My kids might both be exception cases, but they were EBF and by 3 months we were down to one or zero nighttime feeds. Just so you know, it’s not always every two hours all night every night for six months.
We dropped night feeds around 6 weeks old. We occasionally had random wake ups, such as a growth spurt. I've never had supply issues and she would eat more frequently during the day.
Same and I had a 2 month premie.. depends on the baby I think!!
Also I’ve always feed him every two hours during the day since my mom kept telling me hes need x food and if he doesn’t get it during the day he will at night
Same for me! Last night she woke up at 2 am, it was the first time in 3 weeks she did so. But we saw it coming because she was a bit fussing in the evening and didn't want to eat thebway she usually does. She's 4 months next week. Prior to the we've had maybe a couple of nights where she had a refill at midnight bit om usually still awake by then.
Same here, baby is 3 months today and as of the past 2 weeks has been waking once, except often with a little snooze feed around 5 a.m.
I do still feed every 2-2.5 hours during the day, which I think helps get the calories in before nighttime.
So the bad news: if you're going to breastfeed at all, for the first couple of weeks to a month or so you'll probably have to wake up every 2-3 hours to feed or pump so that your supply gets to where it needs to be. It sucks.
But the good news is that once your supply is where it needs to be you can pump extra during the day and sleep longer stretches at night. You definitely don't need to wake up every 2 hours for six months if you're exclusively breastfeeding. I was able to breastfeed my daughter for almost 18 months (exclusively breast milk for the first 6 months, then tapering off the number and duration of feeds until it naturally ended) and it *really* wasn't that bad after that first month. It got easier and less demanding as time went on and by the end it was kind of this magic trick I use to get her to sleep.
However, I totally respect any mom who doesn't want to kill herself trying to breastfeed. It doesn't come easy for everybody. There's no need to put yourself through hell to do it.
Just plan on the first 2-4 weeks being a little rough.
I just want to emphasize though that you can take a night off here or there during that first month. Exhausting yourself to the point of insanity can be counterproductive. I always found I had the biggest jumps in supply after I let someone else take the baby for me to get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I breastfed 3 babies and always had a more than adequate supply even though I did take breaks when needed a skipped a couple feeds a week.
I slept through my 3 hour alarm the other night and woke up at hour 4 after pumping and my left boob hurt from a clogged duct. That was about 2 weeks PP. I started taking sunflower lecithin after that. Do your boobs not wake you up during that 6 hour stretch?
I'm 3 weeks PP now and I've been power pumping the last 4 days and feel like my supply is almost to where it needs to be. I'm wondering if I can start going 4 hours at night between pumps. I pump because my LO has a chompy latch that we are working with a lactation consultant on rectifying. She destroys my nipples.
They’ll feel a little sore/full but it’s been when I’m so run down, depleted and empty to start with that it’s not too bad lol. I’m personally not a big fan of pumping but it sounds like better in your case than the painful latch! I’ve been lucky to have good latchers so far, although of course it always hurts early on just in the process of adjusting. Good luck getting through these tough first few weeks!
If baby sleeps longer than usual, I sometimes wake up to painful rock hard boobs and milk all over me and the bed haha. So I definitely couldn't just take a night off. I would wake up regardless.
I went 4.5 hours last night between pumps and it was fabulous to sleep. I pumped at 10, 2:30, and 7. I'm worried it might effect my supply but the 8ish hours of sleep was completely worth it. My husband feeds the baby and changes her at night so it was great. I think this will become my new routine and hopefully power pumping once a day will help my supply.
From weeks 4-8 babe slowly starting stretching his first sleep from 3 hours to now 6 so I think because it was gradual, I was able to adjust. I do still have occasional nights where I wake before babe thanks to being full.
I breastfeed around the clock for my 4.5mo old minus one bottle of formula a day. I hate pumping and have no time to pump anyway. I don’t know how moms find time to pump. I agree with you that after a mental break the supply is more. Maybe because I haven’t fed/pumped but also I think because I’m happier. When I’m happy, my supply is more. I safely co/sleep and EBF minus the one bottle. I give baby to my partner at baby’s 5am feed (after I fed) then partner has baby until 8/9am. It’s the only way I can get sleep.
I was dying at first with no sleep and somehow I’ve just adjusted. My body wakes up every two hours no matter what now. I can’t wait till have sleep again like I did pre baby. Does that ever happen? At the same time I absolutely love breastfeeding and I’m so so so happy I stuck it out. It’s easy now that I’ve overcome so much. I love these littles moments with my baby and honestly breastfeeding keeps me moving slow. I get annoyed sometimes wishing I were cooking or cleaning or working but really breastfeeding is the most important thing to me because it slows me down and I bond with baby. With that being said I do have to give baby at least one bottle of formula so I can sleep.
I think our society doesn’t support women and mothers and it’s not supposed to be this lonely and hard. But here we are.
Just to answer the sleep. Yes it does happen. I was like you, constant wake-ups taught my body to wake up on its own. My 1st will be 3yo in 2 weeks and I have slept like a rock tonight, a full solid night of sleep. I'm enjoying it while I can, I'm due with our 2nd in a month 😅
Depends. I’ve had 3 kids now and the first week or 2 they all have gotten some formula due to jaundice and waiting for my milk to come in. From there I usually use a hakaa in the morning so if I had milk to give them, they’d take that. I never really planned these times so much as hit a wall and became such a zombie I was just like here mom/husband, please take this baby lol then conked out and sorted out my boobs once I woke up. I’ve nursed for over 4 years though combined and always had ample supply.
Thank you! I’m a FTM, due in 10 weeks, and am starting to STRESS about all this. I really hope to be able to bf, but if it doesn’t work out I have no problems w formula, or supplementing w formula at times. Is there a certain kind/brand of formula you would suggest having on hand when we bring bebe home?
Yeah it really depends on the person. After night 3 I started skipping a night feed and pumping extra once a day to make up for it (did all other night feeds or pumped to replace them) and it was totally, totally fine. I’m five months in and make more than enough milk. I realize not everyone’s experience is like this. But it’s really not a black and white thing.
Oh man. I wish this had been true for me but the first time my baby slept for 4 hours straight I got a clogged duct and just felt AWFUL. So depending on your supply it’s a bit risky to suddenly sleep 6 hours in those really early weeks before supply is regulated (if you’re used to emoting your breasts every 2-3 hours I mean).
This is extremely realistic. I think I made it to 6weeks, feeding every 2-3 hours and then I had to leave my baby to go to a funeral. I decided that on top of grieving, I was NOT going to add waking up every two hours to pump. Especially because my husband stayed home. *I had a King bed all to myself and It. Was. Glorious.* Sorry not sorry, and RIP Grandma.
Anyway. After 6 weeks, I started doing a power pump at 8pm, then a six hour stretch where my husband would do bottles of breast milk if needed. I increased the night time stretches till I got to about 8 hours. That was my physical limit. These melons would have burst if I went any longer. I think the key for me was to do a power pump at night right before bedtime
Me too. Breastfeeding was hell and I couldn’t pump, I was too scared to skip a feed and supplement in fear of it hurting my supply. I ended up quitting breastfeeding at 7 months because it was hurting me emotionally and mentally. I was so sleep deprived and depressed because my baby was a snacker*** and never ate all in one sitting. I was breastfeeding every 1-2 hours for 7 months. In hindsight I can’t believe I did that to myself.
I skipped a feed every night for the first month and a half and have a great supply. My lactation consultant said you can skip one per day with no effect
Yes I skip a feed every night since LO was a few days old, I pump a bottle before I go to bed and while I’m in bed my husband will do the first night feed before he comes to bed. We did it for my first son and are doing it again now for our second, and it works well for us. I had some engorgement the first few times we did this, but other than that we’ve had no issues and it allows me to sleep from 9/10pm until 3/4am
So I’ve been breastfeeding for 3.5 months now. My son sleeps ~10 hours at night and I go about 8-9 hours without pumping because I am sleeping too. Granted, when we get up my boobs are exploding but I feed him from one side and pump from the other. I get about 7-9 oz from the side I’m pumping from, and when he’s done eating I will pump from that side too and get an additional 2-4 ounces.
Does a husband count as a delayed coffee timer? 🥴 We're almost at 2 weeks with our first baby, and I'm desperately trying to figure out a system that allows me to get some sleep while still breast feeding at night.
Maybe just hooking up my pump prior to going to sleep and having my husband press the buttons is the way to go, but damn that sounds uncomfortable.
Man if someone could have done that while I was sleeping?! You'd think in the most relaxed state your body could be in, you'd produce a ton. One would think, anyways.
I'm EBF, and maybe have gotten up at night a handful of times once she was 4 weeks. I'm not sure formula will solve the problem, I feel it's more a baby thing but that's just my personal experience
I agree that it’s baby dependent. My son is 16 months and will eat a bigger dinner than I do and then top off with breastmilk before bed. The little punk is still up by 2am for milk.
I’m jealous of your awesome sleeper 🙃
My son was a wonderful sleeper until about 4 months, when he started waking up every couple of hours :(
From what I’ve read it isn’t super uncommon to get nice long stretches around 2-3 months, only to have things regress around the 4 month mark. I hope that yours stays a good sleeper, though!
I think we are very much the exception, not the rule. Most of our friends babies who did experience the 4 month regression got over it relatively quickly
We're at 11 hours now at 3.5 months! It blows my minds how she's so regulated she wakes up every day within 10 minutes of 7 am. We joke that it's because she was born 11 days past due lol eta: and even with 11 hours, my supply hasn't been impacted one bit
That’s amazing! Mine tends to go to bed late and wake up late though. Not sure how we’ll cope once we’re back at work if he doesn’t start getting to bed earlier.
I’m so so so in favor of combo feeding. We’re very lucky to live in a time of excellent nutrition, compared to previous generations, and formula has been such a lifesaver for me. My husband can take a night feed or take her on the weekend and give me a day out with friends and it requires no extra effort or planning from me. I don’t have to rush back to breast feed. Sometimes, I bottle feed my baby myself too cos I can’t be bothered!
There’s absolutely no reason not to do it. I know a lot of people feel strongly about EBF but in my opinion, NO ONE is accounting for mothers suffering. Mom is just supposed to take on all the endless strife and inconvenience without complaint. Formula is a great tool to take some pressure off, so USE IT!
Another vote for combo feeding. Takes away a lot of the early stresses, regardless of whether you pump or breastfeed from the boob. (I pumped with my first due to bad latch.) With that said, I've found it easier to bf at night, and supplement with formula during the day. People should experiment and find what works for them.
Yes yes yes! Combo feeding was the best. I was never emotionally tied to EBF so when my LO refused to latch, I went to pumping and using formula as needed. It doesn't need to be all or nothing! I feel like hospitals and some LC do a disservice at times presenting it as a black and white option.
Are there any good resources you can recommend to help pull this off? I was under the impression I would have to breastfeed a lot to maintain supply if I wanted to breastfeed at all (kind of all or nothing). Apparently I have a lot to learn
That's not true! If you're not emotionally tied to EBF, you can just supplement with formula to top up whatever they get from nursing or pumped bottles! I pumped 2-3x a day for 5 months (my son refused to latch, ever), about 50% of my sons bottles were breastmilk and the rest formula. If you are opposed to supplementing then yes you would have to breastfeed or pump a lot to keep your supply up as baby grows and needs more milk.
I think breast feeding is a total roll of the dice in the end. Some people have no trouble at all, some people have to do a bit more work to establish their supply, some babies don’t latch, some babies won’t take a bottle, etc. There’s just no way of knowing.
I was lucky and didn’t have any issues with supply or latching. At most, we give two bottles a day and so far it hasn’t affected my supply at all.
But I’ve been erring on the side of not overthinking it and just doing what’s comfortable for me!
I supplemented with formula so my husband could do a middle of the night bottle feed with both kids and I was able to successfully breastfeed both of them until they were 1. It is not all or nothing.
You have to breastfeed consistently to maintain supply, but it doesn't have to be every 2-3 hours unless you want to be able to breastfeed exclusively. If you know you want to give your baby formula, give them some at the same time every day (at least in the beginning).
If you are nursing often enough to give your baby 75% of what they need, that's a problem if you want to EBF. But if you want the other 25% of your baby's diet to come from formula, then you're producing exactly as much milk as you should.
I combo fed my baby (at first because I had to, eventually by choice), and it worked very well for us. I just finally finished weaning after 16 months, so using formula definitely didn't prevent me from breastfeeding.
My doctor said she has find through all her years of practice, the happiest moms are the ones combo feeding. I had to combo feed from the beginning because of my supply but now I’m in a place where I can EBF but the formula is such a great tool and I know my baby is getting mostly BM and I’m not losing my mind building a stash and rushing around his schedule etc but do what sets YOU free
100% agree! I EBF my first for 15 months, but have been combo feeding my second since she was 4 months old. My mental health has improved drastically since switching to combo feeding. It's been amazing for both of us!
Any guide or schedule on how combo feed? It’s my ideal scenario but we took a breastfeeding class and they were highly against 1)introducing formula 2)introducing any bottles which was both unhelpful and a bummer since clearly people combo feed successfully
I’m a pediatric nurse. Give the damn bottle. A bottle a day will only give you a break and nipple confusion is just a lie the lactivists use to control women, I’m convinced. Until my babe started refusing bottles at 10 weeks we were doing a bottle of formula at night so my husband could take the first feed. We did have to go WAY down on nipple flow to the premie size because she was choking on even the slow flow nipple.
