. Bf is new to me as ds was ff so I'm just muddling through at the moment. We haven't been out much since she was born as ds has had chicken pox (great timing) so we need to do that. Also going to try a bedtime routine and see if that makes a difference.

The midwife also thinks I'm not eating enough which is probably true. She suggested more carbs, milky drinks etc throughout the day but especially before bed. Having spent the last 2 years doing slimming world I'm loving the idea of cheese on toast and unlimited hot chocolate!

In my head I know it will pass...its just easy to forget at 3am...

Hi, I'm the same. Cluster feeds from 1-6am. She's only 9 days old but I'm exhausted. Each time I pop her down she cries and wants feeding again. I've been co sleeping but even then, my quality of sleep is poor because I'm worried about rolling on her. Last night I was tempted to give her a dummy for when she is sucking for comfort but worried I'll screw up all the hard work I've put in feeding her. It'll all pass soon I hope....

My DD did this. It did pretty quickly move to cluster feeding earlier in day from about 6 to 11pm every evening then a good sleep of maybe 4 or 5 hours, a feed then another sleep of maybe 3 hours. So don't despair, it will likely get better very soon. In the meantime, is there anyone can come round in the morning for an hour or two to let you get some sleep (if she's still doing this when your DH goes back to work)?

Oh also re the waking up as soon as you move her into basket/cot etc, this got much better when she got big enough to put in a baby sleeping bag instead of using blankets.

I don't know how much it will help but next time I am definitely going to eat better and more oats/lactation cookies/drink more water in the hopes of boosting my supply and them cluster feeding less.