Breastfeeding and sleep

[Scotgirl35]

Ladies I'm on my knees 😴 After being thrilled that I've managed to EBF my DS3 who is 5months old, after not managing to breastfeed my 1st 2, I'm considering just giving up as I can't function like this anymore !
He literally breastfeeds to sleep then wakes every 45mins- 1.5 all night 😣 I introduced a dummy a few weeks ago to see if it helps but it doesn't really...even if settled with dummy he will wake every 5-10 mins until feeds again 😕 and when I say feed...half the time I don't even think he sucks sufficiently to even get any milk!...is just a comfort I guess.
Anyway...any help/advise/suggestions?
I'm thinking of buying a light projector and putting him down wide awake and then sitting with him until he falls asleep?? But worried he will cry too much.
Also he's still swaddled...do I just go cold turkey with that and hope for the best?
Thanks in advance xxx

Have you thought about cosleeping? In my eyes breastfeeding and cosleeping go hand in hand and I wouldn’t have survived otherwise!

Well I suppose I sort of do as I have a snooze pod attached to bed and basically just lean over and try to offer comfort but tbh 99% of the time he won't settle and I have to pick him up and either feed him back to sleep or DH can sometimes rock him back to sleep with a dummy....but why does he wake hourly 😭 I'm exhausted as have a 4 and 2 year old too x

I would try a baby sleep app that plays white noise. Then try a little baby rice in the evening.

This is so similar to my situation right now! Sooo frustrating isn't it, i thought we'd be over the worst of it by now but our boys sleep is all over the place.

The past week we've had 4am wakenings- boys been fed back to sleep then 30-45 mins later he wakes up crying all the way to 7am. Exhausting. We use a dummy too and sometimesit helps him get back to sleep, othertimes he'll spit it out prematurely and then be furious he can't find it/fully wake up again.
Thinking he's getting too much sleep in the day (4.5 hours) so now adjusting in vain hope it means he'll sleep more at night..today am sticking with 1 hour in AM, 2 at lunch, 30 mins PM. Thing is, he's SO miserable in the day if he has more than 1.5 hrs of awake time so difficult to keep him up...

Ahh, just hoping this is another phase and he'll come out the other side soon!

Oh wow so total snap! Could have wrote that post 😣 Struggles to stay awake more than 1.5hours without being miserable but then my fella only sleeps for half an hour 🙄 so he has 4 half hour naps (2 hours total) .
It's exhausting...keep hoping it's a phase but he's been like this for pretty much his whole short life 😂 I'm just too soft to do any sort of CC so suppose I'll just have to live with it 😕
I've got white noise which I do think helps to block out the noise the other kids make in day...not sure how much it helps at night but is on!! Baby rice before bed could be worth a try x

My daughter, now 7 mo was exactly the same and I decided after a lot of pondering to give a bottle of formula before bed from 5 months. I still let her bf after (she usually drinks 3/4 to half of the bottle) and then bf for anything between 5-30mins, not necessarily drinking but so she feeds to sleep but honestly it’s made her sleep so much better. We only have 1-2 wake ups now and usually she sleeps 6-8 hours in that first stretch.
Possibly not a popular opinion and not something you want to do but honestly, for me it was a game changer as I was on my knees. We still bf all other times and it doesn’t seem to have impacted on my supply. My other daughter was ebf and slept like a dream so until a few months ago I would have argued with my own post but in my baby’s case the formula does make her sleep for longer.

Aw thanks for that...I'm going to give it a go 😕 I'm off to buy a bottle and some formula tomorrow...I think for my mental sanity it's the right thing to do and I'll hope it works for me too 🙏🏻🙏🏻 I've just been so scared he will then prefer the bottle but hopefully not! He's gone to bed tonight at 7pm and I've been up 4 times already resettling him so something needs to change 😭

Have you tried feeding lying down? I've just weaned my 9mo off night feeds but from v early days till 4wks ago she slept beside me and fed lying down so I was able to fall back to sleep while she fed. She also woke every hour consistently from 4months onwards so I know how brutal it is. I have now left our bedroom to sleep on the sofa while my DH cosleeps with her and gets her back to sleep when necessary (for the first 2-3 nights of doing this she cried a lot but has now settled into being comforted by DH.) At least on the sofa I am getting better sleep! Is there any way you can let your other half do a night shift whilst you sleep elsewhere, so you can get some well needed rest?

