2 weeks in and struggling with night feeds

[NLW91]

I’m a FTM and my emotions are running high. I’m breastfeeding but I’m struggling with lack of sleep and keeping up with my 2 week old babies demand for milk throughout the night. I was just wondering if anyone has successfully fed their baby with formula throughout the night and breastfed in the day? How did you start to do it? It would just allow my husband to help out in the nights and for me to get some rest.

This is the hardest bit - in 3-4 weeks it'll be so much easier, as your baby stops being nocturnal. Honestly, I'd push through it if you can, otherwise you'll be up faffing with bottles, cooling it down whilst the baby cries.

Another option is expressing if you feel you can't cope with another few weeks - do you have a pump?

Finally - if you need to, formula is fine, nothing wrong with it, the reason for my first paragraph is that bf is loads easier once it's established and feeds become less frequent.

At this early stage the baby feeds regularly at night to boost your supply / establish breastfeeding. If u can hang in there until the 6 week mark then mixed feeding shouldn't affect anything but if u introduce formula too early it can have an impact on your supply.

Just my opinion, each to their own. Good luck, it's not easy! For me personally I turned a corner at 5 weeks when ds let me have the odd stint of 4 consecutive hours!

Do you try cluster feeding before bed? It was a long time ago now for me but by baby 3 I really found this worked and meant I had a rest in the evenings.

I felt the exact same, in fact the sleep deprivation pushed me to the edge and I was diagnosed with PND (not saying you will but I know the struggle). Now at 9 weeks my baby is combination fed and sleeps from 10-5:30 then again until 8:30am after a feed.

I starting my DD on a bottle at 3 weeks and made no difference to my supply. Firstly I would suggest getting a perfect prep machine if you are going to stick with formula as it takes literally 2 mins to make a bottle up which saves a lot of time in the night.

Secondly you could also use a pump and store milk, there’s different ways for it to be stored and is just another option to feed your baby with.

Thirdly I would highly recommend using the MAM bottles this is the only one my DD would take.

Best of luck.

Get some biscuits in, a flask of tea, Netflix/headphones on your phone and you will survive this

If you can, learn to feed lying down. It was a total game changer when I worked it out with my first and now, 6 months into feeding my 2nd, I'm not too bothered with night feeds as I've just dozed the whole way through to this point.

Breastfeeding at night helps determine your supply. For a while at least just follow the advice that when they sleep you sleep- in the day just nap and feed. Have snacks and water etc near by- it does get easier - oh and wake your other half if you physically can’t get out of bed to nappy change or to wind them.

They have phases where they feed AAAALLLL night and phases where they sleep for good chunks of time during the night. Plenty of high protein snacks and shedloads of water for you to keep milk supply up, and sleep during the day when baby naps.

If you feel like you just can't cope, then you may need to practice with a bottle to make sure your baby will take a teat. If it's the odd bottle here and there it shouldn't affect your supply xx

Co sleep was a life changer. (but it is not right for every one, eg if you or partner smoke.). Did not fnd bottles helped infact I haver had both breast and bottle refusal. Managed to overcome but it was tricky.