Does BF always mean sleep deprivation?

[SqidgeBum]

I am pregnant on DD2. I ff DD1 for personal reasons. I want to give BF a go this time around, but I have been put off a bit by scary stories from friends and peers. All my friends, my NCT group, my colleagues, and family seem to have had a really hard time with BF and sleep. Basically, they dont sleep for months and months. My neighbour has an 11 week old and hasnt had more than 2-3 hours sleep a night since the day he was born. Half the time she doesnt get one minute of sleep. He can cluster feed for 17 hours a day!

Did anyone have a good experience of sleep and BF? I dont mind being up in the night. Even with FF DD1 I was up a lot, but I have zero family support, a toddler under 2, and a husband who works 12 hour shifts. I cant have basically zero sleep for months and months, not to mention I cant sit on a couch feeding for 8 hours a day with a toddler who still needs attention. Someone please tell me its easier than I have been told? I dont want to start with the mentality that I am destined to give up.

I have EBF my three - DC1 slept through from 8 weeks, DC2 from 4 months and DC3 from 10 weeks. By sleep through I mean 11 unbroken hours sleep. So def not a reason to avoid BF.

I had a great sleeper for the first 10 weeks. She'd cluster feed pretty sleepily until about 11pm (I would sit tucked up in bed watching box sets for this, it was lovely). Then when she dropped off she generally slept straight through until about 6/7am.
After that it all went to a bit wrong, and there were a few dreadful weeks where I eventually resorted to co-sleeping because she wouldn't sleep without being latched on.
She's now 14 months, still breastfeeds but only first thing in the morning and just before bed. She typically sleeps 6:30/7pm-6am straight through.

(And to your last question OP I never coslept - always a cot in our room - or with DC3 a next to me crib which was great.)

Hi OP. 3 EBF babies here. They all were good sleepers, waking up at first every 2/3 hours for feeds and as they got a bit bigger, every 3/4 hours on average. Only one or two nights here and there of cluster feeding. And past the first couple of months, often they'd go for 6/7 hours in one stretch. I used a co-sleeper cot, and just fed them lying down in a safe position, and often fell asleep whilst feeding. I don't even remember a significant 4 month sleep regression for any of them. I'm pregnant again, so fingers crossed this one follows the pattern!

It's worth remembering too that babies are programmed to wake regularly and not to sleep too deeply. This is the safest way for them, to guard against SIDS. So while it's natural for us, as parents, to hope for better sleep, it is good to remind ourselves why babies are supposed to wake often in the first place.

Breastfed both my babies and we’re good sleepers. Both slept for 3-4 hrs stretches once established, with the odd cluster feeding evening/nights thrown in. Both slept through from about 6 months.

Best part was not getting out of bed as we had a next to me crib, I could just pick them up and pop them back. No having to make bottles etc

I must say the thought of just popping baby back into the moses basket is really attractive, considering I have many memories of standing in the kitchen at 2am with a screaming newborn, trying to remember how many scoops I put in the bottle, while the poor dog grumbled from his bed. I would then have to somehow get baby back upstairs from the couch after the bottle, manage doors (since I was trying not to wake DH), lights and the staircase without waking her. It was a nightmare. If BF works it would be much handier.

DS -fed every 2 hours for 45 minutes at a time 24/7 but read a lot of books on kindle so not all bad I suppose. Oh and he cluster fed in the early weeks from 11pm to 2am
DD - fed every 4 hours for 5 mins right from birth- felt so rested!
Both were sleeping through by 5/6 months but both early risers. Used to pretend to DH that DD had been up all night feeding so he really needed to get up with the kids and let me sleep :D

My bf DD is a good sleeper on a night. From 6 weeks by DD was having 1 feed a night (roughly 9/10-6/7) but she dropped that feed at 3 months and slept around 9 till 6. Since 9 months she's been sleeping 10/11 hours a night.

Getting her to nap during the day however is a completely different matter. Some days she refuses completely.

I had 2 terrible sleepers and both were BF. I coslept and could doze while they fed but I was still woken every hour for years.

The hardest thing is that you can never have a night off. Well in theory you could if you expressed enough but mine used the whole "experience" as a sleep aid/trigger, the milk alone didn't work.

DC1 4 hourly fed from day 1, never really cluster fed and got to be very efficient very quickly. Yes they woke for a brief feed until a year or so but really was terribly easy.
DC2 1-2 hourly for 12 weeks improved after this as on solids and was sleeping through 7-7 from 6/7 months.
DC3 a good feeder and quite efficient but did have the cluster feeding evenings and did a lot of comfort feeding. Slept in with us for years but was never awake for more than a few minutes in the night as long as they could snuggle up and perhaps have a feed. Continued until they were 4 .
All fully BF, the differences just seemed to be them.
Don't be afraid of BF, although it is not the usual mode of feeding in the uk it is worldwide and it has so many practical advantages never mind health ones. Like any baby awake in the night just go along with what they need, keep it dark and quiet and never look at a clock.

