do bottle fed babies sleep longer than breast fed?

[RB1]

I have a six week old breast fed baby who sleeps for only 2 hours a time. is it because he isn't getting enough and would sleep longer if bottle fed? seriously thinking of changing to bottles even though not as good for baby. or am i just hoping to end the sleep deprivation?

My breastfed 7 month old sleeps brilliantly and always has. He is in my bed with me and though he wakes a few times for a feed at night, I am not really too aware of it as it doesn't involve properly waking up usually.

I would never want to start the whole cycle of formula versus BF and potentially muck up the supply and demand thing we have going on, and God forbid I would be washing bottles in the night if it didn't work!!!!

Good luck whatever you do x

op, it is possible that at 6 wks your baby is having a growth spurt which is your baby's way of increasing your milk supply.
if you think it is not the case,

I suggest that you do consider cosleeping even if just for part of the night as cosleeping is not an all or nothing thing. can keep your baby downstairs in a moses basket till you are ready to go to bed and feed on and off till then. or later on, get dp/dh to get the baby and bring to your bed and sleep together for a few hrs or till morning. You can also take a nap together during the day to recharge your batteries.

it takes a while to get used to as most people are concerned they will squish the baby. try searching the sleep/parenting and breast and bottlefeeding threads for all manner of useful advice for cosleeping or start your own thread.

rb1
i do not believe that ff babies sleep longer than bf babies.
just depends on the baby
mine was ex bf till about 5 and a half months, and started sleeping though the night 11 till 7am at 3 weeks and has done so every night from 6 weeks.
then at 4 months started sleping from 8pm till 7/8am

i didnt really realise it at the time but what dd was doing was cluster feeding in the evening which is basically just v v frequent feeding, she used to do this from 6/7pm till 11pm
how often do you feed your dc in the eve ? could you try and offer more?

also i really second the co-sleeping advice, what i did was have dd in her mb next to me when she needed feeding bring her into the bed with you and fed lying dwon so reastful and extremley wonderful for bonding, for me this was a life saver

also have you tried posting in the feeding section, you will get the worlds best support in there.
do try and keep going if you can your doing a great job
welldone

ps have you seen the kellymom dot com website? if not you must have a look its got all the info you could need and more

My DD never did. She was bottle fed entirely by 6 weeks but she never slept through until she was 20 months old.

this is in wrng topic area - i know as i have ignored the correct area from view.

i cannot say whether your child with sleep better.

Message withdrawn

yep keep up the good work, also agree cosleep tis the way to go. clara is right it WILL get better very soon and would be much harder making up bottles in the night and they don't always drink there bottles fast either

All of my 3 did, know that isn't the pc thing to say but they did.

Struggled on for 6 weeks with all 3, the minute I started giving bottles I started to get some sleep and was a much nicer mummy, actually started to enjoy feeds as I was no longer in pain and knackered zombie woman.

No idea if it would be the same for you but it was definately the case for me and many of my friends.

You need to be sure that bottle feeding is for you though as even just topping up after feeds does affect things and you don't want to regret anything later. There is nothing to be ashamed of re bottle feeding(best baby items I ever invested in) but you just need to know it's definately what you want so you feel entirely comfortable with your decision and enjoy whatever you decide to do.

Sometimes babies that are not fed on demand(be it breast or bottle) and put into a 'you must drink this much this often' do sleep longer because their stomachs are stretched artificially thus allowing them to take more milk. (think Claire Verity forcefully waking the babies to give them more milk when they were tired to make them sleep through the night).
This isn't the case for all babies, but forcing them to take more than their stomach will allow is surely not good?

IME it didn't make a huge difference, the 2 who slept through the night earliest (ie 12 hour stretch) were both fully b/f, they were big birthweight babies and I was anal about waking them during the day from day 3 for lots of frequent daytime feeds!

Don't think you can can force babies to take more than their stomach will allow as in my experience they would just throw it all back up or just stop when full.

2 of mine are twins and they had completely different appetites. 1 drank far more than his smaller twin even though I made the bottles the same size.The smaller twin always stopped at exactly the same amount which was right for him.

MilaMae, it doesn't happen overnight but the stomach is stretchable, so if you continuously overfeed the stomach will stretch.

Hi
I would say that being b/f is not necessarily the problem.
Like someone else said, there is a growth spurt at about 6 weeks. and it does depend on the baby.
My dd slept thru night from about 8 weeks and was 100% b/f.
my ds didn't!!!!
Keep up the good work!!

My breastfed DS was a terrible sleeper until 7 months, but I think it was more to do with wanting to be held and feel snug, and also with painful wind.
He never latched on completely, even though I had loads of lessons and advice and read a million books and did everything I was advised, he seemed to prefer to latch on where you could hear him slurping, so I'm sure he gulped down a load of air.
I would burp him, but never really got a big burp out of him(!). I'm sure that was the problem.
Is your DC definitely hungry?
I know the breastfeeding literature denies 'colic' and the like in breastfed babies, but whenever I was in breastfeeding booths in places like Mothercare and John Lewis, I'd discuss it with other mums and they said their babies suffered from trapped burps/wind too. Scrunched up faces and knees to tummy etc.
Anyway, good luck. By the time your DC is 14 yrs old you won't be able to wake them...

NO
as far as i am concenred it s a myth.
babies need milk regularly - why do people think they should go for long periods without at this stage, this baffles me???

my ds breastfed was a great sleeper, his cousin 4 mths younger bottle fed an atrocious sleeper.

my dd breastfed a good sleeper from 9mths.

Also, sorry I missed it out before, your baby is still very very young, although with the sleep deprivation it must feel like ages since you gave birth, and is unlikely to be going more than 3 hours between feeds anyway. 2 hours sounds normal, I'm afraid, but please know that it won't be like this forever and that there IS light at the end of the tunnel.

Another NO here I'm afraid. Your baby is still tiny and is probably going through a growth spurt (my DD had a lot of these). I found that even when my Mum babysat (for 3 nights and days in a row at one point), and my BF DD was FF constantly, she still woke up as much as with BM, and that was when she was much much older than your DB.
The sleep deprivation is really hard though. Have you tried expressing and giving a bottle so that you can have an afternoon off? The first time that I didn't feed DD my Mum gave her EBM and I was upstairs asleep. I knew that if DD didn't take it that I was nearby and could rush to the rescue, on the other hand, I had a whole afternoon's sleep.
PS I promise that this is a case of "this too will pass" - DD was a dreadful sleeper and now goes through like a dream.