Very long night feeds

[littlestar]

My week-old ds feeds quite regularly during the day but not at night. Last night he fed on and off for about 3 hours - every time I thought he'd had enough he'd get fretful and demand to be fed again. Is this normal? I felt physically and emotionally drained by the time he finally fell asleep - is it something I just have to put up with for the time being or is there anything I can do?

What time was this at? Cluster feeding in teh evening is very very common - all my DSs did it when they were very little.

Yes, very very normal in the evening. It will pass. If it's happening in the evening just have a glass of wine and watch telly. If it's happening at 3am it's a lot less fun.

llittlestar, it is normal...he is a week old, and you are familiar to him! He was inside you just a little while ago, and he wants to be near you for cuddles and milk and just the smell and sound of you. He won't be like this forever...he will gradually learn he can be fine without being near you. It is less draining to go with the flow of it

Wine and telly are perfect - and telly is on all night these days

It's also a good excuse to act like an Empress - 'darling, I'm feeding the baby...can you get me a magazine/a glass of wine/a cup of tea/my book/the tv control/some caviar...."

Thank you - I just needed a bit of reassurance that it's normal behaviour as I was worried he wasn't getting enough nutrition or something. Unfortunately it was 4am...

How's it going littlestar?

I found swaddling very helpful for getting new baby to settle - might be worth a try if you think he's had a good feed and needs some sleep?

Still quite erratic, thanks, but yesterday he had a marathon 5-hour feeding session during the afternoon, so at least I could read a book! Then he only wanted one feed during the night, which lasted about an hour, so it wasn't so bad. However, I've now got a nasty case of cracked nipples so all these long feeds are toe-curlingly painful.

Between night feeds he settles much better if he's in bed with me - which the health visitor told me off about. But he doesn't seem to like his cot at all - poor thing. We've tried swaddling him but I don't think he's keen.

Oh dear.... an ill-informed and bossy health visitor, surely not

If you want to know about the benefits of bed-sharing and how it is done safely, then this is a good leaflet for parents with a research base.

Bed-sharing is a godsend - when I read your initial post about a three-hour nighttime feed, I thought, "goodness, I hope she's cosleeping"! Our DS1 slept with us until he was three months, and DS2 (6.5 months now) is only just moving out of our bed.

Nice leaflet ... I'm afraid I break some of the rules - my babies sleep under the duvet with me (but with their heads out, duh), but with only vests on, so they're not too warm. And they both slept alone in my bed, for naps. But we're really low-risk for cot death otherwise, so I'm fairly relaxed.

Oh poor you! How draining. It will get better but in the meantime it might be worth checking your latch - if your nipples are cracking and the feeds are very long it might need a tweak to make feeding more efficient.

Yes, I think I need someone to watch me feed him to see where we're going wrong. He wouldn't latch on for the first 2 days which was very frustrating for both of us. I think I'm so relieved that he latches on at all now that maybe I've not paid enough attention to perfecting my technique - so now I've got sore scabby nipples