Breastfeeding and sleepless nights

[Itsmyarmsthatarecold]

I'm due my first baby in a few short weeks. I'm planning on breastfeeding but keep hearing negative things about it and it's worrying me.

Do babies tend not to sleep as long if you breastfeed rather than bottle feed? Apparently bottle fed babies sleep a lot longer in the night whereas breast fed babies wake every 2 hours. Is this the general rule?

OP you need to educate yourself and ignore people offering helpful "advice".

Newborn babies are not designed to sleep for long periods, they wake frequently as a protective mechanism against SIDS. Of course there is a huge spectrum of normal, and some babies sleep more than others, but as a general rule a when having a newborn you will be suffering some degree of sleep deprivation for a while. Bottle or FF makes very little difference to sleep in the grand scheme of things.

Personally I wouldn't base a decision on infant feeding around how much sleep I thought it would get me - better to make an informed decision based on what you feel is best for baby IMO. Then you can adjust accordingly once you and your baby have gotten to know each other.

IME my breastfed baby slept in three hour chunks from quite early on, with these gradually lengthening in time. Baby didn't sleep any longer at all when he had a bottle of formula at night either. When waking was still quite frequent we bed shared (safely) so I could feed him lying down and doze at the same time (not something you can do with a bottle) so we both got more sleep that way.

My ebf baby sleeps 8/9 hours at night in a stretch and has done since 2 months old. At 4 weeks she was doing a 4 hours and at 6 weeks it went to 6 then by 2 months it was 9 hours. She sleeps better than all my ff friends babies so I think it's an absolute myth. My friends ebf baby sleeps 10 hours a night at same age.

It's much easier to feed a bf baby in the night than a ff baby. I do not get out of bed. Ever. Imagine getting out of bed to go downstairs and make a bottle, wait for baby to drink bottle, then re settle and wind baby.. ugh cba. Then imagine rolling over and popping boob in babies mouth falling straight back to sleep (I co sleep) so easy! I never get this tiredness everyone's on about ?? I've never found having a baby tiring at all and I think it's because I bf and night feeds are easy peasy

Op, don’t worry about it. The first bit until you are in a routine - any routine - is difficult but you’ll cope.

I had ds in a Moses basket in a stand beside my bed, and got to the point I could be 7/8 asleep while he fed.

You’ll be fine. Congratulations.

Ah, it's quite a hard line to tread with this post, isn't it? OP, I don't want you to not try breastfeeding because of potentially inaccurate and unhelpful ideas, but nor do I want you to think there's something wrong or unusual if your breastfed baby does need to eat in the night for a long time. This:

I've never found having a baby tiring at all and I think it's because I bf and night feeds are easy peasy

May be true for some people; I also breastfeed and was on my knees with exhaustion in about weeks 6-8 and again when the four month sleep regression kicked in (still waiting for that one to pass! Though it is easing, fingers crossed). Neither breastfeeding nor bottle feeding is a guarantee of getting lots of sleep with a baby - nothing is, sadly!

@LisaSimpsonsbff I thought the four month sleep regression might actually kill me, but I survived. There is hope!

I BF both of mine til 2yo+ and they were/are terrible sleepers tbh, waking multiple times a night even when 18 months plus. Not sure of it was the BF that caused that or not but if I'd have FF I'd at least have been able to have a night off!* BF has its benefits but with hindsight I continued through guilt even though it was bad for my MH to gave such broken sleep (& the poor MH meant I felt like I didn't matter & thus deserved the poor sleep, as BF was way mote important than me getting rest).

• in theory this can be achieved through expressing, if you can express enough, have time to express enough, and your baby will take a bottle.

to have*

Thanks spam! We had three good nights - just enough for me to start being hopeful that we were out the other side - and then a shit one last night! I find him so much more engaging and interesting now though that I can almost accept the rubbish sleep as the developmental trade-off

I EBF DC1, who slept through at 6 months. The first few months are rough because you have to do all the feeding (unless you express but I hated it so didn't) - I was definitely beyond exhausted by 4 months when FINALLY sleep started to get longer than 2-3 hours at a time. A supportive partner is key, DH did everything around the house and took care of the baby from 6pm when he got home until the next feed at about 9pm so I could go straight to bed! He would make me some dinner whilst I was doing the 9pm feed, I ate and then we all went to bed.