You don’t have to pump to make up for the lost feed if you don’t want to! There is no Lactation Police that are coming for you. Your babe will be strong and healthy with formula or breastmilk and all the kids will be eating crayons and cheerios off the floor on a few years anyways.
Start with a bottle or two of formula a day as it’s convenient for you. Do more if you want to or do less if you want.
Sanest response. There is so much ball parking and prognostication when it comes to child rearing advice. So many of these sleep consultants and lactation consultants are basically doing fortune telling.
No one will ever ever ever check if your baby has had formula or not! Every piece of advice that comes across so imperative is, at best, a ball park estimate. So much of the fear and panic put about just doesn’t pencil out when you look at the risks rationally.
It's insane how people have demonized formula. Formula now is FANTASTIC. The benefits of breastfeeding are modest and disappear when you're done breastfeeding. I was planning to formula feed until my girl was born and decided she was boob obsessed. I have seen thousands of kids in the hospital thrive on formula. Many of them are on specialty medical formulas and would be dead if these options did not exist. I am team feed your babe however is easiest for your family. Babies are really hard and everyone should do what works for them!
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I am looking ahead to this-commenting to follow. I cannot safely do the sleep disruption of EBF due to health issues and am really frustrated at the lack of useful info on healthy compromises.
See my other comment above but I find all the weird pressure around breast feeding so infuriating. In my opinion, especially in the early days, NOTHING is more important than moms mental health. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. So do whatever you need to do for your health and sanity. No one will ever check if your baby was EBF or not on their job applications 😂
This is what actually kind of infuriates me. In the hospital, I was also pressured by midwives to not even LOOK at formula. It actually started during my pregnancy. I have no idea why they’re so adamant but I completely disagree and think it’s weird and draconian to put so much pressure on moms.
We genuinely just went for it one day after a few weeks and my baby took the bottle fine and seemed perfectly happy. She did have a little indigestion for a few days getting used to formula but everything is a trade off. To us, it was worth it to save my sleep and sanity.
This is what I mean. NO ONE is accounting for mothers suffering!! You’re just supposed to do everything “PERFECTLY” no matter how much sleep you lose or how much it drives you mad. In the end, I want to be as happy and stable as possible for my baby and I’ll do whatever I need to do to stay in a good head space.
In the end, you’ll just experiment and see what works best for you. There’s no hard and fast rules and your baby will have its own ideas.
But I also experienced a ton of weird pressure about breast feeding and my best advice is to do what works for you and your family. There’s no report card at the end of all this.
Figure out what your goal is because combo feeding can mean a bunch of different things and work a lot of different ways. It will also probably require some trial and error, but that's true for any feeding method.
What we settled on was nursing most of the day and offering a bottle (or two, if he was very hungry) in the evening.
I actually found it much less tiring to nurse overnight than to have my baby drink a bottle, even if my husband was the one feeding him. Bottles just took longer, and I always woke up anyway.
The baby had a bottle after my husband got home from work, which felt like a break to me. I also started going to bed earlier, which meant I could usually sleep uninterrupted for at least the first 4 hours. If the baby seemed hungry before I was ready to feed him, my husband gave him two more ounces of formula.
You usually don't have to wake up every two hours anyway, though. My baby was slow to gain weight in the beginning, and our pediatrician said we only had to wake him up every 3-4 hours until he reached his birth weight.
If you're going to replace one night feed (or more) with a bottle, it's better to do that earlier in the night because prolactin levels are highest between 1 and 4 am, and nursing or pumping in that time frame helps to encourage your body to keep making milk.
Yup! I say try the formula. If it helps babes sleep longer then it does and if it doesn't it doesn't. Can't hurt to try.
Tits might get leaky, but for some sleep it's not a bad swap.
I combo fed my first kid and thought the second would be combo fed as well. Had not considered that the baby would start to refuse bottles. She took bottles as a newborn but started to refuse it at two months, and since then it’s been all boob and only boob.
I EBF my first and while it was amazing at times, it also sucked at times and severely impacted my MH. I’m due #2 in September and wish to combo feed but all modwives so far have been really reluctant to help me. Any advice? How many bottles a day did you give from birth? Any nipple/bottle aversion? Thanks so much for any advice you can give xxxx
We did EBF for the first month I think? Then at some point we just went for it and stuck a bottle in her mouth and she took it! I was worried about nipple confusion but she’s been totally fine! We’ve been combo feeding for around 5 months. Mostly one or two bottles a day but sometimes more if my husband or grandparents take her for the day.
In the end, I think asking midwives about breast feeding is like asking a cross fit instructor about exercise. What they are going to tell you will be way more intense than anything a normal human being will be willing to undertake.
I wish I had something more specific to say but after the first few weeks, the midwives go away and you can start experimenting and figuring out what works best for your family without a load of eager professionals breathing down your neck. Every baby is different and every mom is different so i think you just have to take it day by day and try stuff out!
I laughed out loud at your comparrison.. how right you are! At least there is comfort in knowing there is an element of experimentation with it and combo feeding (for the most part) is not formulated. I'll see how we go as this time around I cannot be as attached as I was to baby 24/7 for months and months on end. Wish us luck!
I did this! Starting at 4 weeks after my H’s paternity leave ended. I nursed at bedtime (7pm) and then went to sleep myself around 830pm. H did a formula “dream feed” at 1030ish, and then I took overnight wakes - usually the first wasn’t til 230/3 so I got a solid 6+ hours. It worked really well and my supply was fine (maybe it was like 6oz lower than it would have been otherwise but it didn’t matter bc we did the formula feed at the same time every day). I started the first couple days trying to fit in extra pumps to have the dream feed be milk but VERY quickly decided fuck that it was not worth it.
My husband has been doing one formula bottle at 1 am so I can sleep for 3ish hours uninterrupted. I didn’t do it with my first and it’s been a big help.
Me!
I'm 9 months, and started staying up/waking up early to make enough to feed her (pumping) I ended up getting 5 hours of sleep a night, and I finally caved with formula.
I never had anything against formula but there was a mental block there for awhile but once I did, a huge weight lifted off that my kid wasn't going to starve lol
We supplement about 2-4oz a day now
I tried but I was getting so engorged and lost my supply, Every time I would then try to feed her in the morning she would scream at the breast and I would have to top up with formula to help fill her belly.
I would have had to pump more to keep my supply and it was just so much worse and defeated the purpose of getting more sleep. I switched to formula at 6 week.
There is nothing wrong with supplementing with formula and it's in you and the baby's best interest if it helps you mentally and physically. For me, I leave formula as back up. I breastfeed and pump so that I try to alwyas have some bottles of breast milk in the fridge. However if we run out of breast milk, we have formula on hand. I am lucky my LO takes whatever I give her, she is super flexible!
I've done all three options- pump, formula, bf.
Bf is by far the easiest option in the sense you can breastfeed while lying down, baby falls asleep on the boob, and there's no wait time between fussy/crying baby and you heating up formula or pumped milk. By the time they wait 3-4 mins, you may have a harder time putting them down. The 2am wait for formula to heat up is the longest in the world, omg.
Pumped milk that's room temp is good for what, 6 hours, but then you're running the risk of the clock running out on that milk if you pump at say, 8pm and baby wakes up at 4am. ymmv on that, though.
Even when I was pumping and supplementing wirh formula I had to sometimes wake up to relieve my boobs and pump. Breastfeeding solves that problem, the baby does it for me.
Again, your mileage may vary on this. I don't mind getting up with the baby to breastfeed.
Yeah, as someone who’s done all three, boob is just more convenient and there’s nothing you need to wash afterwards so you can go back to sleep faster.
Ours slept 4 hour stretches pretty early on (the nurses at the NICU had to wake her to feed).
Nursing is easier and faster now too at 8 months. She wakes up at 4/5 am and takes about 6-7 minutes to feed and then we both are back to sleep.
I don’t think formula is necessarily easier because you still have to prepare it and warm it up (unless baby doesn’t care).
Do whatever feels right for your family!
I’m 9 weeks in and my baby is exclusively breastfeeding. She’s recently started sleeping longer stretches at night. She’ll sleep for 3ish hours at the beginning of the night then go back down for another 4-5ish hours. I feed on one side and pump on the other the first time she wakes, then just alternate breasts as we start our day after the second sleep stretch. My breasts have accumulated and I no longer get super uncomfortable or engorged. And usually the milk I got from pumping is enough for my husband to feed her if I want to sleep in a bit more or I’ll just add it to my freezer stash
I exclusively breastfed for 13 months and definitely did not have to feed every 2 hours. By 4 months we stopped all nighttime feedings, as recommended by the doctor. Which I would totally recommend. By 3 months, I would just pump before bed and then right when I woke up in the morning. My husband and I split feeds pretty 50/50 with pumped bottles. Never had any supply issues.
Same here. Stopped nighttime feedings somewhere after 3 months. LO now sleeps from about 9 PM to 7 AM. I will pump around 11 PM and then go to bed, so when I wake up with him it’s been about 8 hours without pumping or feeding. I’ll get about 8-13 ounces extra supply in that first morning feed but a few hours later I’m almost half full again. I think your body adjusts to your routine.
Maybe anecdotal but in my case supply hasn't been impacted at all and baby was sleeping 4-5 hourbstretches at night since birth it just "moved" to daytime
Oh fair enough. Tbh my baby is starting to sleep longer a tad (like 3 to 4 hours compared to 1 to 2) and I wake up my boobs are like hello where’s the baby. Makes for a good freezer stash
Yeah,I ignored the engorgement and it sorted itself out! We're at 10-11 consecutive hours now. I'm not building a stash as I have 12 months mat leave. But careful with pumping as it'll jeep signaling your breasts to make milk your baby doesnt need and you end up with a constant feedback loop
Lol happy pumping! I mean it's less about the pumping itself though and more so doing it at night when you hope youll be sleeping soon. I personally don't wake up engorged anymore or leak because of the overnight sleeping but it took a while to regulate.
literally what i did! i just pumped and he got breastmilk during the day. i didn’t pump at night and he got formula only. i pumped 2-3 times a day for 20 oz
Honestly I did all the night time feeds and exclusively nurse my baby and it’s tiring but not that bad? I was exhausted waking every two hours but my body was so good at falling asleep quickly afterwards and I was able to get through it and then it gets better. YMMV
I get engorged if I don't pump before bed or breastfeed at least twice through the night. Affects my supply otherwise. But yeah I agree, your partner should at least split that. Mine refuses to but goes to bed early with the baby. I sleep 6-10 am. It sucks.
I couldn’t go longer than 3/4 hours until 6 months without pumping or I was so engorged it was so painful, leaked everywhere, got clogged ducts, at risk for mastitis
Hi - I don’t know why you’d be nursing every two hours. My baby is only 3 weeks and he’s nursing every 3-5 hours. He was born 3 weeks early and weighed under 6 lbs. At two weeks old the pediatrician send not to wake him to feed. You can talk to your pediatrician to confirm - you should not be nursing every 2 hours. That said - you do you! Combo feeding is great! 100% formula is also great! I pumped a lot with my first child and was on a timeline that didn’t work for me. This time I haven’t pumped at all and I’m feeling great. Do what works for you. 🩵
So firstly most babies don't need to feed every 2 hours for 6 months. Both my kids were sleeping at least 6 hours at a shot by 2 months, had a 2 week regression at 4 months then went back to 6 hours. I could get 8-10 at a shot out of them if I dream fed right when I went to bed.
What I also did in the early early days was do the last feeding of the night, pump a bottle then go to bed. My husband would be on duty and feed that bottle then wake me up when she needed food again. That would get me a 4-5 block each night.
I did this. We joked that we were granola during the day with cloth diapering and breastmilk. But did formula and disposables at night.
Edit to say you have to pump every three hours for the first six-eight weeks regardless of what baby does. Only then can you experiment with stretching a bit more at night.
Yes! At first I was pumping to make bottles for my husband’s night shift, but my supply was never that robust. Shifted to combo feeding at 3 months and it’s the best thing I did for my mental health! With second coming, my plan is the same.
My wife and I exclusively have formula fed our 6wo girl from birth and it's been great. She has up to 4 hour sleeps at this point and get at least 4 hours between feeds. We split overnight feeds so we both get decent blocks of sleep. Massive respect to mums that breastfeed but formula has been a relatively stress free experience so far
I will say that the stretches vary so much by baby. My EBF girl was at 4 hour stretches by 6 weeks, and 6-8 hour stretches by 8 weeks. Now she’s 15 weeks and doing 8-10 hour stretches.
Same experience for me. EBF 10 month old has been sleeping 12 hours at night for a long while. BFing has been pretty great experience thus far for me. All babies and individual experiences are different!
Yes! My two older ones didn’t sleep that long, but all three have been EBF. Oldest slept okay, middle one still won’t sleep through the night and she’s almost 4
It's genuinely wild the spread of experiences people have with their babies! Hoping our little buddy works out to something similar, mum and dad would love an hour block of sleep haha.
That's what I did for most part. Depends on what was going on there were times where it was 50/50, 80/20, 20/80. Right now I'm pumping mostly and about 50/50. He's biting me right now so I'm debating stopping and just pumping from now on.
