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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

will expressing help DS sleep?? Help!

4 replies

garbhini · 03/03/2009 20:03

When DS was born he was a constant feeder (and prob pacifier) for first three months i could not get him off me and I often wandered whether it was because he wasnt getting enough milk. Now at 6 months the day feeds have relaxed, but at least 2 feeds a night. I wander if expressing will help me know how much milk he has taken and therefore whether that is why he is waking. Have always worried about his milk suppky but wanted to do things as naturally as possible. Am i making my own life difficult?? Please help!

OP posts:
SnowlightMcKenzie · 03/03/2009 20:37

garbhini Even if you knew how much he had taken, how would that help you to know whether or not he is hungry in the night?

giveusabreak · 03/03/2009 22:07

Expressing is not a good guide to your milk production since no pump can ever be as effective as a baby. If it makes you feel better then you could give it a go anyway. but expressing can be a chore and is not for everyone anyway.

Six months is a common time for a growth spurt and he may be taking a lot of milk at night. YOu could consider offering more in the day to see if that helps - both sides at bedtime or a feed just as you go to bed (sorry if you already have tried these). It is hard to believe that your body can make enough to sustain a baby - those are the insecurities that formula companies play on . Really, if you weren't making enough milk after 6 months then there would be serious problems with his weight gain and overall state of health. Is he growing OK, plenty of dirty nappies, alert, happy, content after feeds? Can you find a breastfeeding support group where you could share your concerns, which are common, and maybe get some friendly reassurance from fellow breastfeeding mums? Try NCT Coffee mornings or La Leche meetings - you don't have to be a member to go to either. The national websites should give you details of your local contacts.

mawbroon · 03/03/2009 22:35

gharbini - this sounds exactly like my ds was.

If he wasn't latched on for the first 12 weeks then he was crying. He went through fits and starts of sleeping through and is finally beginning to be able to go most of the night without needing me for milk or cuddles. He is 3.4yo btw.

Some of them just need to be with their mummy and need the comfort of feeding. He's not necessarily hungry, and feeding for comfort isn't a bad thing really. IMO it is a need rather than a want, especially at the young age that your ds is.

Qally · 04/03/2009 00:28

It doesn't help them sleep, no. My son is fed with expressed milk, and he eats ten times a day at 4 months when not having a spurt - which is on the upper end of feed numbers a bf baby his age would want. He still eats the average amount of bm calculated by weight, Tiktok gave the calculations in one thread and he was bang on it, to the last 10 ml! He feeds usually 4 hours apart at night, though 2 hourly when growth spurts happen. (He also cluster feeds in 60ml every hour or so in the day when having a growth spurt, when his average is 2 hours - I imagine because the instincts remain intact, boob or bottle!)

The primary reason bottle fed babies often go longer is that the milk is so much less digestible. It takes longer to digest, and they poo more out. Unfortunately, this is also why their gut wall is thicker. That slower digestive transit obviously doesn't apply to ebm. The other reason is that there's also more of a temptation when using a bottle to coax the baby to take more at a feed so they go longer, and making them wait for feeds till very hungry. I don't do that, partly because there's a theory that the link with obesity in ff babies isn't down to what's in the milk, but to the baby not learning to regulate his/her own appetite as they would on the breast - eating till full, stopping - and partly because I hate the thought of my baby wanting food, being too small to understand the concept of time/waiting, and just thinking Mum is denying him the boob. The human baby's instinct is surely to cry, be latched, fed. The few minutes wait to warm the bottle (by the time I found out that wasn't needful, he was used it it so it had become needful) is hard enough on him, imo, without him howling and not having any way to know that he'll get fed eventually. I also think babies have tiny tummies, and trying to pack too much in is possibly a recipe for them screaming in discomfort - I mean, I feel pretty crappy after Christmas lunch, myself. My mother used to try to get him to eat lots on the sly, despite my telling her not to (she couldn't bear to pour wasted ebm away, as I am her baby and she saw me having to pump it!) and I caught her out because he used to cry in pain afterwards. Maybe it was just colic - but since she fell into line with the strict demand feeding, the colic's stopped for him.

Expressing is a bloody nightmare, tbh; worthwhile if there's no bf choice, but such a chore. You'd probably still end up with your baby waking twice in the night, but also having to pump (which by definition takes longer than bf, as the letdown is less effective), and sterilise that pump & bottles as well. It's all the work of both methods, if a mother used tetra packed formula. It's certainly no short cut.

Finally - my boy comfort suckles from me when not hungry, so yours will most likely do as well. (I can tell, because when he suckles to feed, it's extremely painful 90% of the time.) He refuses a dummy most of the time, which is frustrating in a bottle-fed baby!

Hope this makes sense - sleep deprivation makes me ramble, sorry!

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