Feeding to sleep?

[bunhead34]

I have an 11 week old baby, EBF.
Up until now I have been feeding her back to sleep in the night, sometimes one time a night, sometimes 4.
I'm just wondering if I should be doing this? Surely she doesn't actually need fed at 4, 5 , AND 6 am?!

I did this, I never timed their feeds I just fed them back to sleep when they woke up. 11 weeks is tiny and I was never into making them have a routine at that age, there's often sleep regression for a while around that time and if baby needs milk and comfort then that's what they get IMO.
Plenty will disagree, but it didn't make my babies terrible sleepers when they were older so I can't see it did any harm.
I did also co-sleep a lot though so I mostly slept through the feeds which meant to wasn't that disruptive.

I still feed mine to sleep at 18m, it's so easy and bedtimes and night times are really straightforward. I know a friend fed her baby to sleep for about 8 months then transitioned to another sleep cue and that went fine. do whatever works for you, if its not working then you can find some other way. but I think at 11 weeks it's really normal for them to feed several times overnight. Lyndsey Hookway is a really good person to follow on Facebook or Instagram, she posts a lot about normal infant sleep and especially breastfed baby behaviour. she is an IBCLC I believe.

also just wanted to add that I doubted myself feeding to sleep and to settle overnight etc until my baby was around 6 months old, then I just embraced it and havent looked back. a local breastfeeding group helped with that and made me feel happy in my choice /our choice as parents.

I think it's relatively common for an 11 week old to feed several times during the night, although you may hear about babies that age who sleep through the night! You might find that night feeds will vary as baby grows, it might reduce for a bit only to increase again, there's no pattern.

She probably really does need feeding at those times and if you didn't feed her back to sleep, she'd probably keep you awake for hours. She's so little still and the current advice is not to reduce night feeds until 12 months, although obviously you can try to get as mischief into them in the day as possible

I fed to sleep until it stopped working. Tbh if it works don't try to change it. At 11 weeks there may be a few night wakings. They will get less as they get older.

For both mine feeding to sleep stopped working at 9 months and I sleep trained at that point.

One of the best tips I got about baby sleep is that it is always changing.

At that age, it’s still totally normal and expected for a baby to feed several times overnight. It’s also such an easy and convenient way to get them back to sleep.

She will most likely drop a night feed of her own accord in the next few weeks. Once she’s 3 months you can try night weaning her, but tbh it will most likely lead to lots of crying and unsettled nights.