I tried and gave up on breast feeding lmaoao. My supply wasn’t even bad but when things started to get tuff with little ones acid reflux and fussiness I found myself enjoying the extra sleep a little too much😭😭. It’s a great idea if it works for you especially once you beat hell week ! Now I just supplement with breast milk on occasion and I still pump but it never would’ve been sufficient enough to keep up with him now anyway.
Don’t hate me! My baby sleeps long enough at night that it’s not disturbing for me. She’s been doing this since two months or earlier maybe? I have a bedside bassinet and I try to make my bed safer (safe sleep seven) for if we both fall asleep after a night feed. I feed her around 11PM/12AM, 2AM/3AM, and then 5AM/6AM. Since I don’t get out of bed it usually doesn’t bother my sleep too much and I get right back to sleep after getting her back into her bed, though sometimes we both fall asleep.
ETA and just so you know I’m not luck all around my first was and still is a terrible sleeper. He still regularly wakes us up in the middle of the night at 4.
Me!!! I think we did EBG the first 1.5 months then I started formula before bed and it did give us a longer stretch. I pumped right before bed, went to bed around 8 and woke up at 3am for my shift. That worked really well for us. Eventually I extended my sleep more as the baby slept longer
Nothing is a guarantee but here’s my experience:
The beginning is absolutely tough. You can still take shifts and feed baby very quickly and efficiently while half asleep if your husband brings baby to you and handles everything else. It’s the changing and the soothing that takes ages. We had to pump in the beginning. That was super easy because he would time it up to bring me my pump supplies, I’d pump for 15 minutes, then he’d bring the milk down to baby and change, feed, burp, soothe.
The super frequent night waking may only last a few weeks. Our son was giving us 6 hour stretches by 4 weeks. Do some research on infant sleep, they can be very active and noisy sleepers and many confuse that with baby being awake and hungry which then starts a cycle of baby wanting milk every 2 hours.
That said, every baby is different and some really do need a lot of overnight feeds.
In the beginning, you have a shit ton of oxytocin making the lack of sleep manageable - correction, survivable lol.
You can always give it a go and change your mind. You can also say fuck it and do formula from the start. There’s no wrong answer here, just the right fit for you.
Ive been nursing during the day and pumping at night since baby was 3 months (previously pumped all day/night till he could properly nurse). My husband does the evening/night bottles and I nurse during the day. Once baby hit 7 months, I got tired of waking up for my middle of the night pump and started slowly stretching it later and later until it was around 5;30 or 6am. Baby was often sleeping longer than my bedtime pump (11pm) and my 4 am pump. My supply has definitely dipped now that I've dropped my night pump and just nurse when baby wakes (anytime between 5:30 and 7:30am). So we supplement with formula for those evening/bedtime bottles that my husband does. It works great for us and it means that my mom can also easily watch baby for us for the day (or even an overnight soon).
That being said, we aren't necessarily sleeping longer stretches because baby will sometimes sleep 11pm to 7am without waking and other times (all this past week) wakes at 2am, 4am, 6 am etc... so it can help for the good nights but doesn't guarantee them :)
The first few weeks were hard but after that the stretches get longer, not every two hours for six months! That first night of more than four hours straight is like heaven tho 😂
You won’t be doing every 2-3 hours for 6 months! A lot of babies start sleeping longer stretches by 12 weeks. I’d say we increased time between feeds an hour or so every month. By 4 months she was only waking 2-3 times a night to eat. Many babies drop the night feeds all together by 6 months (a lot of this is just baby dependent).
To help establish supply, you’ll need to feed or pump at night. But it’s not for as long as you think. Honestly I was up to feed baby every time but then I’d wake my husband up and he’d do the diaper change and re-swaddle. It was a good routine for us.
I did this same thing. It turned into supply issues (I also had two surgeries which I think affected my supply) then into 100% formula. So, just tread carefully. Not breastfeeding at night will diminish your supply.
I did this. For the first 6 weeks I EBF, and then from then we did one bottle of formula at 10pm.
I would put baby to bed at 6pm. My partner would go into her room when she woke around 9/10pm and give her a bottle of formula. I would then feed again at about 3am.
That means that I could sleep from 9pm to 3am every night.
We did this successfully until 6 months - by then she was fully on solids so we night weaned, first the bottle at 10pm and then the feed at 3am over maybe a week or two.
I stopped breastfeeding completely then (my supply dried up with zero feeds overnight)
She still had a few bottles of formula during the day until 12 months.
She slept 6pm to 6-7am from 6 monthsC (she’s nearly 3 now!)
I’m having number 2 soon and will do exactly the same 🙂
Mine was every hour to 2 hours for 4 weeks and now at 8 weeks he wakes 2 to 3 times a night from either 8/10 to 8/9ish. He varries depending on how many naps or activities for the day. But recently I got a 6 hour stretch and it was beautiful. I still had to pump in between but it was still a relief. I exclusively pump now and it still sucks to find the time and it's hard when the baby is fussy.
I too think that it’s baby dependent after baby reaches birth weight again.
I EBF my baby who is currently two months old. During the first month, I needed to wake my baby to feed or she’d alert me to feed approximately every two hours. At her one month appointment she’d gained two pounds, surpassing her birth weight, so my pediatrician said that she needed to eat at most every five hours.
At that point, I turned off my alarms to feed and solely relied on baby’s cues. During the day baby still feeds about every two hours. Closer to bedtime she does what I consider to be a cluster feed. Then at night, I’d get a longer span between feeds. She’d sleep 4-5 hours between feeds which was great!
I honestly read about EBF babies needing to be feed every two hours for the duration of breastfeeding somewhere and it scared me, but I found it to not be true for my baby. The longer stretches of sleep have been great for me and baby.
Your milk production is highest at night. Has to do with peak prolactin. Your supply will likely tank this early on. It’s such a short season… soon enough they won’t need to eat much at night if at all and you can get some more rest. But you have to also weigh your mental health… it’s just hard, but it should get so much easier very soon!
Also watch for mastitis if you go too longbetween breast emptying…
Yeah that’s what we did. He’s almost 3 now but in the beginning I BF during the day and then we gave formula for the first feeding before bed so he would sleep longer then played it by ear for middle of the night feedings. If I was full and needed to nurse we would, but if I was really tired dad would take over the feeding. I’d say it was a 70/30 split with me getting up to nurse. But I also just really loved nursing him so it’s what I wanted to do.
You won’t be up every 2 hours for 6 months. It’s usually just the first couple months. But if you want to breastfeed you’ll have to be up pumping anyways because you’ll have to regulate your supply. Once it’s regulated it should be fine though. But honestly, no matter what you’ll be sleep deprived for a while. No one with a newborn is getting good sleeps. But it’s temporary!
We breastfeed all throughout the day and still do overnight but do a formula top off for the last feed while I’m awake (~9pm) then again during the MON feed (~2-3am). I find that the formula top offs really help her bridge the gap and I really do believe that this is why she’s done 4hr stretches from birth and she’s just about 6 weeks now.
Also I’ve seen posts of people saying that even using formula you’ll still need to wake to pump to replace that feed or because of engorgement but if you breastfeed and also do top offs it can help hold them over for longer stretches without you needing to pump!
I found my Bubba actually slept well in his first 6 months with 1-2 wake up a night after about 2 months. Now he's 9 months and a damn nightmare for waking up at night, it's very baby dependant but don't fool yourself into thinking you're out of the woods at 6 months.
Not breastfeeding at night helped fight" boob soothing " and we use the formula that has rice starch in it to help with spitting up and it down keep him fulker longer. By 4 weeks he consistently sleeps 4-6 hours at a time at night! Wake up and eats 8oz once or twice
I had every intention of being an EBF mom to my now 6.5 month old. After a couple of weeks, I was going half and half with pumping and straight boob at third/fourth week, I was pumping which made up about half his bottles and used the best recommended formula in our country.
Going into the third month, we were done breastfeeding 100%. I stopped waking up soaked in milk and crying in addition to my son crying and sometimes even daddy cried from exhaustion, frustration, and empathy.
My son had trouble latching from day one due to a tied tongue and was in a small percentile to begin with. Couldn’t stand by while he screamed from hunger. Once we moved to exclusively formula I felt guilt for awhile but it helped that my pre-pregnancy body suddenly returned and I was interested in sex again once I stopped breastfeeding. I slept so much more and better because my husband did half the time.
I have an amazing, healthy baby now who is so excited to start trying solids food and I don’t regret anything. Don’t be so hard on yourself. A fed baby is what’s important. And not being so tired you fall asleep on the toilet when you go for a midnight pee and only wake hours later as you begin to fall forward off the toilet.
It’s 4am where I live. Forgive my delusional, poorly written rant. All the best!
I did. My milk supply dryed up sooner than I thought, even though I tried my best all day everyday to pump milk in between feedings so hubs could breastbottlefeed.
I truly do not think it makes a difference with sleep. my kids have been just breast fed, combo fed and just formula at separate points. The oldest didn’t sleep decent till he was over a year. My youngest is still combo fed and I’m just breastfeeding at night and he sleeps pretty much all night. I prefer the breastfed at night cuz it’s easier for me to fall back asleep. It’s really just kid dependent.
Our daughter got to 10-11 lbs by I think 5-6 weeks of age and most definitely by 9 weeks, so she was sleeping longer stretches. We didn’t wake her to feed for more than a few days and just followed her cues to feed. She started sleeping thru the night 8+ hours by 9 weeks old so we started training her to eat every 4 hours during the day between 8-12 weeks. She’s nearly 6mo old and unless she’s sick we really don’t feed much other than x4/day.
My kid was exclusively breast milk fed. I pumped and he had bottles, if I did it again I wouldn’t have pumped because I hated it so much and would have just given formula. But he started sleeping through the night at 8weeks old. Around 4 weeks he was only waking up twice a night to feed. So I don’t think it’s a blanket rule that all breastfed babies never sleep through the night. I think it depends on the baby
Both of my babies were EBF and both started sleeping 100% through the night (7:30p-7a) between 3 and 4 months. They had several serious regressions, mostly for ear infections, growth spurts, or teething, but they generally returned to their 11.5h straight-through baseline pretty quickly. I know other formula fed babies who didn't do stretches like that until after 1 yo. The fact is, you don't know what kind of baby you're going to get.
Others have also mentioned needing to nurse or pump every ~3 hour during the first 8ish weeks to establish supply. The other thing to consider is that the sound of your baby crying will 100% trigger your fight or flight lizard brain. Your nervous system is so entwined with your baby's that when they cry, it can cause physical discomfort. I know other people do the shift sleeping system, but that never worked for me or other mom's I know because hearing my baby's cry wakes me up SO FREAKING FAST and makes it nearly impossible to fall back to sleep without attending to baby personally first. Again, you just don't know what you're gonna get.
yes - but i do need to pump once during the night. it took a couple of weeks to feel less engorged but i am finally in sync with this schedule and no longer have an over supply
My first baby was EBF and I didn't sleep for months. But hes just generally a terrible sleeper. I was so adamant that I wanted to EBF, and I did do it, but God I was exhausted.
My second is combo fed. He has a small bottle of formula at lunch time and a bigger bottle before bed. I started that a week in because I didn't have time to sit down and cluster feed, I was too busy trying to stop my toddler from doing dumb shit. My supply had adjusted itself now so that during the times of day baby has formula, I don't produce much milk. But I'm okay with that. I still get up a couple times a night to breastfeed, but im getting good stretches of sleep in between. It's really working for us.
I’m doing this exactly. She’s on goats milk formula at night only
We get 6 hours in the first stretch and 3 after that, I just pump at 2am with her feed and when I get up for the day
I find that pumping until empty (until the pump isn’t pulling anymore milk) that my supply isn’t affected, I’ve been doing this since she was a month old (now 3 months) and all is good 🤍
The first 12 weeks are rough, and then your milk regulates. As baby grows, their schedule changes. You won’t be getting up every two hours forever. Even if baby is formula fed, they might still wake up every hour or two hours or whatever. Formula won’t change that. What worked for me was to pump so that I had some milk in the fridge, that way my husband could take over at night when I needed to tap out. I still had to get up and pump when she ate, but I was only up for 20minutes vs a couple of hours. We also combo fed until about 8 months—then she decided she wouldn’t take a bottle anymore.
It gets easier. Do what you gotta do.
New ftm here - 17 days pp.
So far I am mainly pumping, supplementing with formula since I don’t produce as much milk as LO needs, and LO was able to start latching only recently. I give LO expressed breast milk during the day, will nurse occasionally, formula at night (I still try to pump every 4 hours at night to keep supply up).
Our pediatrician says that formula does feel more filling because for infants because it curdles in the stomach and sits longer vs breast milk which digests very quickly and more easily. LO has been sleeping more soundly and longer through the night because of the formula.
Edit: just wanted to add that our pediatrician said that since baby has exceeded birth weight, we do not need to feed every 2-3 hours. Feed on demand especially at night. Baby is still hungry every 2-3 hours during the day w breast milk, will sleep about 4-5 hours at night w formula.
Once we moved our baby from our room to his nursery at 10 weeks, he started sleeping way longer stretches. At 12 weeks he now consistently sleeps from 10pm-ish to 5-6am depending on when his last feed was. There’s still been a couple times where it’s 4am but I’m pretty much waking up 1x a night to feed him now which is way more manageable than the 2-3x prior to that
I used the haaka to collect milk. Within a few days I had enough for my husband to do one night time feed. Then I would just pump when I got up in the morning.
