My sweet 5-week old has always had difficulty getting full and going back to sleep. I breastfeed and recently learned how to keep her awake and breastfeed more efficiently, but she still often takes 1.5 or 2 hours or more to go back to sleep after she wakes up. A lot of the time she seems hungry even after several feeds and even if she doesn't seem hungry she won't sleep. I try to soothe her and rock her, but even if she closes her eyes, as soon as I try to put her down she wakes up. Lately it's more like she's just awake and not making as many hunger signs, but usually she eventually shows that she's hungry and I just have to keep popping her on the boob for a few minutes to try to lull her to sleep. This happens for more than half the feedings and doesn't bother me during the day, but means that I have to be in bed trying to get some sleep or feeding until 3 in the afternoon, and then I only get 4 hours of sleep (if I'm lucky) per 24 hours even if I try going to bed around 9 pm. She sleeps anywhere between 1-3 hours at a time. Any similar experiences/ advice? Thanks!
-
And by the way, I have no supply issues and she is gaining plenty of weight.
-
You probably won't like this idea, but would you be willing to try supplementing with formula only for the night feedings? You want him to get full fast so you can get back to sleep and if it takes 1.5 hours to BF then an hour or so to fall asleep then it's tough to get any rest.
-
No advice other than my LO loved to be awake! She still does at 3mos. 5 weeks was a serious growth spurt for us, and she wanted to nurse non-stop, but she's definitely always been very awake. She would go hours in between naps, and it's just how she rolled.
-
My LO was like this and is still a tough napper at 17 weeks. She has continued to gain weight just fine, so I just chose to continue to nurse whenever she wanted and over time her feeding has spaced out, and we get better chunks of sleep out of her at night.
Hang in there, it's tough when you're not sleeping! I found kellymom's resources on newborn nursing behavior to be very reassuring, so that might be worth checking out.
-
Some babies just have different sleeping habits from the "typical" baby sleep patterns. I second @Modern Daisy though. You should do what works best for you, but do what you need to do to get enough sleep to remain functional. There's no need to be a breastfeeding martyr if you feel like you can't tough out the sleep issues anymore. Another option would be to pump and have your spouse feed the baby a bottle once during the night so you can get some extra sleep!
-
My LO is a frequent eater still at 9 weeks-- now when she is awake, but about the 2 hour mark she is starting to get hungry. She eats a little quicker than she used to but it's still 45 minutes for a full feeding, longer if I let her comfort nurse to sleep. She also likes to cluster feed at night-- some nights it's every hour, though that is definitely spacing out as she gets older. She did fall into a nice pattern of only waking up once at night, sometime between 2 and 5, and goes back to sleep fairly easily after eating, though, so even though I feed all day I still was getting some sleep at night.
She is still a very unpredictable napper. Some days she takes 2 nice long naps, other days it's more like one 30 minute for the whole day (those are not good days!). And sometimes I spend well over an hour trying to get her to sleep-- it's so frustrating, but I am told it's normal.
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite0
6 comments