What are your top tips for coping with night feeds? Share your advice with MAM - £200 voucher to be won

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Whether you’re breastfeeding, bottle, or mixed feeding, coping with night feeds can be really hard. Perhaps you found sharing the responsibility with your partner, establishing a routine early on or making small changes really helped you manage? Whatever your advice is on coping with night time feeds, share them on the thread - you could really help another MNer.

• Share your tips on the thread below to be entered into a prize draw
• One MNer will win a £200 voucher for a store of their choice.

Here’s what MAM has to say: “Here at MAM we believe in supporting every mum on their feeding journey whichever journey they choose. We want mums to join us in supporting each other, MAM has a solution to help parents feel confident and babies feel good.”

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MNHQ

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I would say the exhaustion does not last forever - although it never leaves you, and shows what an awesome job you are doing raising a little person who is wholly dependant on you for everything. If help is offered - take it - you are an amazing mum but not superhuman. Be kind to yourself

Use a bedside crib so you don't even have to get out of bed if breastfeeding.

Use a nightlight - I had a red lamp so I could still see but it wasn't too bright.

Bring a pint of water or squash to bed with you.

Try and get an early night so the broken night's sleep won't be too painful.

Whenever possible, get your partner to take the baby in the morning so you can have a lay-in, if you're breastfeeding and so having to do all the night feeds.

Have a really comfy feeding chair and something to rest your feet on too as well as a blanket to wrap around your shoulders as it often feels colder getting up in the night.

I BFed on demand. Meant a baby who felt easy to soothe, quickly. We co-sleep, too, which works great.

If possible, have your partner help by giving the baby a bottle of expressed milk or formula for one of the night feeds to give you a longer rest. That way you won't be as exhausted when baby is up for the day.

Never put lights on for feeding.
If you need some sort of light put a lamp on in a different room so you just get a bit of a glow, otherwise baby will wake up and think its daytime.

When baby starts falling back to sleep after first half of bottle or breast feed, wind baby then do a quick nappy change to wake them back up to finish the feed.
Then baby should finish the bottle/breast feed and already be comfortable in a nice clean nappy to go back to sleep.

Last bit of advice seems quite harsh.
No matter how tempting it is, do not talk or interact with baby as this will also wake them up too much.
I gave kisses and cuddles but didn't talk to them or play - literally fed, changed, cuddled, put back down to sleep.

If help is offered - so you can sleep - take it :)

I remember our first night at home vividly. As new first time parents my husband and I naively placed our baby in his next to crib, got into bed ourselves turned off the lights and wondered why he wouldn’t sleep on his own. That time was the biggest learning curve for us all. What worked for us was sharing the evening and night feeds as we were expressing-feeding initially then changed to formula feeding. I would go to bed from 7pm-12am and we would then swap for him to sleep from 12am-7am. We wouldn’t have lasted those early weeks if we had not shared the feeding responsibility. We would spend those awake hours in the lounge rather than the bedroom which helped us mentally separate being awake from the place we slept. I wore warm comfy pjs, drank tea and watched tv. 3am could’ve been 3pm if not for the darkness outside. One of my favourite memories was a sunrise on a spring morning - the sun shining through the window whilst the baby and the dog slept. That made it worth it.
We are in the middle of a sleep regression at the moment so night wakings are happening again. We decided that instead of going downstairs and ‘waking up’ we would bottle feed in our bed, keep the lights low and put him back in his cot once asleep or if he refused to co-sleep when needed. It’s worked for us so far and we will continue until this changes. It’s just another reminder that everything is a phase.

i use the torch in my phone and turn it down to the dimmest light. Can be turned up slightly for nappy changes etc.

I try to get up as soon as I hear then stirring so that they have sleepy feed

i don’t disturb OH. I’m breastfeeding, I don’t see the point in us both being awake and tired. If he has a good sleep he can take baby in the morning.

next to me crib and feeding in a safe sleep position incase I did fall asleep

Oh and lots of dummies to hand/in the cot to save looking for one. The glow in the dark ones especially.