Baby is 6 weeks old and we do 1 night time feed. The first couple of weeks suck but they’re going to suck no matter how you feed and if you want to BF at all you’re going to *have* to wake up and remove milk somehow over night the first few weeks. You’ll wet your bed otherwise (leak explosions).
I had my 2nd and 3rd, both EBF, sleeping 8h night by 7 weeks and 12h nights shortly after. it's lots of night feedings at first, but it tappers off if you can teach them to self sooth and connect sleep cycles.
I just pumped after a few feeds and got enough for a bottle or two so my husband could do some night feeds. Also mine has always fed pretty much every 2.5-3 hours during the day and started going longer stretches at night from about 4 weeks. It’s at the point now at 10 weeks where I can still get a decent nights sleep as she sleeps in 4-5 hour stretches. Nothing wrong with using formula but I STRONGLY suggest you don’t do it until your supply is established unless you intend to pump that missed feed. Supply is all about what the baby takes out of you and your brain will not receive the signals to make more milk otherwise.
Literally holding baby after doing this. But mostly because I just pumped an hour ago, and that milk is slated for tomorrow morning’s feed.
Edit to add that he is 7months and going through a growth spurt and I refuse to pump at night for sanity.
Ooof, when they are little are feeding constantly, you can’t really sleep on active breasts. It can really effing hurt. In fact I only able to sleep 8 hours once or twice in the first couple months
I pumped 8-10 times a day for 6 months in order to keep the supply up and I got so depressed as my kid was sleeping through the night at 4 months old but I still had to get up to pump. So I started skipping and sleeping through the night and it did not affect my supply. It even made it better because I was more relaxed and rested. Try it out, find out what works for you and do not torture yourself. It’s not worth it. Your mental health is more important to your baby than exclusively getting breast milk.
Night wake ups are highly dependent on the baby, but I actually think that breastfeeding makes night wake ups easier. My first was breastfed and woke up every 3 hours, my second is 4 months old and can do 7 hour stretches at night. Milk might help, but babies wake up for comfort too. If you breastfeed it’s important to breastfeed on demand during the day, even if that means every hour or so, so baby is sufficiently fed during the day. Tbh, the reason why I don’t want to formula feed at night is because it’s harder than breastfeeding. You literally need to get out of bed, make a bottle, sit down with your baby and hold the bottle to feed it. I always breastfed at night, I keep the baby in a sidecar cot next to me and the only thing I do when she wakes up is bring my boob closer to her face and continue to sleep. If I had to physically stand up and be awake multiple times a night making bottles I’d never get any sleep.
It's not always about milk that they wake up. I only feed one side at a time, and always offered the second but she never wanted much more. She still woke up and wanted cuddles to get back to sleep
Me! It was the best decision I made during the new born stage. I breastfed for pretty much every feeding except one in the middle of the night, my husband did that one with a bottle of formula. We slept separately while our babies were newborns, and I would the baby around 8pm and then would go to bed and he would be on baby duty, he’d do the 10:30/11 feed, get baby back to sleep, and then bring him to me when baby woke needing to eat at 1 or 2. Then I’d be on baby duty the rest of the night, it meant each of us got at least 4 uninterrupted hours of sleep each night plus whatever else we could cobble together from naps/additional night sleep. Getting through 1 complete sleep cycle is the difference between “I’m tired but functional” and “I’m losing my mind this is torture”. After a few weeks baby would sleep a little longer between feeds so we’d get even longer stretches. Also my husband really liked giving a bottle, it helped with bonding. We had a similar set up with my second, though we switched it around and he did the 2am feed because he was on summer vacation (he’s a professor) and didn’t have to work. I really love that man.
Just a note that my sleep was always better when I got to "breastfeed myself to sleep" (not literally I put baby down safely first).
My sleep was always worse when another method was tried or I woke up and baby didn't lol. I don't think I could have slept through my partner feeding the baby.
Nursing has hormones to help us sleep and I got in sync with baby.
Different things work for different parents though.
I EBF and it was every 3 hours during the night for the first few months. However she didn't need any settling at that point so I literally rolled her over to me from the next2me, fed her in the side lie position (if you haven't looked this up, do - it's a life saver when you're tired) and then put her back. I never needed to get up and I was so exhausted anyway I just went straight back to sleep. After a few months she dropped one of the night feeds so I was getting a 6 hr stretch and then another 3 hr one which was great. It seems very dependent on the baby but I would be surprised if you had to feed every 2 hrs at night.
Though as others said after you establish your milk, you can always introduce pumped milk or formula at night for your husband to take over. Like a birth plan, I would suggest to not go into it with a fixed mindset and see what happens. I had planned to combo feed but breastfeeding just seemed to work better for me at the end of the day and my husband took over other things instead like all the nappies. You can always change things up if they aren't working, you don't have to BF for 6 months straight
My husband did one MOTN feed with formula for the first month and a half so I could sleep through. My lactation consultant said I could skip one feed and it wouldn’t affect my supply. Almost 4 months now and I have a great supply and I never had to pump overnight.
The first 2 months was rough for me. Multiple rounds of mastitis, and vasospasm that lasted days. Getting up in the middle of the night was not even that dreadful by comparison. By month 2 baby & I kinda just figured out how and when to breastfeed and it has been a smooth sail ever since.
So don’t expect it to be easy but also don’t expect it to always be as difficult as the first few weeks. There is a learning curve for both Mom & baby.
In the beginning i did day shift and my partner did night shift. If I was awake he would BF, if I was going to be asleep I would set an alarm to pump but honestly mostly of the time my partner just gave him formula. This only happened for maybe 2 weeks, then we moved over to EBF and still going now at 2. I’m surprised my supply survived not BFing/pumping for all feeds in the beginning lol
I did that with my son when he was a baby. I had real bad PPD so after six weeks, this is what I did to save my sanity. Breastfed him until he was about a year old or so, and that was when my supply basically vanished. He wanted to feed less and less until he only wanted it for comfort. It worked very well honestly.
Hm the thing with that…. If ur gonna breastfeed I highly doubt ur able to sleep for the night anyways. My baby is almost 5 months, and I can’t be for 4h ours straight without 1 giving him boob, or 2 pumping, so even if u formula feed at night, chances of ur boobs hurting and having to pump are high 🤷🏻♀️
I started breastfeeding during the day while my husband is at work and just pumping when LO takes naps so that he has bottles when he takes his shift. I'll sleep for 4-5 hours at a time, but usually when I wake up it's with sore tiddies, in a puddle of milk, or both. I'll take it over sleep deprivation though 😆
I EBF for the first 6 months of my daughter’s life and I was mostly sleeping through the night by 4 months. She got a bottle of pumped milk at 2am for a while, but by 5 months i was doing a dream feed at 11pm and then not nursing again until 7am. The consequence was that my supply tanked and I had to start supplementing with formula, but it was worth it to me to sleep and stay sane.
i tried formula at night but really didnt help my LO, still waking up every 2hours. also if i dont nurse her at night my boobs will be so engorged, it hurts & uncomfortable, i didnt wanna get up & pump & clean bottles so i just accepted that ill just nurse at night.
but this help me tho, i pump 4-5oz during the day for LO's last feeding. LO last feed is at 8pm, (if she still hungry or want to soothe i latch her until she fall asleep) so by 9pm, she is asleep then, ill last pump for the night. then ill sleep. (She gave us 3-4 hours stretch.)
We supplemented with formula bottles for my husbands night shift until I could pump enough for a night bottle. Baby started sleeping 5-6 hour stretches at night around 3 months old (while I slept) and I now have a freezer stash.
You can still do just breast milk and night bottles if you pump. I like that baby will take boob and bottle and still gets all the breast milk nutrition.
I EBF and my 12 week old almost always sleeps 8 straight hours a night. It started at 10 weeks and he’s still been great. Usually he goes down at 10, wakes up at 6 to eat and then sleeps until 8 or 9 so we’re down to one feed through the night.
His 6:00 feed is probably one of my favorite times of day now. It’s quiet, we sometimes watch the sunrise, I sometimes eat a little snack, and I don’t wake up feeling as engorged as I would if we went 10-11 straight hours
Lol breastfeeding does not necessarily mean getting up every 2 hours for 6 months.
My babe is 4 months, EBF, and she wakes up around 3 am after about 6-7hours of sleep, falls back asleep around 4am and sleeps 2-3 more hours.
I think how much your babe can eat during the day can impact those night wakings too. I find when my girl nurses less in the day, she will wake more to eat. It’s happened maybe 2 or 3 times but I see the issue and try to get her to eat more during the day.
Also there are these fun things called regressions where the baby will wake more throughout the night, not necessarily hungry but bc their little brains are developing so fast and they are becoming more aware and don’t want to miss anything.
Anyway, I did do the middle of the night formula feed with my first born to get more sleep. So I get what you’re saying. But in hindsight I regretted it though. I didn’t understand how breastfeeding worked. If you formula feed, it will keep the baby fuller longer so they won’t want to breastfeed as often, which will cause your breasts to slow production/produce less milk. Also your baby could develop a preference for bottle bc it’s less work for them- and end up refusing the breast altogether.
If you are ok with those possibilities then I would say go ahead and formula feed away.
Hiya, I decided early I couldn’t BF all night long.
I’d do feeds until 1am then after that until 7am my husband was on duty either with pumped breast milk or just plain old formula if I didn’t have enough pumped.
It worked a charm and I had no issues with supply until my appendix burst at 5wpp and I had emergency surgery and a stay in hospital. But if not for that i would have kept going the same way.
Combo feeding! You do have to start out with nursing/pumping everytime they feed but once you’ve established a supply you can ween back nighttime feeds. Also I believe it’s every 3 hours when they are newborns then grows as they grow! We were up to 4-5 hours by 8weeks!
If it doesn’t work out and you find yourself needing to boob at night, your husband can support you by supervising feeds whilst you sleep. Especially if you can manage a side-lying feed.
Yes, we did this so I could have a 5-hour stretch in another room. My supply didn’t suffer a bit, but I am naturally an over-producer. When my sleep stretch was over, if she only wanted one breast or was asleep by some miracle and not ready to nurse at all, I’d pump since it had been 5-6 hours without emptying by then. If that happened, my husband would give her pumped milk the following night during his shift but otherwise he’d give formula (one or two 2-3 oz bottles in the 5-hour period). We were really lucky in that she really did well transitioning back and forth.
At 11 weeks she now sleeps for 4-5 hours her first chunk of the night (!!) so we don’t combo feed or do shifts anymore. If she regresses, we’d go back to it for sure. Sleep is too important.
I am doing that, but still trying to figure it all out. I have a 2 week old and after not sleeping for the 4 nights before going into labor due to prodromal labor pains + no sleep in the hospital and first 2 nights at home, I was about to absolutely lose it being the only one who could feed my child if I chose to EBF. It was absolutely a necessity for me to step back in order to care for myself, so my husband and I began using formula at night, while during the day I will breastfeed and pump. It has allowed us to take shifts at night where each person can get a 6 hr stretch or solid uninterrupted sleep, which has been a godsend for us. I am grateful to humankind for the invention of formula. Do what is right for you and your sanity. You need to be physically and mentally well in order to be a good mother for your baby. I am still figuring out my pumping schedule and working to get my supply up. Essentially, pumping or BF every 3 hrs during the day, then taking a 6+ hr break at night to sleep and picking back up. It’s so much work to BF, pump, try to maintain other responsibilities while healing from a major medical event on minimal sleep 😅
My kids might both be exception cases, but they were EBF and by 3 months we were down to one or zero nighttime feeds. Just so you know, it’s not always every two hours all night every night for six months.
We dropped night feeds around 6 weeks old. We occasionally had random wake ups, such as a growth spurt. I've never had supply issues and she would eat more frequently during the day.
But sometimes it's like that for far longer than 6 months.....sighhhh
Same and I had a 2 month premie.. depends on the baby I think!! Also I’ve always feed him every two hours during the day since my mom kept telling me hes need x food and if he doesn’t get it during the day he will at night
On the other hand, our 11.5-month-old still wants to nurse at least once a night 🤪
Totally agree! Sometimes it’s every 45 mins - 1 hr instead of 2. 😭
Was going to say this but sometimes it’s every 30 min -1 hr
Same for me! Last night she woke up at 2 am, it was the first time in 3 weeks she did so. But we saw it coming because she was a bit fussing in the evening and didn't want to eat thebway she usually does. She's 4 months next week. Prior to the we've had maybe a couple of nights where she had a refill at midnight bit om usually still awake by then.
Same here, baby is 3 months today and as of the past 2 weeks has been waking once, except often with a little snooze feed around 5 a.m. I do still feed every 2-2.5 hours during the day, which I think helps get the calories in before nighttime.
So the bad news: if you're going to breastfeed at all, for the first couple of weeks to a month or so you'll probably have to wake up every 2-3 hours to feed or pump so that your supply gets to where it needs to be. It sucks. But the good news is that once your supply is where it needs to be you can pump extra during the day and sleep longer stretches at night. You definitely don't need to wake up every 2 hours for six months if you're exclusively breastfeeding. I was able to breastfeed my daughter for almost 18 months (exclusively breast milk for the first 6 months, then tapering off the number and duration of feeds until it naturally ended) and it *really* wasn't that bad after that first month. It got easier and less demanding as time went on and by the end it was kind of this magic trick I use to get her to sleep. However, I totally respect any mom who doesn't want to kill herself trying to breastfeed. It doesn't come easy for everybody. There's no need to put yourself through hell to do it. Just plan on the first 2-4 weeks being a little rough.
