6 week old won’t sleep in the day at all and constantly feeds!

[mumtobeinsept]

Please help!! I have 2 issues which are sort of linked - excuse the lengthy post.

I have a 6 week old who I breastfeed mostly during the day and formula feed at night.

Issue 1 is that in the day she is constantly feeding, I literally can’t get her off me for longer than 20 mins max. As soon as she drifts off and I put her in the Moses basket or sleepyhead she wakes up and starts with the hunger cues. This was what made me introduce formula as I just couldn’t satisfy her hunger. I could not bf constantly day and night. I kept bringing this up with the HV and midwife but they all they said was “this is normal”, “bf babies feed on demand” or “she’s going through a growth spurt”.

I’m just really sick and tired of them telling me this. A growth spurt all day every day?? From research online and also from family around me, cluster feeding at certain times is normal and other times feeding should be every 1.5-2 hours. I am feeding hours on end and literally dont get a min to go to the toilet let alone leave the house. I really want to continue breastfeeding but the constant feeding is driving me insane and I’m not sure I can go on for much longer without having a breakdown!!

Issue 2 (which is linked to the constant feeding) is that she refuses to sleep in the day. At night she sleeps great. She goes to sleep at 12.30 for 6 hours, then up for a feed for around 45mins and back down again until 9.30. This is when she has formula.

I thought her hunger during the day was down to me not having enough milk but when I pump I am getting a decent amount of milk. Also she is burping after a feed and having lots of dirty nappies.

I trialed giving her 1 bottle of formula in the day which kept her fuller for longer (2 hours) but that still didnt get her to sleep.

What am I doing wrong? Is it the quality of my milk, maybe not fatty enough? Should I give up on breastfeeding? Maybe If she was more satisfied she would sleep in the day?

Have you tried not putting her down in the Moses basket or Sleepyhead and just holding her instead? At the same age my daughter woke up every time I put her anywhere that wasn't me. Just set yourself up with water bottle, phone charger and snacks and be prepared for her to snooze on you for hours.

Same as burritofan I let mine nap on me during the day. Establishing BF was really hard, I wasn’t prepared at all about the feeling of losing body autonomy. Then it got better quickly around 8 weeks.
Hang in there and keep feeding. Just keep your phone nearby

I think she wants to be held. It isn't the milk. She wants to be close to you.

Is sounds like she is waking up during the day not because she is hungry but because she needs you. Have you tried putting her in a sling for naps?

If you exclusive ff overnight then your body may struggle to produce enough milk. Your body only produces enough of the hormones that makes your produce enough milk to match demand over night. Keep an eye on your supply.

Also have your tried a dummy? after a good feed give her a dummy (may take a few days to get used to it) as she may be using you for comfort. Does she start dropping off to sleep when you are feeding her?

Don't be sick and tired of your health visitors and professionals telling you this. It IS perfectly normal. Very very few 6 week old babies can be put down alone to have lovely calm peaceful naps during the day. I don't know anyone who had a baby like this! It's what the sling was invented for, literally.

Read up on the fourth trimester. It really is normal for baby to want to be close to you all the time. Also perhaps if you're ff at night, your body isn't getting the right signals to produce enough milk so your baby is working harder in the day to keep your supply up.

I think I would add in a breastfeed at night - a feed between midnight and 4 am is really important for building milk supply. Id add formula in at 6pm instead.

Thanks for the replies.

Sleeping on me works sometimes but most of the time when I take her off and try to shush her and cuddle her she's still trying to latch on to my chest, to my neck, to anything basically so she does want to feed.

I tried giving her a dummy, researched about different types but she just spits them out.

I definitely do think you all are right in that she wants me for comfort some of the time and uses my breast as a dummy, but most of the time she is genuinely hungry and wants to be fed.

I tried pumping in the middle of the night to boost supply but tbh honest after all day of feeding my nipples are sore and I'm so tired I just want to collapse and sleep.

I bought a sling but couldn't figure out how to put it on so I can feed her in it, it's one of them wrap around ones.
Are there any you would recommend? At least this way I can actually move from the sofa.

Hi, I just wanted to say that I think your perseverance with the breast feeding is incredible. This is the first time I have logged onto mumsnet in a long time. My DD is now 6 and I have just been going through and reading my absolutely desperate posts from when she was only a few weeks old and I can feel and remember the desperation in them.