My 8mo was the same at that age. It has improved a lot since then (with some periods of worsening with colds and teething too). It is very hard, you have my utmost sympathy

Thanks ladies for the replies ☺️ Never quite mastered the feeding lying down...I will try harder I think...although I still have him swaddled in a 'woombie' sleep sack so that's probably not helping is it?
Just had the night from hell with him actually because he fed at 1am then vomited all over woombie 😱🙈 , with the only spare one also in the wash basically it took until 4am for me to get him settled because every time I laid him back down his arms would fly up and he was awake again 😫😫 ....oh I'm in a mess...so many things to sort don't know where to start 😰

We use the merlin magic sleepsuit, which muffles the startle reflex- kind of a transitional sleep suit between swaddling and the gro bag. Will use this until hes 6 months when I'll put him in his grobag....not sure how well that'll be received! Atm the sleepsuit works pretty well as he basically can't move his arms that freely.

Yesterday evening i gave the boy some baby rice after his usual feed and he gobbled it up. He was then fed at 7 and slept til almost 12, was awake for 15 mins then slept til 3.45! Unheard of!
Im putting it down to: baby rice, putting the white noise device under his cot (when previously it had been on our dresser on other side of room) and me swapping the side of bed i sleep on with husband, so im further away and he can't smell me as much (still in earshot!). Of course, this could be a fluke and tonight might be back to before (please god no!)

Whatever the case I'm going to continue offering baby rice again tonight as think he's been hungry on just my milk alone.
ALSO. At 12 and after he woke at 3.45, my boy was unsettled. He fell asleep after being fed but awoke as soon as he was put down (standard). After 15 mins of rocking him to sleep/ him waking up i put him down and he was yelling out in a tired lil voice (but not crying). I counted to a minute before doing anything and he fell asleep. That happened at 3.45 and then 6/ 6.30 when he awoke again- i made a point of not reacting straight away after putting him back down and i think he self settled (that mysterious self settling I'd only read about before). There was a few times i had to put the dummy back in but i literally did that and walked away.
Ok who knows if this will last, but hopefully by sticking consistently to this 1 min rule he might find it easier and easier to settle.

Hope tonights better gor you!

Oh wow that's excellent! Thanks for that insight I'll try to replicate I think 🙏🏻🤣
Defo need to give the baby rice and formula a go....I've got some formula to try tonight (wish I'd thought of baby rice 🙄).
Never heard of a magic merlin...think I need to purchase one of those!!
I've got white noise playing quite loudly.
I think even 1 block of decent sleep is enough to survive on? It's the hourly wake ups that are killing me 😴
Good luck tonight I bet the suspense of killing you?!!

I’d urge you to do a bit more research before introducing formula and baby rice op kellymom.com/nutrition/starting-solids/solids-sleep/

Has the amount of wakings recently increased? Mine is ebf, fed to sleep cosleeping like you. 10mo.
At 4.5 months he went through sleep regression and again last month. Timings are pretty normal and for me lasted about 6weeks.
Matched up with learning new significant skills. Crawling at 4mo and now the walking and first words at 10mo. So i think developmentally they cant switch off.
If it is this, then it will get better.
I think if baby has been ebf and nursed to sleep since birth it will be a horrible battle to change sleep to self settling. Can you wait till baby is actually weaned off breastmilk before you do that?
If you want to keep bfing then hang on in there a few more weeks to see if 8t gets better. If you dont want to keep bfing then do the mik change before you attempt to leave baby to self settle as it will be too many changes at once

I wouldnt give baby food though, 6montgs is the recommended age. The digestive system is not ready for food yet

I would check how much Arsenic is in the baby rice before giving it to a 20 week old baby.

Agree, baby rice is not recommended at all anymore.
I know what you're going through though op, I sympathise! I never did find a solution though lol

Get your partner to settle him.

Arsenic 😱 oh wow. Thanks for all the helpful replies ladies.
I think you're right...I've worked hard to EBF after not managing with my 1st 2 so think I'll try with 1 bottle of formula only before bed and still breastfeed to sleep. Guess I just hope it's a long phase that's about to end 🙏🏻 He did a 2 hour block last night 10-12 🤣 but he's almost impossible to settle now after the 5am ish wake so it's going to be a long day today.
DH is great and tries to settle him but he just will not have any of it! Sometimes he can resettle him with dummy and rocking him but he either wakes as soon as he lays him back down or he will stay down but only for 5mins 🙄