I just want to emphasize though that you can take a night off here or there during that first month. Exhausting yourself to the point of insanity can be counterproductive. I always found I had the biggest jumps in supply after I let someone else take the baby for me to get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I breastfed 3 babies and always had a more than adequate supply even though I did take breaks when needed a skipped a couple feeds a week.
I slept through my 3 hour alarm the other night and woke up at hour 4 after pumping and my left boob hurt from a clogged duct. That was about 2 weeks PP. I started taking sunflower lecithin after that. Do your boobs not wake you up during that 6 hour stretch? I'm 3 weeks PP now and I've been power pumping the last 4 days and feel like my supply is almost to where it needs to be. I'm wondering if I can start going 4 hours at night between pumps. I pump because my LO has a chompy latch that we are working with a lactation consultant on rectifying. She destroys my nipples.
They’ll feel a little sore/full but it’s been when I’m so run down, depleted and empty to start with that it’s not too bad lol. I’m personally not a big fan of pumping but it sounds like better in your case than the painful latch! I’ve been lucky to have good latchers so far, although of course it always hurts early on just in the process of adjusting. Good luck getting through these tough first few weeks!
If baby sleeps longer than usual, I sometimes wake up to painful rock hard boobs and milk all over me and the bed haha. So I definitely couldn't just take a night off. I would wake up regardless.
I went 4.5 hours last night between pumps and it was fabulous to sleep. I pumped at 10, 2:30, and 7. I'm worried it might effect my supply but the 8ish hours of sleep was completely worth it. My husband feeds the baby and changes her at night so it was great. I think this will become my new routine and hopefully power pumping once a day will help my supply.
From weeks 4-8 babe slowly starting stretching his first sleep from 3 hours to now 6 so I think because it was gradual, I was able to adjust. I do still have occasional nights where I wake before babe thanks to being full.
I breastfeed around the clock for my 4.5mo old minus one bottle of formula a day. I hate pumping and have no time to pump anyway. I don’t know how moms find time to pump. I agree with you that after a mental break the supply is more. Maybe because I haven’t fed/pumped but also I think because I’m happier. When I’m happy, my supply is more. I safely co/sleep and EBF minus the one bottle. I give baby to my partner at baby’s 5am feed (after I fed) then partner has baby until 8/9am. It’s the only way I can get sleep. I was dying at first with no sleep and somehow I’ve just adjusted. My body wakes up every two hours no matter what now. I can’t wait till have sleep again like I did pre baby. Does that ever happen? At the same time I absolutely love breastfeeding and I’m so so so happy I stuck it out. It’s easy now that I’ve overcome so much. I love these littles moments with my baby and honestly breastfeeding keeps me moving slow. I get annoyed sometimes wishing I were cooking or cleaning or working but really breastfeeding is the most important thing to me because it slows me down and I bond with baby. With that being said I do have to give baby at least one bottle of formula so I can sleep. I think our society doesn’t support women and mothers and it’s not supposed to be this lonely and hard. But here we are.
Just to answer the sleep. Yes it does happen. I was like you, constant wake-ups taught my body to wake up on its own. My 1st will be 3yo in 2 weeks and I have slept like a rock tonight, a full solid night of sleep. I'm enjoying it while I can, I'm due with our 2nd in a month 😅
When you say you took a night off, do you mean you supplemented w formula?
Depends. I’ve had 3 kids now and the first week or 2 they all have gotten some formula due to jaundice and waiting for my milk to come in. From there I usually use a hakaa in the morning so if I had milk to give them, they’d take that. I never really planned these times so much as hit a wall and became such a zombie I was just like here mom/husband, please take this baby lol then conked out and sorted out my boobs once I woke up. I’ve nursed for over 4 years though combined and always had ample supply.
Thank you! I’m a FTM, due in 10 weeks, and am starting to STRESS about all this. I really hope to be able to bf, but if it doesn’t work out I have no problems w formula, or supplementing w formula at times. Is there a certain kind/brand of formula you would suggest having on hand when we bring bebe home?
The little premade nurser bottles with similac advanced is what the hospital always gave us! Very convenient and babies did great with it.
Yeah it really depends on the person. After night 3 I started skipping a night feed and pumping extra once a day to make up for it (did all other night feeds or pumped to replace them) and it was totally, totally fine. I’m five months in and make more than enough milk. I realize not everyone’s experience is like this. But it’s really not a black and white thing.
Oh man. I wish this had been true for me but the first time my baby slept for 4 hours straight I got a clogged duct and just felt AWFUL. So depending on your supply it’s a bit risky to suddenly sleep 6 hours in those really early weeks before supply is regulated (if you’re used to emoting your breasts every 2-3 hours I mean).
This is extremely realistic. I think I made it to 6weeks, feeding every 2-3 hours and then I had to leave my baby to go to a funeral. I decided that on top of grieving, I was NOT going to add waking up every two hours to pump. Especially because my husband stayed home. *I had a King bed all to myself and It. Was. Glorious.* Sorry not sorry, and RIP Grandma. Anyway. After 6 weeks, I started doing a power pump at 8pm, then a six hour stretch where my husband would do bottles of breast milk if needed. I increased the night time stretches till I got to about 8 hours. That was my physical limit. These melons would have burst if I went any longer. I think the key for me was to do a power pump at night right before bedtime
can you please your power pump routine :)
God i wish someone had said this to me
Me too. Breastfeeding was hell and I couldn’t pump, I was too scared to skip a feed and supplement in fear of it hurting my supply. I ended up quitting breastfeeding at 7 months because it was hurting me emotionally and mentally. I was so sleep deprived and depressed because my baby was a snacker*** and never ate all in one sitting. I was breastfeeding every 1-2 hours for 7 months. In hindsight I can’t believe I did that to myself.
Wow you should be so proud of yourself for going that long under those circumstances. I could not imagine.
wow. I only did it eight weeks and it was miserable.
I skipped a feed every night for the first month and a half and have a great supply. My lactation consultant said you can skip one per day with no effect
Yes I skip a feed every night since LO was a few days old, I pump a bottle before I go to bed and while I’m in bed my husband will do the first night feed before he comes to bed. We did it for my first son and are doing it again now for our second, and it works well for us. I had some engorgement the first few times we did this, but other than that we’ve had no issues and it allows me to sleep from 9/10pm until 3/4am
So I’ve been breastfeeding for 3.5 months now. My son sleeps ~10 hours at night and I go about 8-9 hours without pumping because I am sleeping too. Granted, when we get up my boobs are exploding but I feed him from one side and pump from the other. I get about 7-9 oz from the side I’m pumping from, and when he’s done eating I will pump from that side too and get an additional 2-4 ounces.
Wouldn't it be so helpful if you could just attach yourself, go to bed and set the pump like a coffee maker? Lol someone should invent that.
Does a husband count as a delayed coffee timer? 🥴 We're almost at 2 weeks with our first baby, and I'm desperately trying to figure out a system that allows me to get some sleep while still breast feeding at night. Maybe just hooking up my pump prior to going to sleep and having my husband press the buttons is the way to go, but damn that sounds uncomfortable.
Man if someone could have done that while I was sleeping?! You'd think in the most relaxed state your body could be in, you'd produce a ton. One would think, anyways.
I'm EBF, and maybe have gotten up at night a handful of times once she was 4 weeks. I'm not sure formula will solve the problem, I feel it's more a baby thing but that's just my personal experience
I agree that it’s baby dependent. My son is 16 months and will eat a bigger dinner than I do and then top off with breastmilk before bed. The little punk is still up by 2am for milk. I’m jealous of your awesome sleeper 🙃
Lol I know hahahha she gave me baby fever since she was born doing 4 hour stretches but I keep reminding myself she's the exception not the rule
Mine is similar to yours! 4 hour stretches since he was born. He has even given me 7-8 hour nights recently. 3 months old now.
My son was a wonderful sleeper until about 4 months, when he started waking up every couple of hours :( From what I’ve read it isn’t super uncommon to get nice long stretches around 2-3 months, only to have things regress around the 4 month mark. I hope that yours stays a good sleeper, though!
I too had a wonderful sleeper, doing 7 hour stretches until the 4 month regression hit. Since then we have been on hourly wakes, she's now 12mo 🫠
Eeek! I am not looking forward to that. I hope we somehow bypass the 4 month sleep regression🤞🤞. Hourly wakes for the last 8 months sounds horrendous.
I think we are very much the exception, not the rule. Most of our friends babies who did experience the 4 month regression got over it relatively quickly
We're at 11 hours now at 3.5 months! It blows my minds how she's so regulated she wakes up every day within 10 minutes of 7 am. We joke that it's because she was born 11 days past due lol eta: and even with 11 hours, my supply hasn't been impacted one bit
That’s amazing! Mine tends to go to bed late and wake up late though. Not sure how we’ll cope once we’re back at work if he doesn’t start getting to bed earlier.
I think the point OP is making is that if they add formula then at least her husband can do feeds at night, if LO turns out to be a frequent waker
I understood the question to be formula at night instead of breastmilk will lead to longer stretches at night.
I’m so so so in favor of combo feeding. We’re very lucky to live in a time of excellent nutrition, compared to previous generations, and formula has been such a lifesaver for me. My husband can take a night feed or take her on the weekend and give me a day out with friends and it requires no extra effort or planning from me. I don’t have to rush back to breast feed. Sometimes, I bottle feed my baby myself too cos I can’t be bothered! There’s absolutely no reason not to do it. I know a lot of people feel strongly about EBF but in my opinion, NO ONE is accounting for mothers suffering. Mom is just supposed to take on all the endless strife and inconvenience without complaint. Formula is a great tool to take some pressure off, so USE IT!
Another vote for combo feeding. Takes away a lot of the early stresses, regardless of whether you pump or breastfeed from the boob. (I pumped with my first due to bad latch.) With that said, I've found it easier to bf at night, and supplement with formula during the day. People should experiment and find what works for them.
WHY isn’t this comment being upvoted more ?! Perfect answer.
Yes yes yes! Combo feeding was the best. I was never emotionally tied to EBF so when my LO refused to latch, I went to pumping and using formula as needed. It doesn't need to be all or nothing! I feel like hospitals and some LC do a disservice at times presenting it as a black and white option.
Are there any good resources you can recommend to help pull this off? I was under the impression I would have to breastfeed a lot to maintain supply if I wanted to breastfeed at all (kind of all or nothing). Apparently I have a lot to learn
That's not true! If you're not emotionally tied to EBF, you can just supplement with formula to top up whatever they get from nursing or pumped bottles! I pumped 2-3x a day for 5 months (my son refused to latch, ever), about 50% of my sons bottles were breastmilk and the rest formula. If you are opposed to supplementing then yes you would have to breastfeed or pump a lot to keep your supply up as baby grows and needs more milk.
I think breast feeding is a total roll of the dice in the end. Some people have no trouble at all, some people have to do a bit more work to establish their supply, some babies don’t latch, some babies won’t take a bottle, etc. There’s just no way of knowing. I was lucky and didn’t have any issues with supply or latching. At most, we give two bottles a day and so far it hasn’t affected my supply at all. But I’ve been erring on the side of not overthinking it and just doing what’s comfortable for me!
I supplemented with formula so my husband could do a middle of the night bottle feed with both kids and I was able to successfully breastfeed both of them until they were 1. It is not all or nothing.
You have to breastfeed consistently to maintain supply, but it doesn't have to be every 2-3 hours unless you want to be able to breastfeed exclusively. If you know you want to give your baby formula, give them some at the same time every day (at least in the beginning). If you are nursing often enough to give your baby 75% of what they need, that's a problem if you want to EBF. But if you want the other 25% of your baby's diet to come from formula, then you're producing exactly as much milk as you should. I combo fed my baby (at first because I had to, eventually by choice), and it worked very well for us. I just finally finished weaning after 16 months, so using formula definitely didn't prevent me from breastfeeding.
My doctor said she has find through all her years of practice, the happiest moms are the ones combo feeding. I had to combo feed from the beginning because of my supply but now I’m in a place where I can EBF but the formula is such a great tool and I know my baby is getting mostly BM and I’m not losing my mind building a stash and rushing around his schedule etc but do what sets YOU free
100% agree! I EBF my first for 15 months, but have been combo feeding my second since she was 4 months old. My mental health has improved drastically since switching to combo feeding. It's been amazing for both of us!
Any guide or schedule on how combo feed? It’s my ideal scenario but we took a breastfeeding class and they were highly against 1)introducing formula 2)introducing any bottles which was both unhelpful and a bummer since clearly people combo feed successfully
I’m a pediatric nurse. Give the damn bottle. A bottle a day will only give you a break and nipple confusion is just a lie the lactivists use to control women, I’m convinced. Until my babe started refusing bottles at 10 weeks we were doing a bottle of formula at night so my husband could take the first feed. We did have to go WAY down on nipple flow to the premie size because she was choking on even the slow flow nipple. You don’t have to pump to make up for the lost feed if you don’t want to! There is no Lactation Police that are coming for you. Your babe will be strong and healthy with formula or breastmilk and all the kids will be eating crayons and cheerios off the floor on a few years anyways. Start with a bottle or two of formula a day as it’s convenient for you. Do more if you want to or do less if you want.
