I have a question that will make you all judge, but I'm going to ask anyway!

[hopefully]

DS is 7 weeks old tomorrow, gaining well and generally healthy, and exclusively BF. He was 9lb 8oz at birth, and despite losing quite a bit initially is now following 75th percentile line almost to the letter.

In the evening, he has his last feed at 10:30pm, after which I leap into bed and DP settles him (he's usually settled by midnight/half past). He then wakes like clockwork at 4-4:15am for a feed. I've been slowly cutting down this feed over the past 4 days, as he is gaining well, and he's happy to settle after just one side now and sleep until around 7am-7:30.

Sooo... Although I'm getting that one longer stretch, because he's colicky in the evening, I don't really get any sleep before then, and because I wake up when DP gets up for work at 7am (and so does DS) I don't really get much sleep after his 4am feed, so I'm basically existing on 4.5 hours sleep per 24 hour period.

I'm contemplating either introducing a formula top up (going to try EBM for a couple of days first) or a full formula feed (so at least DP can give it occasionally) for his last feed, and I was wondering if you could share with me any experiences of topping up/replacing that late feed with formula with babies around this age/weight. If you all tell me it will probably only gain me an extra 15 mins sleep, I won't bother, but if there's any danger of it helping him to sleep till 6am or beyond, I might give it a shot! I may, of course, try it anyway so DP can give him a feed, but I may as well express the feed if he'll only go the same amount of time on EBM as formula.

Please don't flame me for wanting him to sleep more at such a young age! I know he might not whatever I do, but I'm getting nastier and nastier to poor DP from lack of sleep, and feeling pretty low from it (on the weekends when I get to sleep in the day, I am a new woman!)

OMG, didn't realise I'd written a full essay. Sorry!

Quite apart from the formula question, can you not sleep when he does during the day on weekdays? Or does he not nap well during the day? I still tend to take one nap a day when DD does, and she's seven months...

I BF DS and FF DD.

He slept better.

Honestly, it is an old old myth taht formula fed babies sleep better/ longer/ heavier. They don't. You could screw up your supply for the other feeds, and still have only 4.5 hours sleep.

I do think you should try and get some sleep at another time though, 4.5 hrs in 24 is just not enough.

I do snatch the odd sleep during the day, but I normally find that (a) I'm on edge in case he wakes up (he rarely does, I am completely neurotic, clearly) and (b) in his shorter naps I find I'm groggier for snatching 30 mins sleep than I was before the nap.

The only time I can relax enough to have a proper catch up sleep is during his long lunch time nap on the weekends, when i know DP will resettle him if he wakes.

The other problem is I hate being house bound, so he has quite a lot of his naps in the pram. I miss fresh air otherwise! He's not awake enough yet in his awake times to stay awake in the pram and nap at home afterwards.

TBH I am not sure that swapping BM for formula will help with the sleep. Any evidence you get on this score is going to be anecdotal, but my DD (totally BF) was a brilliant sleeper and her cousin (FF) was terrible - woke at least twice in the night until he was weaned.

Pumping might be the better solution. Your DP can give the bottle and also with my DD I reckoned she took a bit more from the bottle when she was sleepy than she would have from my breast (because it is less work to get the milk out).

It also sounds like he's taking a fairly long time to settle after his last feed. Have you tried swaddling and making that feed v boring (in the dark, no eye contact etc?) Those things might mean he goes down a bit quicker, so less disruption for you and your DP.

Sorry, not much help, but if all else fails just remember that he will be older and past all of this before you know it and then you'll be wondering where your tiny baby went!

hang on in there. I know it's horrific those first few weeks, but he might start sleeping through the night in a couple of weeks.

The other thing is, could you get DS to do the 4AM feed with EBM and sleep in a separate room just one night so that you get a full night's sleep? From what I remember, one full night's sleep kept me going for a week and made me feel so much better. Do you both wake up every night?