@pettyprudence your DS is the sort of situation I have encountered with friends, which i just couldnt manage while also dealing with a toddler. I just dont have the option of sitting down to feed that often. Well done for powering through!

After the learning with DD1, I coslept and bf with DD2. Was far less tiring, as I didn’t really fully wake up, didn’t have to get up, switch lights on etc. I was able to go back into full sleep much quicker - and this all adds up. It was so much easier that I actually enjoyed the night feeds and went back to sleep much calmer - perhaps that’s bf as well

@squidgebum it wasn't for too long though, and it was partially because he was a reflux baby with cmpi (as was DD) so the situation may have been worse with FF. I did try one night doing FF, with dh helping but it was even worse than bf-ing for me (sorting the bottles, kicking dh awake as he slept through DS screaming) and gained me absolutely no extra sleep.
By 7/8 weeks bfing only took 20 mins and was easy peasy (but still every 2 hours, a habit he maintained with solids until he was about 5). By 26 weeks and established weaning (weaned early due to reflux, did nothing for his vomiting) he'd dropped his feeds to just morning and afternoon (his bed time feed was actually the first one he dropped at 5 months and coincided with him sleeping through! I just went with it.)

I had a hard time with DC 2 and struggled with PND. I bf during the day and then gave him a bottle at night and if he woke in the night. He slept through at 6 months. (DC1 was exclusively bf for 6 months and took years to sleep through!)

No sorry. Both of mine have been complete boob monsters all night until they were about 2yo.

But I have never hugely struggled with it as I cosleep with them and this allows me to get enough sleep. You can also night wean when they are old enough if it's still a problem. I probably would have done this around a year if I wasn't a wuss and couldn't handle them crying

DS2 I was stuck in hospital for a week with so I had a taste of the whole feed, try to stay awake, try to put baby down rigmarole and that was horrific. I couldn't have coped if I'd been doing that for months and months on end. If you cosleep you don't need to worry about falling asleep feeding them and you don't have to put them down so those parts which I found the hardest don't really play a part.

As for daytimes it can vary but you will find you get quite skilled at holding baby to your breast one handed allowing you to do other things! It is also apparently possible to breastfeed in a ring sling. I never got the hang of this with my own but I did learn the technique later on when I helped run a sling group, it turned out to be a godsend!

First 6 weeks my DD who is my second child, only woke once a night at 3pm, so she slept 11pm to 7am with just one wake up. My boobs were killing me so full.

Personally as the wake ups increased to 997 a night I decided again to cosleep, so baby and me fall asleep feeding on our sides lying in our bed. No covers near baby and I sleep in the protective c position . I swap sides each time baby wakes. It maybe that if I fed both sides each time the number wake up would be less, but who knows. And you'll cope with the toddler, second babies are used to it.

Not having to mess on making bottles and winding a baby save you a lot of time!!

The only thing is it would be you exclusively doing the feeding so it is tiring if you want a night off but so worth it. I would do it all over again.

Just to say - I said earlier upthread that ds slept 4-6 hours from birth and was bf - I'm definitely not lying! He absolutely did because I was so worried he wasn't feeding enough that I contacted the midwife who told me, when he was 2 weeks old, that she was happy for him to go 6 hours overnight so I set an alarm to make sure he didn't go longer than that. I still have those alarms saved on my phone! And the 4m regression wasn't a thing with either of mine. Dd was such a crap sleeper that if there was a regression it made no difference and ds suffered a minor regression at 8mo (possibly a teething issue) but nothing else.

We have a next to me. I feed her to sleep between 9/10, she sleeps to one or two, ten min feed, then wakes 3/4 for a ten min feed then wakes about 8.00.

@SqidgeBum

I have noticed many mothers say BF is handy as you can doze/co-sleep. I know people advocate for it, but it kind of freaks me out thinking i would roll over and kill her.

Has anyone managed to BF and baby sleep in a moses basket or a cot beside them? I imagine it would be hard to stay awake as you arent physically getting up like you need to with FF.

I would really recommend a cosleeper cot for this (the next to me or similar). I never felt comfortable cosleeping with DS in the bed, and the few times I tried it I found between my worry about it, the position you have to lie in and the fact you're not supposed to have covers, I barely slept at all. But we got a next to me early on, after DS made it clear he hated the Moses basket, and it was brilliant - he was on his own surface so I didn't worry about rolling on him etc, and I could have covers as long as I kept them well away from that side of the bed. It meant I could feed lying down and then slide him over without needing to sit up (or, sometimes, I left him in the next to me and sort of dangled a boob in his face... ). It felt like a really good compromise between a separate cot and full cosleeping for us.