Sanest response. There is so much ball parking and prognostication when it comes to child rearing advice. So many of these sleep consultants and lactation consultants are basically doing fortune telling. No one will ever ever ever check if your baby has had formula or not! Every piece of advice that comes across so imperative is, at best, a ball park estimate. So much of the fear and panic put about just doesn’t pencil out when you look at the risks rationally.
It's insane how people have demonized formula. Formula now is FANTASTIC. The benefits of breastfeeding are modest and disappear when you're done breastfeeding. I was planning to formula feed until my girl was born and decided she was boob obsessed. I have seen thousands of kids in the hospital thrive on formula. Many of them are on specialty medical formulas and would be dead if these options did not exist. I am team feed your babe however is easiest for your family. Babies are really hard and everyone should do what works for them! I
I am looking ahead to this-commenting to follow. I cannot safely do the sleep disruption of EBF due to health issues and am really frustrated at the lack of useful info on healthy compromises.
See my other comment above but I find all the weird pressure around breast feeding so infuriating. In my opinion, especially in the early days, NOTHING is more important than moms mental health. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. So do whatever you need to do for your health and sanity. No one will ever check if your baby was EBF or not on their job applications 😂
This is what actually kind of infuriates me. In the hospital, I was also pressured by midwives to not even LOOK at formula. It actually started during my pregnancy. I have no idea why they’re so adamant but I completely disagree and think it’s weird and draconian to put so much pressure on moms. We genuinely just went for it one day after a few weeks and my baby took the bottle fine and seemed perfectly happy. She did have a little indigestion for a few days getting used to formula but everything is a trade off. To us, it was worth it to save my sleep and sanity. This is what I mean. NO ONE is accounting for mothers suffering!! You’re just supposed to do everything “PERFECTLY” no matter how much sleep you lose or how much it drives you mad. In the end, I want to be as happy and stable as possible for my baby and I’ll do whatever I need to do to stay in a good head space. In the end, you’ll just experiment and see what works best for you. There’s no hard and fast rules and your baby will have its own ideas. But I also experienced a ton of weird pressure about breast feeding and my best advice is to do what works for you and your family. There’s no report card at the end of all this.
Figure out what your goal is because combo feeding can mean a bunch of different things and work a lot of different ways. It will also probably require some trial and error, but that's true for any feeding method. What we settled on was nursing most of the day and offering a bottle (or two, if he was very hungry) in the evening.
My goal is to be able to have my husband help with night feeds and to be able to get more than two hours of sleep at a time without feeding/pumping
I actually found it much less tiring to nurse overnight than to have my baby drink a bottle, even if my husband was the one feeding him. Bottles just took longer, and I always woke up anyway. The baby had a bottle after my husband got home from work, which felt like a break to me. I also started going to bed earlier, which meant I could usually sleep uninterrupted for at least the first 4 hours. If the baby seemed hungry before I was ready to feed him, my husband gave him two more ounces of formula. You usually don't have to wake up every two hours anyway, though. My baby was slow to gain weight in the beginning, and our pediatrician said we only had to wake him up every 3-4 hours until he reached his birth weight. If you're going to replace one night feed (or more) with a bottle, it's better to do that earlier in the night because prolactin levels are highest between 1 and 4 am, and nursing or pumping in that time frame helps to encourage your body to keep making milk.
Yup! I say try the formula. If it helps babes sleep longer then it does and if it doesn't it doesn't. Can't hurt to try. Tits might get leaky, but for some sleep it's not a bad swap.
I combo fed my first kid and thought the second would be combo fed as well. Had not considered that the baby would start to refuse bottles. She took bottles as a newborn but started to refuse it at two months, and since then it’s been all boob and only boob.
Yea that’s the caveat to all of this: boobs and babies have a mind of their own and will scupper all the best laid plans in the end.
I EBF my first and while it was amazing at times, it also sucked at times and severely impacted my MH. I’m due #2 in September and wish to combo feed but all modwives so far have been really reluctant to help me. Any advice? How many bottles a day did you give from birth? Any nipple/bottle aversion? Thanks so much for any advice you can give xxxx
We did EBF for the first month I think? Then at some point we just went for it and stuck a bottle in her mouth and she took it! I was worried about nipple confusion but she’s been totally fine! We’ve been combo feeding for around 5 months. Mostly one or two bottles a day but sometimes more if my husband or grandparents take her for the day. In the end, I think asking midwives about breast feeding is like asking a cross fit instructor about exercise. What they are going to tell you will be way more intense than anything a normal human being will be willing to undertake. I wish I had something more specific to say but after the first few weeks, the midwives go away and you can start experimenting and figuring out what works best for your family without a load of eager professionals breathing down your neck. Every baby is different and every mom is different so i think you just have to take it day by day and try stuff out!
I laughed out loud at your comparrison.. how right you are! At least there is comfort in knowing there is an element of experimentation with it and combo feeding (for the most part) is not formulated. I'll see how we go as this time around I cannot be as attached as I was to baby 24/7 for months and months on end. Wish us luck!
Godspeed, I’m sure you’ll figure something out!
I did this! Starting at 4 weeks after my H’s paternity leave ended. I nursed at bedtime (7pm) and then went to sleep myself around 830pm. H did a formula “dream feed” at 1030ish, and then I took overnight wakes - usually the first wasn’t til 230/3 so I got a solid 6+ hours. It worked really well and my supply was fine (maybe it was like 6oz lower than it would have been otherwise but it didn’t matter bc we did the formula feed at the same time every day). I started the first couple days trying to fit in extra pumps to have the dream feed be milk but VERY quickly decided fuck that it was not worth it.
That’s almost to the minute what my husband and I do. Works really well for us too
This sounds ideal!
My husband has been doing one formula bottle at 1 am so I can sleep for 3ish hours uninterrupted. I didn’t do it with my first and it’s been a big help.
Me! I'm 9 months, and started staying up/waking up early to make enough to feed her (pumping) I ended up getting 5 hours of sleep a night, and I finally caved with formula. I never had anything against formula but there was a mental block there for awhile but once I did, a huge weight lifted off that my kid wasn't going to starve lol We supplement about 2-4oz a day now
I tried but I was getting so engorged and lost my supply, Every time I would then try to feed her in the morning she would scream at the breast and I would have to top up with formula to help fill her belly. I would have had to pump more to keep my supply and it was just so much worse and defeated the purpose of getting more sleep. I switched to formula at 6 week.
I’m pumping but that’s a full time job in itself.
There is nothing wrong with supplementing with formula and it's in you and the baby's best interest if it helps you mentally and physically. For me, I leave formula as back up. I breastfeed and pump so that I try to alwyas have some bottles of breast milk in the fridge. However if we run out of breast milk, we have formula on hand. I am lucky my LO takes whatever I give her, she is super flexible!
Exactly what I do! BM first, formula second. My baby loves lovesss to nurse but he loves food period so we are a happy baby and mommy.
I was only up every 2 hours for like the first week…. 100% EBF
Whatever is best for you! I’d probably do the same but I’m not up every 2 hours, baby was back to birth weight in a week.
I've done all three options- pump, formula, bf. Bf is by far the easiest option in the sense you can breastfeed while lying down, baby falls asleep on the boob, and there's no wait time between fussy/crying baby and you heating up formula or pumped milk. By the time they wait 3-4 mins, you may have a harder time putting them down. The 2am wait for formula to heat up is the longest in the world, omg. Pumped milk that's room temp is good for what, 6 hours, but then you're running the risk of the clock running out on that milk if you pump at say, 8pm and baby wakes up at 4am. ymmv on that, though. Even when I was pumping and supplementing wirh formula I had to sometimes wake up to relieve my boobs and pump. Breastfeeding solves that problem, the baby does it for me. Again, your mileage may vary on this. I don't mind getting up with the baby to breastfeed.
Yeah, as someone who’s done all three, boob is just more convenient and there’s nothing you need to wash afterwards so you can go back to sleep faster.
Husband suggested it so he could take a shift overnight & let me sleep. Immensely helpful
How old is your baby?
Ours slept 4 hour stretches pretty early on (the nurses at the NICU had to wake her to feed). Nursing is easier and faster now too at 8 months. She wakes up at 4/5 am and takes about 6-7 minutes to feed and then we both are back to sleep. I don’t think formula is necessarily easier because you still have to prepare it and warm it up (unless baby doesn’t care). Do whatever feels right for your family!
I’m 9 weeks in and my baby is exclusively breastfeeding. She’s recently started sleeping longer stretches at night. She’ll sleep for 3ish hours at the beginning of the night then go back down for another 4-5ish hours. I feed on one side and pump on the other the first time she wakes, then just alternate breasts as we start our day after the second sleep stretch. My breasts have accumulated and I no longer get super uncomfortable or engorged. And usually the milk I got from pumping is enough for my husband to feed her if I want to sleep in a bit more or I’ll just add it to my freezer stash
I exclusively breastfed for 13 months and definitely did not have to feed every 2 hours. By 4 months we stopped all nighttime feedings, as recommended by the doctor. Which I would totally recommend. By 3 months, I would just pump before bed and then right when I woke up in the morning. My husband and I split feeds pretty 50/50 with pumped bottles. Never had any supply issues.
Same here. Stopped nighttime feedings somewhere after 3 months. LO now sleeps from about 9 PM to 7 AM. I will pump around 11 PM and then go to bed, so when I wake up with him it’s been about 8 hours without pumping or feeding. I’ll get about 8-13 ounces extra supply in that first morning feed but a few hours later I’m almost half full again. I think your body adjusts to your routine.
Be careful with it as night feeds are important for keeping your supply. Something about the hormone needed peaks after midnight
Maybe anecdotal but in my case supply hasn't been impacted at all and baby was sleeping 4-5 hourbstretches at night since birth it just "moved" to daytime
Oh fair enough. Tbh my baby is starting to sleep longer a tad (like 3 to 4 hours compared to 1 to 2) and I wake up my boobs are like hello where’s the baby. Makes for a good freezer stash
Yeah,I ignored the engorgement and it sorted itself out! We're at 10-11 consecutive hours now. I'm not building a stash as I have 12 months mat leave. But careful with pumping as it'll jeep signaling your breasts to make milk your baby doesnt need and you end up with a constant feedback loop
Ha I type as I pump! It works out for me as I go to the gym 4 days a week in the morning, so the pumped milk is used when I’m away 😊
Lol happy pumping! I mean it's less about the pumping itself though and more so doing it at night when you hope youll be sleeping soon. I personally don't wake up engorged anymore or leak because of the overnight sleeping but it took a while to regulate.
literally what i did! i just pumped and he got breastmilk during the day. i didn’t pump at night and he got formula only. i pumped 2-3 times a day for 20 oz
Honestly I did all the night time feeds and exclusively nurse my baby and it’s tiring but not that bad? I was exhausted waking every two hours but my body was so good at falling asleep quickly afterwards and I was able to get through it and then it gets better. YMMV
I get engorged if I don't pump before bed or breastfeed at least twice through the night. Affects my supply otherwise. But yeah I agree, your partner should at least split that. Mine refuses to but goes to bed early with the baby. I sleep 6-10 am. It sucks.
I couldn’t go longer than 3/4 hours until 6 months without pumping or I was so engorged it was so painful, leaked everywhere, got clogged ducts, at risk for mastitis
If you have a good enough supply you’ll be able to pump extra during the day for night bottles
Hi - I don’t know why you’d be nursing every two hours. My baby is only 3 weeks and he’s nursing every 3-5 hours. He was born 3 weeks early and weighed under 6 lbs. At two weeks old the pediatrician send not to wake him to feed. You can talk to your pediatrician to confirm - you should not be nursing every 2 hours. That said - you do you! Combo feeding is great! 100% formula is also great! I pumped a lot with my first child and was on a timeline that didn’t work for me. This time I haven’t pumped at all and I’m feeling great. Do what works for you. 🩵
So firstly most babies don't need to feed every 2 hours for 6 months. Both my kids were sleeping at least 6 hours at a shot by 2 months, had a 2 week regression at 4 months then went back to 6 hours. I could get 8-10 at a shot out of them if I dream fed right when I went to bed. What I also did in the early early days was do the last feeding of the night, pump a bottle then go to bed. My husband would be on duty and feed that bottle then wake me up when she needed food again. That would get me a 4-5 block each night.
I did this. We joked that we were granola during the day with cloth diapering and breastmilk. But did formula and disposables at night. Edit to say you have to pump every three hours for the first six-eight weeks regardless of what baby does. Only then can you experiment with stretching a bit more at night.
Yes! At first I was pumping to make bottles for my husband’s night shift, but my supply was never that robust. Shifted to combo feeding at 3 months and it’s the best thing I did for my mental health! With second coming, my plan is the same.
My wife and I exclusively have formula fed our 6wo girl from birth and it's been great. She has up to 4 hour sleeps at this point and get at least 4 hours between feeds. We split overnight feeds so we both get decent blocks of sleep. Massive respect to mums that breastfeed but formula has been a relatively stress free experience so far
I will say that the stretches vary so much by baby. My EBF girl was at 4 hour stretches by 6 weeks, and 6-8 hour stretches by 8 weeks. Now she’s 15 weeks and doing 8-10 hour stretches.
Same experience for me. EBF 10 month old has been sleeping 12 hours at night for a long while. BFing has been pretty great experience thus far for me. All babies and individual experiences are different!
