I need to vent on this and say stuff I feel I can never say to people?s faces.
Sleep is needed for cognitive development and sleep deprivation is used as torture yet noone teaches parents about it, except to what to do when they?re older and have established problems. Babies need an incredible amount of sleep and there are detrimental consequences for them if they don?t get what they need. Breastfeeding introduces challenges to help them get the sleep they need and I wish I?d known what I know now before I had my first baby. Many first time mothers (me included) never consider their babies sleep requirements and are never advised on it. We took our babies out wherever we went leaving them to sleep whenever they could. When they cried from tiredness we would misinterpret their cries as hunger or boredom and feed them or produce some new plastic toy to dazzle them with.
They then would develop a wide eyed exhausted gaze which would cause people to comment on how ?they?re taking it all in? when they?re actually overwhelmed.
It is amazing quite how much sleep little babies need. Before 12 weeks they need about 16 hours a day . My 9 wk old feeds about 7 times in 24 hours taking a total of 5 hours 15mins. Assuming he goes straight back to sleep after his night feeds and one day feed. Then after the other 4 day feeds he has 40mins before he needs to be asleep and as it can take 10mins to get him to sleep he can only really be awake 30 mins after a feed. Ime babies under 2 months can stay awake for a max of between 1 and 2 hours. If kept awake longer than that period they not only struggle to sleep immediately after but also struggle to sleep in the evening, for the night.
I do realise that the first few weeks when establishing breastfeeding are an exception. Until breastfeeding is established the baby by definition isn?t full and they have to work at increasing your supply. Living with a hungry baby is really hard and they inevitably can?t get the sleep they need while they need to be awake and feeding constantly or else when they sleep only briefly before waking hungry. One problem in parents? perception after these weeks is that their baby can?t sleep and we become quite used to having an awake baby for company. The baby then cluster feeds due to the sleep deprivation and the mother is left thinking there is no time between feeds to bother trying for a nap. I remember myself and other mums at the time commenting on how our babies didn?t sleep anything like the amount the books suggested (as if that was their fault ) and we would miss our babies company if they slept more during the day!
However, once breastfeeding is established we should be trying much harder to get our babies to sleep in the day. My first was unable to sleep unaided, unless exhausted, after those first 6 weeks. She needed to be rocked and have a finger to suck before she would sleep. We naively only gave her the opportunity to sleep at night. It could then take up to 3 hours of various tactics before she eventually succumbed. Demand sleeping does not work . Babies need a quiet, dark, comfortable environment and many need help getting to sleep. We shouldn?t be offering them this only at the end of the day and we shouldn?t be left to learn it the hard way.
Vent over. Carry on.