At about 4 months I had enough and got MILITANT about the feeds in the day - every 1.5-2 hours max rather than "on demand" though obviously if extra feeds were needed in between I gave them. Within days baby started waking twice overnight and going to bed earlier and everything fell back into place but it was bloody hard for the first few months.

Night weaned at 6 months by themselves, very rarely woke in the night but if they did then DH went to them first to settle them. I rarely did night feeds again ever.

I'm having another baby soon and plan to EBF again though so it was definitely worth it. I loved the convenience - crying baby, feed baby, everyone's happy within seconds!

The thing is, it's impossible to answer this question really because everyone has different experiences. I think, anecdotally, most breastfed babies probably are "worse" sleepers but then our expectations of babies are generally too high. They are supposed to wake frequently in the night for feeds. Indeed, as you establish breastfeeding in the early weeks and months it's really important that you feed very frequently as it builds up your supply.

We switched to formula at 6 months and it made sod all difference to his sleep. The only difference was that I had to get up to make a bottle rather than whipping my boob out while still lying down.

I just had my baby a month ago,
I breast fed him for 2 weeks he slept for about 3 hours at a time but when my partner went back to work he wanted fed every 20 minutes as he could smell it on me, I couldn't even cuddle him without him wanting me, it was very draining and I ended up isolating myself,

He then went through 3 days where he screamed and refused to sleep, we thought it was trapped wind as he would come off my boob screaming as if in pain ( he very rarely cries at anything!) I decided to express into a bottle to see how much he was getting and it turned out he was screaming cause he was starving, I wasn't producing anywhere near enough for him.

Swapped him to formula and the crying stopped, he's older now so doesn't nap much during the day but sleeps from 10pm to 5 am then back to sleep to 10am

I defo notice he's happier on formula and so am I as I m able to actually hold him without him trying to eat me lol!
I should mention I was so so for breas feeding and was almost against formula but until you breast feed yourself it's hard to judge lol! Hope this helped :) having your baby will be the most amazingist experience in the world! X

I'm glad you found a good solution for you Megan but just so OP knows: expressing isn't a way of checking how much milk you make, lots of women have plenty of milk for their baby but can't get much/any milk expressing. The number of wet nappies a baby is producing is a much better guide to whether they're drinking enough.

I breastfeed and he’s never slept more than about 2.5 hours in 10 months. Moving to solid food made not a jot of difference, o doubt ff would have either. I don’t feel crazily overtired though. In the early days I napped, nowadays my partner takes the morning shift when he wakes up so I get extra hours. I say give breastfeeding a go. Now I have to prep actual food, I miss the simplicity of being able to feed anywhere anyhow. With such a frequent waker, the idea of using formula would have been such an arse..

Also bear in mind low milk supply can be temporary.

I decided to express into a bottle to see how much he was getting and it turned out he was screaming cause he was starving

It is well known (or should be anyway) that expressing is NOT a reliable indicator of how much your baby is getting. The reliable indicators are weight gain and wees. If your baby is gaining weight and weeing, they are getting enough milk.

I had major oversupply and could barely express anything. It's not an indicator.

I probably should have said, ny health visitor was concerned about his weight gain and he was producing way more dirty nappies than wet so it was an informed choice from her too

And she told me to express to see how much I was producing.x

I’m a pro expresser as I’ve done it at work for almost a combined 13 months between two babies.

My expressed output is low on Mondays when I’ve only directly fed on weekends. It’s low if I get sick or don’t drink enough water. I have different pumps and get different amounts from each also. But my direct feeding is almost never affected by these things. So I don’t believe expressing is a good way to know how much you are producing.

It’s good that the weight issues are resolved meghan but some HVs clearly give poor advice, as others have said the amount you express has nothing to do with the amount you produce.

I also had weight issues with my BF baby. To get a rough idea of how much he was drinking, my midwife weighed him, let me feed him, then weighed him again. I’m not saying that’s terribly accurate either but expressing into a bottle tells you nothing at all.

I went away for a weekend when my DD was 11 months. My breasts were so full they were lumpy and painful, but I couldn't get more than a few drops out with either the pump or hand expressing, so it's definitely not a good indicator.

Expressing is absolutely no indication of production and unfortunately many HVs (and HCP in general) are woefully ill informed when it comes to breastfeeding. At lot of breastfeeding journeys are ended prematurely because of bad advice - which is shocking really, given how hard the NHS pushes breastfeeding on new mums. They shout about the importance of it, but don't provide the support to back that up.