Do ff babies sleep through earlier/more often?

[Pantheon]

Don't mean for this to be a bf/ff debate, just curious. My dd wakes up in the night as do friends' babies who are bf. However friends' babies who are ff have been sleeping through for months - even 7-7 in some cases. Dd is 8 months so still early days but dream about that kind of sleep!

Not with mine,he woke every 2 hours a night

I found that my friends who ff had babies that tend to sleep longer stretches earlier on, but by the time they were about 7/8 months it had totally evened out, infact some of our ff friends have had the most nightmare sleepers carrying on into toddlerhood, where as most of the b/f toddlers I know sleep through just fine. I’d say you have to keep your eye on the end game! My ebf dd started sleeping through like a dream at 7 months. That said I’m sure I’ve seen that studies showed that ebf mums actually got more overall hours sleep becasue they didn’t have to get up to sterilise etc.

I nearly spat out my tea then OP 😂 no definitely not. Mine sleeps even worse than some BF babies I know and tbh I find it's down more to the baby than the feeding/co-sleeping/routine for everyone Ive spoken to. My PFB is 11 months and the longest stretch we have ever had is 3 hours.

Hahahahahahhahaha

Nope. 😩

I FF my first dd now 7 and she slept through from 3 months BUT she was an overall good baby anyway.

I BF my second for the first month and I had to stop. I was exhausted and was up most of the night feeding and feeding most of the day too. She never slept alone and I was very depressed. Switched to formula at 1 month old and she used to sleep between 3 and 4 hours after feeds. She didn't sleep the night until she was 7 months and on solid food but day naps were brill

I'm sure i read somewhere that, statistically, FF babies are more likely to sleep through.

DS is FF and would do 6-8 hour stretches from 3 months. We did have some sleep regressions, but they never lasted longer than a week and he was easy to settle with a bottle or the gradual retreat method.

Mine slept 7-7 when breastfed and now she is on formula

My 1 yo starting sleeping through 7-7 about a month ago. He was ff and now on cows milk. I honestly just think it was increasing the amount of solids he was eating that worked for me

Formula is less digestible so in theory ff babies often feed less frequently, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they sleep better or feed less at night. My ff baby didn’t sleep through til she was 3.5. My ebf one slept through most nights from 10 weeks. It really had a lot more to do with personality than how they were fed. That said, I’ve found doing night feeds with my bf one much easier than bottle feeding and I ultimately get back to sleep quicker.

Thanks everyone for your replies. Seems like it's much more random than I thought!

My dc1 was ebf and slept through at 6 weeks old! My dc2 was only bf 2 weeks, then ff. Didn't sleep through til 6.5 months, so still early but nowhere near as early as dc1!

I’ve had 2 bf, one ff. one of the bf babies and the ff baby were awful sleepers for years! One bf baby was a great sleeper.

According to this (which is free to access for the next 50 days apparently) FF babies sleep no better than BF babies, but parents think they sleep better.

Then again it looked to me most like the BF babies would want feeding/comfort after 2 sleep cycles whereas the FF babies only wanted feeding/comfort after 3 sleep cycles. So while they might both have brief awakenings it seemed like the BF babies wake the parents sooner. IDK - I'm not a researcher but that's what the chart looks like IMO.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945718303204

Yes they absolutely do. I’ve done both! The thing with formula is that you can feed every 3 hours to a schedule, and gradually reduce the feeds (one by one) during the night, and increase the neighbouring feeds accordingly, until the feed that you’re trying to eliminate is gone. Using this method, I had my twins sleeping through from about 10-11 weeks and they have always slept fantastically ever since. My breastfed singleton - not so much. You don’t have much choice but to feed on demand with breastfeeding, and eventually you end up with a baby who is habit waking and you’ve got no idea what’s habit and what’s genuine need, until you eventually lose your mind from sleep deprivation so much that you sleep train 😁

No and she has never slept through. She's nearly 6 btw

I only managed to breast feed for the first week with dd and she is now formula fed. she is 8 weeks old today and has already slept through the night a couple of times (10pm-4.30/5amish) but I don't know if I've just got it lucky or because of ff

Pot luck ime.
Many dc here, 1 slept thorough at a fortnight old, 1 at 5 weeks, 1 at 9 months, 1at 10 months.
I little bugger was at school before he stopped shouting 'mam' every bloody night!!

Meant to say all ebf!!

Mine breastfed completely. Slept about 8 hours from 4 weeks old. Now a year old and has slept 12 hours for as long as I can remember. :)

Interesting! Thanks all.

My bf dc1 slept for 12 rbs a night from 6 weeks. From 2 weeks was doing 2 six hour stretches, waking in the middle for a quick feed before going straight back off again. So she was far better at sleeping than all of the other babies in the post natal group.

Dc2 also bf, but complete opposite. Fed every 2-3 hours for months and months. He still wasn’t the worst sleeper in the new baby group, that title went to a ff baby.
There are lots of reasons baby’s don’t sleep, but I think feeding method is a bit of a red herring when it comes to getting baby’s to sleep through. It’s all anecdotal evidence and ‘my baby was ff and slept for 12 hours a night’. That might be true, but you also have no idea what your baby would have done if you had bf. They might have slept for 14 hours a night then.

In my experience, bottle fed babies sleep better. I’ve breastfed ds for 9 months then switched to formula. To begin with he would only drink 3oz of formula from a bottle but over a few weeks this increased to 7oz as I assume his stomach grew to take more milk. Once he was taking bigger bottles he slept so much better. My other ds could not breastfeed so I fed expressed milk from a bottle. He slept really well from early on but could also drink a lot of milk in one go.

Mine all slept over night from birth, all breastfed

I wonder if it comes down to the fact that babies who are breastfed have to be attended to by their mum, whereas a ff baby could get mum or dad up? Therefore the mum of a bf baby might have the perception that their baby is sleeping less, because they are always the one who is up with them and so are more tired?
FWIW my DD was ebf and didn't sleep through until 12.5 months. However she seems to be a great sleeper now at 21 months, better than her ff peers. Mostly I think it's just down to luck and personality of the baby!

Nope!