You have to try and sleep when they sleep during the day. I had an hour in bed today and mine are 17mo!!! It is worth getting used to being able to recharge on a 30min nap in bed/sofa/wherever. I know stuff doesn't get done, and you don't get any 'me time' but it is the only way to claw back the sleep deficit.

As for the FF - I can't help you there, my two were topped up from the start. But if your DP does the 10.30pm feed with EBM or formula exclusively, you could go to bed at 8pm say some nights and sleep until 4am. You won't know yourself!

Mine dropped the 10pm feed about 10 weeks and then the 4am feed by about 14 weeks, by which time they were fed about 7pm and then again at 7am. So you might be half way there getting a proper night's sleep!

Good luck.

We did EBM for last feed for last 2 DC, DH gave that bottle while I used to go to bed at 8pm. It gave me at least 6 hours till the next feed and prevented that whole snappy sleep deprived relationship we had for a few months after our first DD.

As has already been suggested try giving EBM as a night feed with lights down low, no eye contact etc.

i gave dd1 formula for last feed from 2weeks, and she immediately started sleeping through the night. However, tried it with dd2, and it didn't make any difference so i stopped it.

i gave dd1 formula for last feed from 2weeks, and she immediately started sleeping through the night. However, tried it with dd2, and it didn't make any difference so i stopped it.

hopefully I'm glad you started a thread about this coz I didn't want to say this on the other.

ff is an aqequate alternative to bf. However, if you take all the benefits of bf and turn them on their head, in truth they are actually RISKS of ff, so, personally, unless you really feel you have no choice (and feeling this way from sleep deprivation or for any reason is completely valid) then I would try and stick with bf or ebm.

Also, no-one actually knows what is in formula!

By giving a bottle you CAN force a little extra liquid into your lo which 'might' mean they can go longer before the next feed, but you are also interfering with their natural apetite regulation. The evening feeds are also the best for regulating your supply.

I don't mean to be doom and gloom, just present the facts. How you manage the risks like in all aspects of parenting is up to you. I suspect, knowing some of your history, that you'll be fine on the supply, but you never know so monitor it.

(BTW: I DO live in the real world. DS was on one ff per day at day 5, and DD gets ocassional ebm top-ups)

Curses, i was hoping for lots of 'my baby slept through immediately on formula' stories!

We do keep both the 10:30pm and4am feeds as dull as possible, but once he's awake he just seems to need a while to settle - he's not distressed or anything (unless i stick him back into his cot wide awake), just staring!

I think we'll start by trying to pump enough for DP to give a full ebm feed at 10:30, so i can get the odd 6 hours sleep,, and see where we are in a couple of weeks. at least if i then give up and go onto one formula feed he'll have had that bit longer being exclusively BF.

thanks for all the encouraging stories of BF babies that sleep!

littlewhizzingbella I don't feel comfortable asking dp to do the 4am feed, as he is often up till 12:30am or later settling DS, and has to be up by 7am, but perhaps we could swap duties occasionally.

Yes I think if you both have at least one night a week of a guaranteed sleep, it makes you feel so much better.

Can remember doing that with xp

We actually do have more than anecdotal evidence to give you an answer to this question, hopefully.

Formula supplements do not help with sleep, according to a good study you can find on the web - google "Breast-feeding Increases Sleep Duration of New Parents" and you'll find it. I am rushing, so can't spend time to search for the link now, sorry.

hopefully do you have to wake your LO up for the 10pm feed? We found with our LO we woke him at 10pm, forced him to feed (he wasn't interested) and he still woke up sometime in the early morning so I just dropped that feed and now I can go to bed earlier so the fact he wakes up in the early morning isn't so horrible.

Also the one thing I have found is that every single baby is different when it comes to sleep and that just because one FF baby sleeps thru the night doesn't mean another one will, I also know people who BF and whose LOs sleep 7pm-7am.

What we did was that after DS's evening feed (even if that was 7.30) I'd go to bed, and DH would stay downstairs with DS. When he wanted feeding later, then DH would change his nappy etc, and bring him to me in bed where I would feed him laying down, and we'd all drift off together.

