confused about sleep and routines...please help!

[Ghostie]

I have am eleven day old little girl and I am very confused about sleeping and feeding. In the hospital I was told to feed on demand, so I have been. Now, the baby seems to constantly fall asleep on the breast when she feeds and won't seem to self settle or go down without feeding. The books and the health visitor seem to be saying that these are really bad sleep and feeding habbits. Any one else in the same situation or got advice about trying break these patterns in a newborn baby? Do you just let them cry? I am very new to this and very confused!

no, don't let her cry. demand feeding is really very important, esp in the early days. her demand is what regulates your supply, not just now, but long term. she needs to feed a lot and it's fine for her to fall asleep

please don't worry about self-settling, as long as you are both happy that's all that matters

i fed all 3 of mine to sleep until they stopped doing it of their own accord and we're all just fine!

Can you try and look at the pattern she's got in to and offer her a feed before she's crying/over tired? Try and catch her before she has to demand the feed IYSWIM. Might mean you get more in her before she falls asleep.

Oh, and DS fed to sleep for the first 4 months, now doesn't. You do what works for the first few weeks/months, then worry about it later. She's not going to be feeding to sleep in her 20's! This is what works now, not forever.

Thanks for this, in the early days it is so hard to know if you are doing the right thing or not and when DD stresses and I am on my own I get a bit worried...clearly I just need to relax and let go a bit!

Firstly - congratulations!

11 days is tiny and tbh at this stage the only 'routine' you need bother with is making day and night different so she starts to do a little bit more of her sleeping at night than the day. Here's a useful website that I've found much more helpful than any of the millions couple of books I bought in my new-mum panic! Link here

You are doing exactly the right thing feeding on demand - and as the others say, don't worry about self-settling yet. The best thing you can do for your DD is help her feel safe and secure as only 11-12 days ago she was curled up inside you and this was all she'd ever known (this is what I used to tell myself when DS was tiny and having a wobble!)

Congratulations on your new baby! It sounds as if you're doing a great job.

As everyone else says, don't worry about it. Frankly, the books are rubbish. You will find that as your DD gets bigger, she no longer falls asleep after every feed. DS did this from 2/3 weeks. It was another month or two before he started feeding to sleep again, and I was immensely relieved since getting him to sleep by any other means was hideously difficult and involved masses of crying. Feeding to sleep is a wonderful tool.

At 6 months DS still feeds to sleep and can't self-settle, which is totally normal at this age.

My experience is that the best way to be a calm and half competent parent is to ignore everything the HV tells you. Sorry to be negative, but I've received a lot of unhelpful and plain wrong advice from them on both feeding and sleeping.