I'd also recommend a next to me. I never figured out how to fix it to the bed or let the side down so we used it as a stand alone cot next to the bed. It was great. It is higher so I didn't have to really get out of bed to feed the kids.

I never felt like I'd fall back to sleep. Partly because I had two winter newborns so it was a bit cold lol.

I also highly recommend sleeping bags for ease of feeding and putting down.

As good as my second was with sleeping, she still cluster fed overnight in the early days and weeks. This is totally normal.

My husband took on all the toddler duties while on paternity leave / when not at work. It meant I could focus on feeding baby.

[quote Cherrybalm]@GeorginaTheGiant do what you want and what you got to do but think it's a bit unnecessary to bash breastfeeding the way you just have. fair enough that was your experience but, in general, if you are exclusively breastfeeding it is much cheaper. no pump, no bottles - that's not exclusively breastfeeding. so really, 10 pound nipple cream and my 4 nursing bras which was about 20 quid. it's not comparable. I have no issue with formula feeding whatsoever but let's stick to being unbiased when giving advice to someone who is deciding whether to give it a try or not.

also, the reason breast milk is noted as being ideal is because of the antibodies. again, nothing against formula but they are impossible to replicate.

btw, please dont come back defensive, I'm not interested in another thread going breastfeeding vs formula feeding, it's been done to death. but, sorry, you needed to be called out for the infactual aspects of your posts (the cost side and the "evidence" comment)[/quote]
I’m equally uninterested in any kind of bf v ff debate, but I resent being basically told not to share my own experiences just because they don’t fit the narrative you want to push.

If you want to push back on incorrect facts then you saying that a tube of lansinoh and four nursing bras comes to £20 in total, well sorry but I find that very difficult to believe.

I shared that I personally spent the same on what I bought to support bf as I did on formula. That is my real, lived experience so please don’t basically tell me to get back in my box. I didn’t say anything in my thread other than share my views and experiences, I didn’t tel the Op what to do herself, and to be honest I’m pretty sick of being told to shut up by people about what I lived and breathed for a year, just because it goes against the narrative that you want to push.

Some people have brilliant bf experiences, and you clearly only want to hear from them. That doesn’t make my own experience any less valid.

My first baby was bf and a bad sleeper. However, I think that was really just his personality. All of my NCT group bf and we had the full range of sleep experiences from the angel baby who was doing 7-7 from about 10 weeks up to my son, who was actually great until the 4 month sleep regression. My best friend had a baby in March and she’s EBF and has been sleeping through for months, so it can definitely happen.

There’s so much more to bf (pros and cons) than sleep though. And because every baby is different you might never know whether their sleep was affected by how you fed them. Also combi feeding is an option- lots of people I know gave a bottle of formula as the bedtime feed so their DH could do it, for example.

@SelmaB

Just to say - I said earlier upthread that ds slept 4-6 hours from birth and was bf - I'm definitely not lying! He absolutely did because I was so worried he wasn't feeding enough that I contacted the midwife who told me, when he was 2 weeks old, that she was happy for him to go 6 hours overnight so I set an alarm to make sure he didn't go longer than that. I still have those alarms saved on my phone! And the 4m regression wasn't a thing with either of mine. Dd was such a crap sleeper that if there was a regression it made no difference and ds suffered a minor regression at 8mo (possibly a teething issue) but nothing else.

Yes, it is actually fine (and normal) for newborn babies to have one longer stretch in any 24 hour period, where they can manage a longer sleep without feeds. Anecdotally, many people notice this stretch often falls after a bit of a cluster feed (which gives hope!). One of my babies did this too from birth. He was also a big baby (over 10 lbs) so this probably meant he could fill up more at a feed and last a bit longer.

Yes they can cluster feed, but you can also train cluster feed. When dc2 was newborn (in Jan this year), she wanted to cluster feed hourly for nine hours. Hmm, I thought, we can start this any later than 2pm. So I fed her at 2, then at 3 and so on. This lasted a week or so then we shaved a hour either side.

Now she wakes once or twice. But this is ok for me as I'm going back to work and I think she may want to use night feeds to make up for missed direct from the boob feeds.

Breastfeeding is cheaper and easier than sterilizing once you get over beginner hump (you and little one are both learning....)

Also you can make breastmilk 'thicker' eating oatmeal, walnut, avocado so they may stay fuller longer (like ff...)