Unless you express at 10.30, then you could be compromising your supply as you'd have a big gap which isn't ideal.

I'd also stay in bed with DS at 7 if I were you. I find being at least horizontal in bed to be refreshing.

Hello, just thought I'd a bit..
Mine woke at about 3-4 until they were 5 months old but I gave them a dream feed at 10pm ish. This meant that they weren't fully awake when being fed but still managed to latch on fine. I don't understand what is taking a while to settle? If he is not distressed but just staring then I would leave well alone and let him settle. I used to BF, wind and then put them back in the cot oncce they'd finished whether they were awake or not. It took a while to have the confidance to leave them alone while awake but he will soon let you know if he's not happy. I think part of me also just likes staring at my milky children!
Good luck!
Do you have a friend, relative who can come to lunch and then take them for a walk while you have a nice post lunch food coma? That also helped me a lot, knowing that I wasn't listening out for them.

The only thing I will say is that my dd started sleeping thru at 7 weeks & because she wasn't feeding for 12 hours I got into a right mess with my supply. No one told me that I should express to make sure I was keeping the supply up.

I was told that my body slowed down production becuase it thought that she didn't need as much & I had to start expressing at every feed & in between to get it back up. It took a week to get it back to a supply that satisfied her.

So, I would say go for it, only if you can express at some point to keep production up...in which case, you probably still won't get as much sleep as you want/need.

What I was told by my HV is that formula milk is not as easy for babies to digest as breastmilk, so it takes longer, hence many will go longer between feeds.

I mixed fed ds3, mainly because my milk didn't appear to be nourishing him - he'd maintain his weight on me alone but never gained until I introduced some formula. This was a similar experience to that which I'd had with ds1 and ds2, who both ended up fully formula fed quite quickly (for long and complicated reasons that I won't go into here).

I was anxious to keep in at least some breastfeeding with ds3 as I'd previously felt like such a failure for not managing to breastfeed 1 and 2, so I decided to give the formula feeds overnight, and it worked very well for me. I breastfed ds3 all day, then his mid-evening feed and last feed of the day were formula feeds, and usually he then went through the night.

In the morning he would latch most happily onto me, and by then I had more milk to offer him, so it seemed to work for both of us. He adjusted very easily and happily to mixed feeding, and I didn't notice any problems either with his appetite for breastmilk, his willingness to breastfeed during the day, or my supply.

Hopefully - if you think it will work for you, give it a go. It's your life and your baby, and you will make the best decisions for your child.

tiktok thanks, I'll google that and have a read. Be good to read something concrete, even if it's not what I want to hear!

Libra if I don't wake T (we try this about twice a week), he wakes himself at some point between 10 and 11:30 pm, and it seems to make no difference to his 4:30am waking, so we figure at least if we wake him a bit earlier it means DP isn't settling him so late and I get to maximise my sleep!

teasleepfood he's contented (but awake) after his feeds, as long as he's bounced in his chair or I wander round with him over my shoulder. If I pop him in the cot he starts having hysterics within a minute, and it takes twice as long to settle him. Once he's sufficiently chilled and ready for bed after the chair bouncing, he'll go down in his cot quite happily and nod off with a bit off shh-ing.

Urgh, I'm so depressed by it! He slept till 4:45am this morning, so by the time he resettled at 6:15, I got all of 45 mins sleep before DP got up, and then managed another 30 mins before DS woke up. If only he would make it another hour I wouldn't mind starting the day just before 6am.

sunnygirl thanks for the support - it's good to hear some positive stories for if I do decide to give it a try (which I think I inevitably will eventually if things don't improve, as I'm also struggling to find the time to express a sufficient amount for DP to give a feed for me).

If you expressed, could your DP give a bottle at 10.30pm, so you could go to bed at, say, 9pm, and then sleep until your DS wakes around 4/5am?

That's what we did, and it worked v. well.

Sorry, just read whole thread and realised you are already planning to give this a go.

Well, go luck!