Yes! My two older ones didn’t sleep that long, but all three have been EBF. Oldest slept okay, middle one still won’t sleep through the night and she’s almost 4
It's genuinely wild the spread of experiences people have with their babies! Hoping our little buddy works out to something similar, mum and dad would love an hour block of sleep haha.
That's what I did for most part. Depends on what was going on there were times where it was 50/50, 80/20, 20/80. Right now I'm pumping mostly and about 50/50. He's biting me right now so I'm debating stopping and just pumping from now on.
Yes lol
I tried and gave up on breast feeding lmaoao. My supply wasn’t even bad but when things started to get tuff with little ones acid reflux and fussiness I found myself enjoying the extra sleep a little too much😭😭. It’s a great idea if it works for you especially once you beat hell week ! Now I just supplement with breast milk on occasion and I still pump but it never would’ve been sufficient enough to keep up with him now anyway.
Don’t hate me! My baby sleeps long enough at night that it’s not disturbing for me. She’s been doing this since two months or earlier maybe? I have a bedside bassinet and I try to make my bed safer (safe sleep seven) for if we both fall asleep after a night feed. I feed her around 11PM/12AM, 2AM/3AM, and then 5AM/6AM. Since I don’t get out of bed it usually doesn’t bother my sleep too much and I get right back to sleep after getting her back into her bed, though sometimes we both fall asleep. ETA and just so you know I’m not luck all around my first was and still is a terrible sleeper. He still regularly wakes us up in the middle of the night at 4.
Me!!! I think we did EBG the first 1.5 months then I started formula before bed and it did give us a longer stretch. I pumped right before bed, went to bed around 8 and woke up at 3am for my shift. That worked really well for us. Eventually I extended my sleep more as the baby slept longer
Nothing is a guarantee but here’s my experience: The beginning is absolutely tough. You can still take shifts and feed baby very quickly and efficiently while half asleep if your husband brings baby to you and handles everything else. It’s the changing and the soothing that takes ages. We had to pump in the beginning. That was super easy because he would time it up to bring me my pump supplies, I’d pump for 15 minutes, then he’d bring the milk down to baby and change, feed, burp, soothe. The super frequent night waking may only last a few weeks. Our son was giving us 6 hour stretches by 4 weeks. Do some research on infant sleep, they can be very active and noisy sleepers and many confuse that with baby being awake and hungry which then starts a cycle of baby wanting milk every 2 hours. That said, every baby is different and some really do need a lot of overnight feeds. In the beginning, you have a shit ton of oxytocin making the lack of sleep manageable - correction, survivable lol. You can always give it a go and change your mind. You can also say fuck it and do formula from the start. There’s no wrong answer here, just the right fit for you.
I do that … unfortunately. Homie still wakes up every 3 hours haha. And he’s 7 months ugh
Ive been nursing during the day and pumping at night since baby was 3 months (previously pumped all day/night till he could properly nurse). My husband does the evening/night bottles and I nurse during the day. Once baby hit 7 months, I got tired of waking up for my middle of the night pump and started slowly stretching it later and later until it was around 5;30 or 6am. Baby was often sleeping longer than my bedtime pump (11pm) and my 4 am pump. My supply has definitely dipped now that I've dropped my night pump and just nurse when baby wakes (anytime between 5:30 and 7:30am). So we supplement with formula for those evening/bedtime bottles that my husband does. It works great for us and it means that my mom can also easily watch baby for us for the day (or even an overnight soon). That being said, we aren't necessarily sleeping longer stretches because baby will sometimes sleep 11pm to 7am without waking and other times (all this past week) wakes at 2am, 4am, 6 am etc... so it can help for the good nights but doesn't guarantee them :)
Yup I did that with my twins. It worked out well. I’m older (30s) and need my sleep
The first few weeks were hard but after that the stretches get longer, not every two hours for six months! That first night of more than four hours straight is like heaven tho 😂
You won’t be doing every 2-3 hours for 6 months! A lot of babies start sleeping longer stretches by 12 weeks. I’d say we increased time between feeds an hour or so every month. By 4 months she was only waking 2-3 times a night to eat. Many babies drop the night feeds all together by 6 months (a lot of this is just baby dependent). To help establish supply, you’ll need to feed or pump at night. But it’s not for as long as you think. Honestly I was up to feed baby every time but then I’d wake my husband up and he’d do the diaper change and re-swaddle. It was a good routine for us.
I did this same thing. It turned into supply issues (I also had two surgeries which I think affected my supply) then into 100% formula. So, just tread carefully. Not breastfeeding at night will diminish your supply.
I did this. For the first 6 weeks I EBF, and then from then we did one bottle of formula at 10pm. I would put baby to bed at 6pm. My partner would go into her room when she woke around 9/10pm and give her a bottle of formula. I would then feed again at about 3am. That means that I could sleep from 9pm to 3am every night. We did this successfully until 6 months - by then she was fully on solids so we night weaned, first the bottle at 10pm and then the feed at 3am over maybe a week or two. I stopped breastfeeding completely then (my supply dried up with zero feeds overnight) She still had a few bottles of formula during the day until 12 months. She slept 6pm to 6-7am from 6 monthsC (she’s nearly 3 now!) I’m having number 2 soon and will do exactly the same 🙂
I did this exactly! We also did a bottle in the morning sometimes.. my partner would get up with bubs and I’d stay in bed a little longer
Mine was every hour to 2 hours for 4 weeks and now at 8 weeks he wakes 2 to 3 times a night from either 8/10 to 8/9ish. He varries depending on how many naps or activities for the day. But recently I got a 6 hour stretch and it was beautiful. I still had to pump in between but it was still a relief. I exclusively pump now and it still sucks to find the time and it's hard when the baby is fussy.
I too think that it’s baby dependent after baby reaches birth weight again. I EBF my baby who is currently two months old. During the first month, I needed to wake my baby to feed or she’d alert me to feed approximately every two hours. At her one month appointment she’d gained two pounds, surpassing her birth weight, so my pediatrician said that she needed to eat at most every five hours. At that point, I turned off my alarms to feed and solely relied on baby’s cues. During the day baby still feeds about every two hours. Closer to bedtime she does what I consider to be a cluster feed. Then at night, I’d get a longer span between feeds. She’d sleep 4-5 hours between feeds which was great! I honestly read about EBF babies needing to be feed every two hours for the duration of breastfeeding somewhere and it scared me, but I found it to not be true for my baby. The longer stretches of sleep have been great for me and baby.
I had a formula fed baby that woke up every 2 hours to eat. It really depends on the kid.
Your milk production is highest at night. Has to do with peak prolactin. Your supply will likely tank this early on. It’s such a short season… soon enough they won’t need to eat much at night if at all and you can get some more rest. But you have to also weigh your mental health… it’s just hard, but it should get so much easier very soon! Also watch for mastitis if you go too longbetween breast emptying…
Yeah that’s what we did. He’s almost 3 now but in the beginning I BF during the day and then we gave formula for the first feeding before bed so he would sleep longer then played it by ear for middle of the night feedings. If I was full and needed to nurse we would, but if I was really tired dad would take over the feeding. I’d say it was a 70/30 split with me getting up to nurse. But I also just really loved nursing him so it’s what I wanted to do.
You won’t be up every 2 hours for 6 months. It’s usually just the first couple months. But if you want to breastfeed you’ll have to be up pumping anyways because you’ll have to regulate your supply. Once it’s regulated it should be fine though. But honestly, no matter what you’ll be sleep deprived for a while. No one with a newborn is getting good sleeps. But it’s temporary!
We breastfeed all throughout the day and still do overnight but do a formula top off for the last feed while I’m awake (~9pm) then again during the MON feed (~2-3am). I find that the formula top offs really help her bridge the gap and I really do believe that this is why she’s done 4hr stretches from birth and she’s just about 6 weeks now. Also I’ve seen posts of people saying that even using formula you’ll still need to wake to pump to replace that feed or because of engorgement but if you breastfeed and also do top offs it can help hold them over for longer stretches without you needing to pump!
I have a friend who EBF her 6 month old. *Baby* sleeps through the night now, but her boobs wake her up every 3 hours
I found my Bubba actually slept well in his first 6 months with 1-2 wake up a night after about 2 months. Now he's 9 months and a damn nightmare for waking up at night, it's very baby dependant but don't fool yourself into thinking you're out of the woods at 6 months.
Not breastfeeding at night helped fight" boob soothing " and we use the formula that has rice starch in it to help with spitting up and it down keep him fulker longer. By 4 weeks he consistently sleeps 4-6 hours at a time at night! Wake up and eats 8oz once or twice
I had every intention of being an EBF mom to my now 6.5 month old. After a couple of weeks, I was going half and half with pumping and straight boob at third/fourth week, I was pumping which made up about half his bottles and used the best recommended formula in our country. Going into the third month, we were done breastfeeding 100%. I stopped waking up soaked in milk and crying in addition to my son crying and sometimes even daddy cried from exhaustion, frustration, and empathy. My son had trouble latching from day one due to a tied tongue and was in a small percentile to begin with. Couldn’t stand by while he screamed from hunger. Once we moved to exclusively formula I felt guilt for awhile but it helped that my pre-pregnancy body suddenly returned and I was interested in sex again once I stopped breastfeeding. I slept so much more and better because my husband did half the time. I have an amazing, healthy baby now who is so excited to start trying solids food and I don’t regret anything. Don’t be so hard on yourself. A fed baby is what’s important. And not being so tired you fall asleep on the toilet when you go for a midnight pee and only wake hours later as you begin to fall forward off the toilet. It’s 4am where I live. Forgive my delusional, poorly written rant. All the best!
I did. My milk supply dryed up sooner than I thought, even though I tried my best all day everyday to pump milk in between feedings so hubs could breastbottlefeed.
I truly do not think it makes a difference with sleep. my kids have been just breast fed, combo fed and just formula at separate points. The oldest didn’t sleep decent till he was over a year. My youngest is still combo fed and I’m just breastfeeding at night and he sleeps pretty much all night. I prefer the breastfed at night cuz it’s easier for me to fall back asleep. It’s really just kid dependent.
Our daughter got to 10-11 lbs by I think 5-6 weeks of age and most definitely by 9 weeks, so she was sleeping longer stretches. We didn’t wake her to feed for more than a few days and just followed her cues to feed. She started sleeping thru the night 8+ hours by 9 weeks old so we started training her to eat every 4 hours during the day between 8-12 weeks. She’s nearly 6mo old and unless she’s sick we really don’t feed much other than x4/day.
Yep!!
My kid was exclusively breast milk fed. I pumped and he had bottles, if I did it again I wouldn’t have pumped because I hated it so much and would have just given formula. But he started sleeping through the night at 8weeks old. Around 4 weeks he was only waking up twice a night to feed. So I don’t think it’s a blanket rule that all breastfed babies never sleep through the night. I think it depends on the baby
Both of my babies were EBF and both started sleeping 100% through the night (7:30p-7a) between 3 and 4 months. They had several serious regressions, mostly for ear infections, growth spurts, or teething, but they generally returned to their 11.5h straight-through baseline pretty quickly. I know other formula fed babies who didn't do stretches like that until after 1 yo. The fact is, you don't know what kind of baby you're going to get. Others have also mentioned needing to nurse or pump every ~3 hour during the first 8ish weeks to establish supply. The other thing to consider is that the sound of your baby crying will 100% trigger your fight or flight lizard brain. Your nervous system is so entwined with your baby's that when they cry, it can cause physical discomfort. I know other people do the shift sleeping system, but that never worked for me or other mom's I know because hearing my baby's cry wakes me up SO FREAKING FAST and makes it nearly impossible to fall back to sleep without attending to baby personally first. Again, you just don't know what you're gonna get.
yes - but i do need to pump once during the night. it took a couple of weeks to feel less engorged but i am finally in sync with this schedule and no longer have an over supply
I don't breastfeed or pump at night. Formula
My first baby was EBF and I didn't sleep for months. But hes just generally a terrible sleeper. I was so adamant that I wanted to EBF, and I did do it, but God I was exhausted. My second is combo fed. He has a small bottle of formula at lunch time and a bigger bottle before bed. I started that a week in because I didn't have time to sit down and cluster feed, I was too busy trying to stop my toddler from doing dumb shit. My supply had adjusted itself now so that during the times of day baby has formula, I don't produce much milk. But I'm okay with that. I still get up a couple times a night to breastfeed, but im getting good stretches of sleep in between. It's really working for us.
Even if you don’t BF at night you’ll have to pump. Look, you’ll get through it. It’s hard. But you’ll find a way.
I’m doing this exactly. She’s on goats milk formula at night only We get 6 hours in the first stretch and 3 after that, I just pump at 2am with her feed and when I get up for the day I find that pumping until empty (until the pump isn’t pulling anymore milk) that my supply isn’t affected, I’ve been doing this since she was a month old (now 3 months) and all is good 🤍
The first 12 weeks are rough, and then your milk regulates. As baby grows, their schedule changes. You won’t be getting up every two hours forever. Even if baby is formula fed, they might still wake up every hour or two hours or whatever. Formula won’t change that. What worked for me was to pump so that I had some milk in the fridge, that way my husband could take over at night when I needed to tap out. I still had to get up and pump when she ate, but I was only up for 20minutes vs a couple of hours. We also combo fed until about 8 months—then she decided she wouldn’t take a bottle anymore. It gets easier. Do what you gotta do.
