breastfeeding ?? -- sleepy eaters

[sntm]

Couple of questions --
1. For those of you with sleepy eaters, at some point do they become non-sleepy eaters?
2. In the middle of the night, how do you tell if a sleepy eater is full?
Jack enters a near coma when eating and none of the tickling/cold washcloth/passive situps techniques work. I have to be really aggressive to wake him up which takes a while and when he really is full, I feel like I'm just messing with his sleep. That said, I'm a little exhausted from putting him back down in his cradle and having him wake up in 15 minutes (just as I'm drifiting off) fussing and crying for more.

shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[stillplayswithbarbies]

>Couple of questions --
>1. For those of you with sleepy eaters, at some point do
>they become non-sleepy eaters?

Yes. Logan pretty much slept around the clock for her first 2 months on this earth. I had to do all sorts of things to get her to stay awake enough to eat at first. Now, at 4 months, she rarely falls asleep eating.

>2. In the middle of the night, how do you tell if a sleepy
>eater is full?

The same way you do any other time. Except I would always fall asleep too while she was eating, so I didn't worry so much at night about keeping her awake to eat. Eventually she learned to eat in her sleep at night. In fact, she still does this. When I go to bed at 11:30, I take her to my bed and lay down with her and she doesn't wake up, but she does suck strongly while she is asleep.

When she was a newborn, I didn't wake her fully to eat, I would just do something to get her to start sucking again when she stopped. So, she would eat for awhile and then stop sucking and I would blow on her hair and she would sucksucksuck again for a little while and then stop again. We'd keep this up until blowing on her hair no longer made her start sucking again, or until she popped off the nipple, and then I figured she was full.

...Karen
Jacob Nathaniel Feb 91
Logan Elizabeth Mar 03

[jubilee]

At about 10 weeks old my DS got better at being awake and faster during breastfeeding. I don't know if something in him changed or if I just got wiser to his needs. What I found is that he would tend to fall asleep when he had emptied the breast. (I have a hard time telling if there is anymore milk) If I kept him on the breast he'd keep falling asleep, but if I burped and switched sides, he'd wake up and eat. Now those 40-60 minutes feeds have gone down to 20 minutes because I'm not spending all my time waking him up!!

[sntm]

Even when I take him off to be burped, he tends to stay asleep. I'm hopeful that as he gets older, it will get better. He has improved enough that during the day I can usually wake him up. My consolation is that this may predict that he will be a good sleeper when the time comes!

shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[deenass]

Shannon

I had a sleepy, lazy eater (usually about 45 min on each side and oh, every 2 hours he ate!) What worked to wake him up was to change his diaper before I fed him and leave him undressed, then when he finished one side, i got him dressed which woke him up to do the other side.

The engorgement on one side will get better after your body figures out that he's not going to be eating both sides (or you can pump that side, at least to get rid of the pressure and store up the milk).

My mantra in the early weeks was "another day I've done this is another day I've done it." It DOES get better, I SWEAR!!!!!!!!!!