Am I giving him caffeinated milk, or what is going on?!

[UpToMyElbowsInDiapers]

DS is 6.5 weeks old. By this age, his older sister would reliably sleep a 5-hour stretch at night followed by another 2-3 hour stretch. She was EBF and never took a bottle, but we didn’t really need her to since her schedule from a young age was pretty reasonable.

Now for DS... he usually cluster feeds from 3pm until about 11:30pm (though always gives me a good break for dinner, thankfully!), then sleeps for 2-3 hours. DH goes to bed early, while I’m cluster feeding DS, and then gives him a bottle of expressed milk when DS wakes up around 2am so that I can stay sleeping (theoretically...) for a little stretch. That’s all great until around 3:30am, when DS wakes up again. He is then fussy and seems to want to be held and/or fed every hour or so for the rest of the night. During the day he can quite reliably go 2-3 hours without a feed, so it’s not that he’s unable!

So... what are we doing wrong? It occurred to me that I always pump milk in the morning after I’ve had a cup of coffee. This sounds crazy, but the milk couldn’t be ever so mildly caffeinated could it? Is the melatonin-free morning milk itself signalling DS that it’s time to be awake and alert, or is something else going on?

Please help! The 6-7 feeds a night are beginning to feel a bit ridiculous. Would we be better off with one formula feed in the middle of the night? I unfortunately can’t pump in the evening because there’s too much going on with the cluster feeding, dinner, and DD at home. I probably wouldn’t have the required volume at that point anyway.

Ideas?

Yes, caffeine can be passed into milk.

Sounds like you got an easy baby first time around and second time you weren't so lucky. He is 6.5 weeks give him a chance, at that age my ds was still up every 1.5 hours all night. Dd was sleeping 11-5 regularly at the same age.

Ds didn't sleep a night through until 14 months, dd is 5 months and has been doing 10-7 most nights for a couple of months. Both bottle fed but completely different children.

I think what you are describing is normal I’m afraid. Some babies can go for longer at night and others spend forever on the boob day or night. Certainly my first two loved breastfeeding every 3 hours day or night and not until baby 3 arrived did I get one who slept a bit longer at night from about 6 weeks old.

I would be wary of going to formula in hopes of getting baby to sleep through, I tried it with dc1 and she just woke up wanting a bottle instead.

I was told by HV to sleep when baby sleeps so all of us had afternoon naps (baby, preschoolers and me).

Basically sleep deprivation is shit, thankfully they don’t stay babies for long, although it drags on and on at the time.

Caffeine is present in milk 15 minutes after you drink it. But given he’s only a tiny baby frequent wakings seem normal.

I also had a natural sleeper for my first baby. Here I am with baby 2 reading the sleep board

Sounds normal to me at that tiny age, we had 3 months of hourly night feeds... So tough (especially with another lo to look after) but sounds like your doing a good job 🙂

Sigh... I was worried people would say it’s normal, and he’s just not a great sleeper. Deep down that’s what I suspected... but a girl can hope!

Righty-ho, I’ll just crack on with the cluster feeding but I think I’ll be extra careful with this guy to start working on the “sleepy but awake” bedtimes. We’ll try to start building some good habits, and hope that his constant night-time hunger abates at some point!

... I write this after he went for a 4-hour milk-free stretch this afternoon. SAVE IT, DUDE! 😂

I drink caffeine in the mornings only and I used to express milk then so my partner could give an evening bottle. It didn’t seem to affect his sleep.

At about ten weeks he started refusing bottles so I went back to just breastfeeding and there was no change in his sleep patterns.

Good luck 🙂 sleep deprivation is not easy!!