Breastfeeding

[CasDk]

Hi all, I have a seven week old and he is exclusively breastfed. The challenge is he is a snacker, and only feeds for a max of 10 mins. He then falls asleep on the breast. This means he can only sleep for 2/3 hours at night in one go. I've tried everything from tickling, wet cloth, nappy change mid feed etc, but he loses interest. Does anyone have any tips for helping him to sleep for longer periods please?! Thank you so much in advance x

Sorry to bring bad news but I think this is normal. Mine is still like it at 6 months

Does your baby sleep for the same amount of time at night too? Thank you!

2/3 hours at night is perfectly normal at 7 weeks.

Normal unfortunately . But it gets better and easier.

If you're getting three hour stretches from a seven week old then that's average to even quite good, sorry. He has a teeny tiny stomach so it may well not be because he's falling asleep before he's full - he might be falling asleep because he is full. He will probably start going longer at night as he gets bigger.

If you feel like it's just because he's breast-fed - lots of formula fed seven week olds would also still be up that often. It always sounds better because they tend to count in feeds not hours, so might feed at 10, 1, 4 and 7, so 'two night feeds' - but it's still only 2.5/3 hour stretches of sleep.

2-3 hours is totally normal for any 7 week old, regardless of how they are fed.

Have look at wonder weeks. It's great for spotting development leaps when behaviour and sleep goes pear shaped.

There's also an infant sleep study www.isisonline.org.uk which will show you the 'normal' for small babies. Basically, babies who sleep through are pretty rare.

Yer that's pretty amazing at 7 weeks, mine was every 60-90 minutes at that point.

Thank you all! It is reassuring to hear. It must just be my NCT friends whose babies seem to be doing five hour stints. Much appreciated x

Your NCT friends are probably lying! People always look at a baby sleeping longer as some ridiculous wonderful parenting achievement.
Babies have shit sleep, they wake frequently, it's what they do.

People in real life like to exaggerate how much their babies sleep, they see it as a competition.

Your baby sounds perfectly normal.

They may not be telling the truth
Lots of people don’t admit how bad little ones sleep as others can be critical.

I was told by a midwife that their stomached are the size of their fists so feed frequently

Mine were all different but all within the realms of normal. My first and third were similar 2/3 hourly wake ups. First wouldn’t latch so was bottle fed and 3rd was ebf so no correlation between feeding method and sleep in my case. dc2 was combo fed and slept 8-6 from 9 weeks!

Mine is a horrific sleeper at 6mo OP. Getting a two hour stretch of sleep a night is "good". He's at the extreme end of bad though.

My advice would be to get baby used to taking a bottle (expressed or formula) sooner rather than later so you can share the feeding load. I regret not doing so.

My LG used to sleep 5hours+ a night since 4 months she is now up every 2-3 hours. It is perfectly normal 😍

If you’re getting 2/3 hours sleep you should be doing the happy dance.
I’m breastfeeding twins, some days I’m sat for over 12hrs with my boobs out praying DH comes home soon so I can go the loo 😂 even when I feed them at the same time. It is what it is, I’m ok with it (mostly) and I get more sleep by co-sleeping but even then, it’s no more than 2hrs at a time. By the time I’ve fed them, changed their nappies and usually vests and babygrows as even though I can feed them both at the same time, winding two babies at the same time is near impossible so at least one ends up covered in puke while I’m changing the others nappy while DH snores and is totally oblivious to the chaos right next to him haha.
It’s worth it though, those 2 hours where the three of us snuggle up and try to edge DH out of bed are amazing.
My only advice would be
*if you don’t have Netflix or Prime, get it, theres going to be nights where you can watch an entire film before you can go to sleep
*find some really addictive game, I play some crappy games on my phone so I don’t fall asleep on them
*enjoy it! It’s a thankless task and you get no help whatsoever, you’ll be exhausted and on occasions sore and have a big hormonal meltdown but before you know it your baby is off to high school and having teenage tantrums and you’ll long for these days again

That's not snacking. They only have tiny stomachs at that age. It'll get easier and they sleep for longer promise.

Crikey. My seven week old is waking every 45 to 60 minutes! It sounds like you're doing very well

On the NCT group thing - I agree that people lie, but also it all changes anyway. The baby in our group who was sleeping best at 7 weeks is now a six month old who wakes up 5+ times a night and can take an hour to resettle. The baby who fed every hour at 7 weeks is now sleeping through. It isn't like sleep is a race and if you get out in front early you win.

Yep, totally normal. Just beware you aren’t comparing your baby with an NCT friends 8 week old, or larger 7 week old baby. At this stage every pound, every week of life makes a different in terms of how much their stomachs can hold and how long they can go.

Keep going, hang on...the only thing you can really do for a night time routine at this stage is to go to bed with baby at 8/9pm and stay with them in the dark, in quiet (or with some sort of night time white noise like wave/ocean sounds) until 7am, feeding, sleeping, feeding. Show them the difference between night and day. Keep quiet, don’t change nappies unless they’ve poo’d. When they are ready to sleep longer and hold more in their stomach they’ll be primed to do more of their sleeping at night. Everything will change around 12 weeks.

Yes completely normal and quite good ime! Don't ever get into the comparing game of sleep - everyone else's children slept through 12 hours from 2 days old...I honestly don't believe a word of it.