I struggled with BF and in the end, my parents 'insisted' on sleeping at ours and taking her for a night and giving her formula, just so I could get some sleep. I REALLY didn't want to but gave in....in the end it turned out to be the best thing as she was a VERY hungry baby and as soon as she had formula and enough of it, she was the happiest, most content baby.

I am not suggesting you do what I did, I only lasted a couple of weeks with BF...just that trying different things isn't a 'bad' thing to do and that you must of course listen to the midwives and HVs but in the end you have to do what is right for both of you...if that's adding a bit of formula to give her what she needs then personally, I would do it xxxx

I think one thing to bare in mind is that it's the feeding all day that is filling her up so that she sleeps well at night, the formula alone won't be causing that. My dd was and is the same (now 15w). She would nap for 20mins on her own but even just lying down flat next to me she'll nap for 2 hours during the day. The closeness offers security which they need as well as comfort.keep going with the dummy / buy the smallest you can find and she learn how to use it, this will make a big difference too.

Keep going, it's hard work at times but I try to look at it as I have nothing else more important to do right now than to see my dd is well fed and well slept, and appreciate the good nights!

I had this issue but it was 24:7. Turned out DS had a tongue tie. He needed to feed that long in order to get enough milk. Please ask for your baby to be checked. Three midwives has told me he didn’t have a tongue tie, but it was missed.

My wife follows the videos on this site to get a sling on amawrap.com/
Seems to work until DS craps his nappy.

nightmanager has said something important, that your baby could have tongue tie. If your baby cannot feed very efficiently at each feed she may well need to feed all day. It is exhausting for her and that is why she is sleeping after the formula feed at night.

The problem is that it is very normal for babies to need to feed all the time, but sometimes what is not picked up is that the baby isnt latched on properly in the first place, so the feed is just drip drip drip rather than a full feed.

I got some advice when I was in your position, feeding day and night all the time and the baby actually losing weight. It was actually horrific to find that my baby wasn't properly latched but had been sucking like a straw. Once the latch was corrected (I used my thumb and forefinger to make a V under the nipple so that the baby had a proper "mouthful", but only when someone explained this to me 8 weeks in the milk was being let down properly instead of just in small amounts. I could feel it gushing and the baby taking large quantities at each feed after the latch improved.

I fed every two hours rather than continuously. I fed at least every three hours at night for 3 nights to get the production going properly. You need to feed at night to get prolactin optimised. I gave baby one bottle of formula in the day and one at 6.30 because by then he had lost weight, but you don't necessarily need to do that if you can change the situation right now.

things improved magically.

The problem is that if you give formula at night your supply will go down and it will be a vicious cycle, baby will get less and less in day and need more and more feeding in the day. At six weeks you will be producing a lot of milk but if the baby isn't demanding it at night, the milk supply will start following suit, making the feeding situation worse (ie baby wants more and more but isn't getting it, therefore less and less settled, or sleepy)

So in short, check the latch. Feed at regular intervals but not continuously. Feed at night. Supplement a small amount of formula if necessary but not at night. I supplemented at 11am and 6.30pm (had a bedtime routine started by 8 weeks)

She is very tiny, I would go with what she needs and if you are on the sofa 24/7 then so be it. I don't think I got dressed for weeks

I had a lot of issues with latching in the first 10 days and had horrible bleeding nipples which cauased agony.

I saw several midwives and the breastfeeding team at the hospital and finally managed to get her on properly. This has been checked by HV and community midwives which have watched me feed since and they all said the latch was perfect. I also got the doctor to check for tongue tie and he said she was ok so I don't think it's latch/tongue tie problem.

She did lose weight initially but after 3 weeks she was back to her birth weight and has been gaining since then, HV was happy with the rate..

I got through that latching hurdle but this one unfortunately is proving very difficult :(

@yukka I really hope that is true, that the feeding during the day is making some sort of contribution because I feel like I'm making us both miserable, me failing at satisfying her and driving myself crazy at the same time!!

I will try and get up for the 6am feed today (DH usually does this feed) and give her some breast before the bottle since a few of you have suggested it will increase my milk.

what is the maximum amount of time you can go without feeding without it effecting your supply?