With my youngest he bottle fed from about 6 months old. I used to keep a flask of boiled water and a jug of cold water next to the bed so I could make a bottle up without leaving my bed.
My youngest was breastfed and the best top.i can give us cosleep until they sleep through. It's the only way I got any sleep!

Best thing I did was co sleep - following safety guidelines around co sleeping, and trying not to look at the time or count how many times we'd been awake in the night. If I looked at the time I'd be thinking of I only been asleep for xxx or it's still xxx hrs till morning, or it's the xxx time I've been up tonight. It made a big difference to how I felt about night time feeding/ waking.

Co-sleeping, if safe, and breastfeeding if possible, makes night feeds much easier.

Also agree with not checking the clock, it really doesn't help to know the time.

I cosleep with my boy. He wakes up, I wake up, I whip out a boob, he feeds laying down with his eyes closed. Once he's full he comes off and I put my boob away and fall back to sleep myself.

I had to express at 3 each morning for a 4 am feed due to problems with latching. Due to pumping being noisy I would do it downstairs. My BIL was working nights in IT and would take his break then so we could chat and have a catch-up online. It made all the difference to me having another person awake and communicating at what would otherwise be a very lonely time.

It was a long time ago now, but my top tip is have a snack yourself.
Yogurt, mini weetabix and fruit pots was my favourite.

It was a while ago for me. I looked at it that the world belonged to me and my ds as everyone else was asleep. No one got to share that moment with us. I would open the back door and curl us both up in a blanket and enjoy looking at the stars.

Sharing the night feeds with my DH made it so much better. Even if it meant I had to express and save a feed for later. Gave me one less feed to do and extra rest or sleep while DH took over. Like they say sharing is caring 🙂

First remember that every baby is different so don't despair if one advice is not working for you and your little bundle! Kids and especially babies feels (and share!) your joy, your anxiety and personally I had to learn it for myself in time.

My DC's settled a routine of sleeping through the night at about 2 months, waking for feed at 1am and 4-6am depends on how much they had a feed before. All apart of the last one, DC4 (now 9 months) who was waking up irregularly and annoyingly often, sometimes at every 20-30 minutes throughout the night. As i breastfeed there wasn't much his dad could help with. I did make him a bottle here and there when I was so tired I couldn't hold him and he slept a bit longer but he started to sleep better when we started weaning. So I noticed many babies wakes up very often because they didn't feed enough either during the day or before bedtime.

Firstly: make sure what you feed them is enough. Some babies needs more, some less, some more often than others so don't just stick with a given timeframe and quantity. Learn their needs.
Second: make sure their clothing and mattress are confortable enough.
Third: some babies really need a soother! DC3 have never had one as he didn't take any and was really easy without one. Instead I couldn't have peace with DC4 without one, tried more I used to love but he only took MAM. I had one free from Boots and so glad they give the chance to try as I have bought loads since.
Fourth: let your baby settle a routine without pushing them into a specific routine just because other says that what it should be. They usually don't cry for nothing but it is us who don't understand their needs. If you feed them and still crying they need to sleep. If still crying they probably have a pain, a colic, a gas, a teeth coming out. If not seems to be in pain they may just want a cuddle and some attention. 😀

Mine is dont look at the time, i found it really stressful when knowing how long until my alarm went off and worrying about no sleep so I just used to pretend it could be any time

Best tip from a HV: When breastfeeding, feed on one side, change nappy, feed other side.

For the first couple of months, I made sure I was getting plenty of sleep during the day, set out a comfy chair away from the bed to try and stop drifting off and would get myself a small snack ready to keep me occupied.

At 4 months, the sleeplessness was exhausted so I moved to co-sleeping. By creating a safe atmosphere I was able to lay down and doze whilst feeding for the benefit of me and baby.

Dad changes nappies
co sleep + sidecar cot
loooong phone charger

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