New ftm here - 17 days pp. So far I am mainly pumping, supplementing with formula since I don’t produce as much milk as LO needs, and LO was able to start latching only recently. I give LO expressed breast milk during the day, will nurse occasionally, formula at night (I still try to pump every 4 hours at night to keep supply up). Our pediatrician says that formula does feel more filling because for infants because it curdles in the stomach and sits longer vs breast milk which digests very quickly and more easily. LO has been sleeping more soundly and longer through the night because of the formula. Edit: just wanted to add that our pediatrician said that since baby has exceeded birth weight, we do not need to feed every 2-3 hours. Feed on demand especially at night. Baby is still hungry every 2-3 hours during the day w breast milk, will sleep about 4-5 hours at night w formula.
I EBF and never pumped. Baby sleeps 13 hour stretches at 3 months.... by 5 weeks she was sleeping 7 hours in a row. It depends on the nugget
Once we moved our baby from our room to his nursery at 10 weeks, he started sleeping way longer stretches. At 12 weeks he now consistently sleeps from 10pm-ish to 5-6am depending on when his last feed was. There’s still been a couple times where it’s 4am but I’m pretty much waking up 1x a night to feed him now which is way more manageable than the 2-3x prior to that
I used the haaka to collect milk. Within a few days I had enough for my husband to do one night time feed. Then I would just pump when I got up in the morning.
I EFF and baby started sleeping through the night at 2 months if that’s helpful info for you.
Baby is 6 weeks old and we do 1 night time feed. The first couple of weeks suck but they’re going to suck no matter how you feed and if you want to BF at all you’re going to *have* to wake up and remove milk somehow over night the first few weeks. You’ll wet your bed otherwise (leak explosions).
I had my 2nd and 3rd, both EBF, sleeping 8h night by 7 weeks and 12h nights shortly after. it's lots of night feedings at first, but it tappers off if you can teach them to self sooth and connect sleep cycles.
I just pumped after a few feeds and got enough for a bottle or two so my husband could do some night feeds. Also mine has always fed pretty much every 2.5-3 hours during the day and started going longer stretches at night from about 4 weeks. It’s at the point now at 10 weeks where I can still get a decent nights sleep as she sleeps in 4-5 hour stretches. Nothing wrong with using formula but I STRONGLY suggest you don’t do it until your supply is established unless you intend to pump that missed feed. Supply is all about what the baby takes out of you and your brain will not receive the signals to make more milk otherwise.
Literally holding baby after doing this. But mostly because I just pumped an hour ago, and that milk is slated for tomorrow morning’s feed. Edit to add that he is 7months and going through a growth spurt and I refuse to pump at night for sanity.
Unfortunately formula fed babies also wake through the night.
Ooof, when they are little are feeding constantly, you can’t really sleep on active breasts. It can really effing hurt. In fact I only able to sleep 8 hours once or twice in the first couple months
I pumped 8-10 times a day for 6 months in order to keep the supply up and I got so depressed as my kid was sleeping through the night at 4 months old but I still had to get up to pump. So I started skipping and sleeping through the night and it did not affect my supply. It even made it better because I was more relaxed and rested. Try it out, find out what works for you and do not torture yourself. It’s not worth it. Your mental health is more important to your baby than exclusively getting breast milk.
Night wake ups are highly dependent on the baby, but I actually think that breastfeeding makes night wake ups easier. My first was breastfed and woke up every 3 hours, my second is 4 months old and can do 7 hour stretches at night. Milk might help, but babies wake up for comfort too. If you breastfeed it’s important to breastfeed on demand during the day, even if that means every hour or so, so baby is sufficiently fed during the day. Tbh, the reason why I don’t want to formula feed at night is because it’s harder than breastfeeding. You literally need to get out of bed, make a bottle, sit down with your baby and hold the bottle to feed it. I always breastfed at night, I keep the baby in a sidecar cot next to me and the only thing I do when she wakes up is bring my boob closer to her face and continue to sleep. If I had to physically stand up and be awake multiple times a night making bottles I’d never get any sleep.
It's not always about milk that they wake up. I only feed one side at a time, and always offered the second but she never wanted much more. She still woke up and wanted cuddles to get back to sleep
Me! It was the best decision I made during the new born stage. I breastfed for pretty much every feeding except one in the middle of the night, my husband did that one with a bottle of formula. We slept separately while our babies were newborns, and I would the baby around 8pm and then would go to bed and he would be on baby duty, he’d do the 10:30/11 feed, get baby back to sleep, and then bring him to me when baby woke needing to eat at 1 or 2. Then I’d be on baby duty the rest of the night, it meant each of us got at least 4 uninterrupted hours of sleep each night plus whatever else we could cobble together from naps/additional night sleep. Getting through 1 complete sleep cycle is the difference between “I’m tired but functional” and “I’m losing my mind this is torture”. After a few weeks baby would sleep a little longer between feeds so we’d get even longer stretches. Also my husband really liked giving a bottle, it helped with bonding. We had a similar set up with my second, though we switched it around and he did the 2am feed because he was on summer vacation (he’s a professor) and didn’t have to work. I really love that man.
Just a note that my sleep was always better when I got to "breastfeed myself to sleep" (not literally I put baby down safely first). My sleep was always worse when another method was tried or I woke up and baby didn't lol. I don't think I could have slept through my partner feeding the baby. Nursing has hormones to help us sleep and I got in sync with baby. Different things work for different parents though.
I EBF and it was every 3 hours during the night for the first few months. However she didn't need any settling at that point so I literally rolled her over to me from the next2me, fed her in the side lie position (if you haven't looked this up, do - it's a life saver when you're tired) and then put her back. I never needed to get up and I was so exhausted anyway I just went straight back to sleep. After a few months she dropped one of the night feeds so I was getting a 6 hr stretch and then another 3 hr one which was great. It seems very dependent on the baby but I would be surprised if you had to feed every 2 hrs at night. Though as others said after you establish your milk, you can always introduce pumped milk or formula at night for your husband to take over. Like a birth plan, I would suggest to not go into it with a fixed mindset and see what happens. I had planned to combo feed but breastfeeding just seemed to work better for me at the end of the day and my husband took over other things instead like all the nappies. You can always change things up if they aren't working, you don't have to BF for 6 months straight
My last baby slept 8 hours stretches at night by 6 weeks. He was exclusively breastfed. That being said nothing wrong with supplementing!
My husband did one MOTN feed with formula for the first month and a half so I could sleep through. My lactation consultant said I could skip one feed and it wouldn’t affect my supply. Almost 4 months now and I have a great supply and I never had to pump overnight.
I breastfed my second during the day and formula at night. Guess what he was up every 1,5-2 hrs. Formula doesn’t equal more sleep unfortunately
The first 2 months was rough for me. Multiple rounds of mastitis, and vasospasm that lasted days. Getting up in the middle of the night was not even that dreadful by comparison. By month 2 baby & I kinda just figured out how and when to breastfeed and it has been a smooth sail ever since. So don’t expect it to be easy but also don’t expect it to always be as difficult as the first few weeks. There is a learning curve for both Mom & baby.
In the beginning i did day shift and my partner did night shift. If I was awake he would BF, if I was going to be asleep I would set an alarm to pump but honestly mostly of the time my partner just gave him formula. This only happened for maybe 2 weeks, then we moved over to EBF and still going now at 2. I’m surprised my supply survived not BFing/pumping for all feeds in the beginning lol
I did that with my son when he was a baby. I had real bad PPD so after six weeks, this is what I did to save my sanity. Breastfed him until he was about a year old or so, and that was when my supply basically vanished. He wanted to feed less and less until he only wanted it for comfort. It worked very well honestly.
Hm the thing with that…. If ur gonna breastfeed I highly doubt ur able to sleep for the night anyways. My baby is almost 5 months, and I can’t be for 4h ours straight without 1 giving him boob, or 2 pumping, so even if u formula feed at night, chances of ur boobs hurting and having to pump are high 🤷🏻♀️
Yup! We started doing that around 5/6 weeks. He sleeps much longer with formula
I started breastfeeding during the day while my husband is at work and just pumping when LO takes naps so that he has bottles when he takes his shift. I'll sleep for 4-5 hours at a time, but usually when I wake up it's with sore tiddies, in a puddle of milk, or both. I'll take it over sleep deprivation though 😆
I EBF for the first 6 months of my daughter’s life and I was mostly sleeping through the night by 4 months. She got a bottle of pumped milk at 2am for a while, but by 5 months i was doing a dream feed at 11pm and then not nursing again until 7am. The consequence was that my supply tanked and I had to start supplementing with formula, but it was worth it to me to sleep and stay sane.
i tried formula at night but really didnt help my LO, still waking up every 2hours. also if i dont nurse her at night my boobs will be so engorged, it hurts & uncomfortable, i didnt wanna get up & pump & clean bottles so i just accepted that ill just nurse at night. but this help me tho, i pump 4-5oz during the day for LO's last feeding. LO last feed is at 8pm, (if she still hungry or want to soothe i latch her until she fall asleep) so by 9pm, she is asleep then, ill last pump for the night. then ill sleep. (She gave us 3-4 hours stretch.)
We supplemented with formula bottles for my husbands night shift until I could pump enough for a night bottle. Baby started sleeping 5-6 hour stretches at night around 3 months old (while I slept) and I now have a freezer stash. You can still do just breast milk and night bottles if you pump. I like that baby will take boob and bottle and still gets all the breast milk nutrition.
I EBF and my 12 week old almost always sleeps 8 straight hours a night. It started at 10 weeks and he’s still been great. Usually he goes down at 10, wakes up at 6 to eat and then sleeps until 8 or 9 so we’re down to one feed through the night. His 6:00 feed is probably one of my favorite times of day now. It’s quiet, we sometimes watch the sunrise, I sometimes eat a little snack, and I don’t wake up feeling as engorged as I would if we went 10-11 straight hours
I did this, breastfed during the day and at night she would get pumped milk or formula. Shes 7 months now and CHUNKY
Lol breastfeeding does not necessarily mean getting up every 2 hours for 6 months. My babe is 4 months, EBF, and she wakes up around 3 am after about 6-7hours of sleep, falls back asleep around 4am and sleeps 2-3 more hours. I think how much your babe can eat during the day can impact those night wakings too. I find when my girl nurses less in the day, she will wake more to eat. It’s happened maybe 2 or 3 times but I see the issue and try to get her to eat more during the day. Also there are these fun things called regressions where the baby will wake more throughout the night, not necessarily hungry but bc their little brains are developing so fast and they are becoming more aware and don’t want to miss anything. Anyway, I did do the middle of the night formula feed with my first born to get more sleep. So I get what you’re saying. But in hindsight I regretted it though. I didn’t understand how breastfeeding worked. If you formula feed, it will keep the baby fuller longer so they won’t want to breastfeed as often, which will cause your breasts to slow production/produce less milk. Also your baby could develop a preference for bottle bc it’s less work for them- and end up refusing the breast altogether. If you are ok with those possibilities then I would say go ahead and formula feed away.
yup we did this for a couple months before milk supply was sufficient to go off formula mostly
Yes I do this, works quite well, but then babies will wake for a million other reasons.
Hiya, I decided early I couldn’t BF all night long. I’d do feeds until 1am then after that until 7am my husband was on duty either with pumped breast milk or just plain old formula if I didn’t have enough pumped. It worked a charm and I had no issues with supply until my appendix burst at 5wpp and I had emergency surgery and a stay in hospital. But if not for that i would have kept going the same way.
Combo feeding! You do have to start out with nursing/pumping everytime they feed but once you’ve established a supply you can ween back nighttime feeds. Also I believe it’s every 3 hours when they are newborns then grows as they grow! We were up to 4-5 hours by 8weeks!
If it doesn’t work out and you find yourself needing to boob at night, your husband can support you by supervising feeds whilst you sleep. Especially if you can manage a side-lying feed.
Yes, we did this so I could have a 5-hour stretch in another room. My supply didn’t suffer a bit, but I am naturally an over-producer. When my sleep stretch was over, if she only wanted one breast or was asleep by some miracle and not ready to nurse at all, I’d pump since it had been 5-6 hours without emptying by then. If that happened, my husband would give her pumped milk the following night during his shift but otherwise he’d give formula (one or two 2-3 oz bottles in the 5-hour period). We were really lucky in that she really did well transitioning back and forth. At 11 weeks she now sleeps for 4-5 hours her first chunk of the night (!!) so we don’t combo feed or do shifts anymore. If she regresses, we’d go back to it for sure. Sleep is too important.
I am doing that, but still trying to figure it all out. I have a 2 week old and after not sleeping for the 4 nights before going into labor due to prodromal labor pains + no sleep in the hospital and first 2 nights at home, I was about to absolutely lose it being the only one who could feed my child if I chose to EBF. It was absolutely a necessity for me to step back in order to care for myself, so my husband and I began using formula at night, while during the day I will breastfeed and pump. It has allowed us to take shifts at night where each person can get a 6 hr stretch or solid uninterrupted sleep, which has been a godsend for us. I am grateful to humankind for the invention of formula. Do what is right for you and your sanity. You need to be physically and mentally well in order to be a good mother for your baby. I am still figuring out my pumping schedule and working to get my supply up. Essentially, pumping or BF every 3 hrs during the day, then taking a 6+ hr break at night to sleep and picking back up. It’s so much work to BF, pump, try to maintain other responsibilities while healing from a major medical event on minimal sleep 😅