At the beginning of breastfeeding I think you need to keep removing the milk that builds up or it sends a signal to the cells to make less, later on the body (older babies/toddlers) can adjust to a different feeding pattern. I would think five hours between feeds would be the longest at night really.

You can't really miss a single feed, if you're not feeding you need to be pumping in order to keep up your supply. Not feeding and not pumping throughout the night will definitely be detrimental to the amount of milk you're producing.

I found that the first feed of the day 6am was often the best feed of the day, as I had had some sleep and the baby would settle then quite well after the feed. Could you feed the baby and then hand her to your husband at 6 to look after for an hour or so while you go back to sleep, and not give the formula then.

The Infant feeding section of Mumsnet will have plenty of advice btw..you can google lots of past threads too.

From my own experience, going down the pumping route was a bit of a nightmare, you get so bogged down in sterilizing and attaching yourself to a machine and timings it can make breastfeeding feel like the worst of both worlds.

I would just avoid giving formula at night except possibly for the early evening feed if that is proving difficult to settle baby at, and you are exhausted beyond endurance. tbh formula can also make babies unsettled as well as settling them and the hv to never give one at night and encourage any night wakings at this age up till 4 months was v important for establishing my milk supply and successful feeding (and baby was a very good sleeper by 4 months, long daily naps, woke once in the small hours, gained well)

I think if you go down the avoid formula at all costs route you have to be prepared to go through a few difficult days of baby feeding non stop again; I would say go for it, but it is important to have a plan b and if a bit of mixed feeding done in the right way keeps you breastfeeding, I would also not discount that. But it isn't possible to stop feeding the baby at night at this age if you want to stimulate production properly.
As the baby gets older, I was told by a HV that the latch can also change subtly, as the baby gets heavier and the way you hold her to the breast has to change too so that she is properly "planted" and not dragging.

If your baby only regained her birth weight at three weeks then she has a lot of time to make up for, which is another reason to feed feed feed, because otherwise the formula you are replacing her breastfeeds with are going to exacerbate the catching up problem. But she needs to sleep and you need rest so trying to regulate the feeds perhaps to every 2hour on the dot, and not let her drop off mid feed and then 3 hourly at night might make it feel less like an endurance.
Babymoons are good! When you just go to bed with the baby (making sure not too hot for baby), and don't try and do much else but feed, skin to skin etc, for two days solid. That also worked for me. But with those little gaps between feeds rather than non stop attached.
Best of luck, and congratulations! (my oldest is 19 now!)

You really really can't skip any feeds at only 6 weeks as your supply isn't yet established and BF at night is the most important for prolactin production. She's trying to latch all day as your supply is being impacted at night. I wouldn't have been able to not BF at night as I would get very very sore as I had lots of milk. The fact that you're not shows it is impacting your supply I think

You are sadly being given duff advice. And get the tongue tie checked for again by someone who is qualified to do so.

And not being able to put a newborn down is a separate issue and very normal

One of the things that was suggested to me is that every time I fed the baby make sure the baby is properly supported on lots of pillows and your arms are supported when you are holding the baby to you, so there isn't a drag factor the baby's mouth should be parallel to your nipple NOT under it or coming at an angle when you latch her on. At the beginning of breastfeeding, first few weeks there is so much milk that these things won't appear important, but later it will affect the efficiency with which your baby can feed, and in turn how much milk she is getting at each feed (milk=settle/sleep)

Thank you @Nettleskeins and everyone else for the advice ❤️❤️

I got up at 5.30 to feed this morning and fed her for around 40 mins, when I took her off the usual happened... she was still trying to latch and was hungry :(

I wasn't ready to start the usual...(constant feed), this time even earlier from 5am!! So I made her formula and she guzzled it down. It just makes me think what happens to the milk I'm giving her? How it she feeding for that long then having all that formula on top?

@Harrysmummy246 when I wake up in the morning my breasts are engorged, lumpy and painful. I just ignore it during the night tbh because I'm so tired and rundown I just want to sleep.

@Nettleskeins I'm using a breastfeeding pillow which is a godsend and provides her with good support.

I have both of our checkups next week with the gp. I will keep going until then and see what she says.
I spoke to the doctor yesterday and she said she might have reflux which is making her think she's hungry when she's not. Have any of you experienced/heard of this?

No idea why some of the text is in bold? Sorry I'm new to the site