BFing - when does it get a bit easier?!

[RebeccaJames]

I am EBFing my newborn DS2 and it is such hard going. He'll feed for half an hour, cone off for 10 mins, then root to go back on again. At night he'll sleep 3 hours, but after that it's short nap/feed/short nap/feed for the rest of the night.

I want to soldier on but can't remember when it all starts to take shape and get longer between feeds. I can hang on in there if I know roughly when things ease a little.

Any ideas?

Oops, forgot to say he is 3 weeks old tomorrow...

Ds2 had the hang of it around 5-6 weeks. He's 12mo now and it's still just so easy. Especially if he hurts himself. Booby is ways there.

Keep going, growth spurts are hard but you sound like you're doing amazingly. :)

Different for different women (and their babies!) but for me was about 6 weeks.

I remember feeling a bit at sea with DC2 as I'd kind of assumed it would be straightforward as I'd bf DC1. And the actual feeding was ok (not sore) just I'd forgotten how much and how often newborns feed, and the randomness of it.

Hang in there, hope it gets better for you soon

Thank - I can keep 6 weeks in my head and I will manage to keep going.

One more question occurs to me: when he's stopped feeding properly and is just flutter-sucking (which health visitor said I should let him do for now as it contributes to stimulating milk supply), is that awake time? I'm trying to track how much sleep he is having but it's not as clear-cut as it sounds! Is that half hour flutter-sucking at the end of a feed sleep or awake time?!

I agree around about 6 wks but both my children used to have many small feed/small sleeps in an evening which used to stress me out at first but when I just went with it it sometimes meant that at the end they would then sleep for several hours, I believe its called cluster feeding I had never heard of it before but it helped me to understand the pattern. Good luck,it's not easy at first so you are doing very well to stick with it.

Also 4-6 weeks I jut suddenly realised it was easy ... Having found th first weeks v tough

Re awake time - I didn't really think about that at the stage you are at - I just let ds do whatever and didn't keep track - as you describe it's very much a constant drifting in and out at that point

It settles into more clear awake and sleep time within a few weeks so personally I would try not to worry about that x

3 weeks is a particularly hard time, from memory that's when the milk production switches from being driven by placental removal to being driven by feeding demand. Many babies often go through a growth spurts around the same time which makes for constant feeding on top of hormonal rumblings.

I found it got easier around 5 weeks I think, then we had another blip at 3-4 months old when he realised the world was out there and kept turning his head to look and loosing the latch. After that plain sailing, still going strong at 21 months which is not something I thought I'd be doing, but 1ce a day as a morning cuddle routing is just lovely.

Good luck, hope it gets easier for you!