breastfeeding and sleeping schedule

[lindauer72101]

Hello, I am a new mom to a month old daughter. I have a question for the breast feeding moms. What type of schedule, if any do you have your children on when it comes to sleeping and eating. My husband and I are trying to figure out a sleeping schedule especially a down for the night schedule for our daughter. I know it is a bit early to try to institute much of a schedule besides going by her cues. However, I am returning to work in a couple of months and I want to develop a routine that can easily be followed.

Thanks,
Angela

[jbowman]

Hi Angela,

Congratulations! How exciting that you have a new baby!

My DD is 8 months old and we have a schedule that has developed over time. But we did not have anything resembling a schedule until DD was about 5 months old (and DD didn't start sleeping through the night until she was about 7 months old). IMHO I think it is a mistake to try to establish a schedule at this early date. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but just feed the baby when she seems hungry (I know that's all of the time!), follow her cues for sleep, etc. In other words, go with the flow and let the baby establish the schedule! I think you will be far less frustrated this way than you would be if you tried to institute a schedule. Just let it develop over time and just do what you need to do now. Order will come, but it does take time!

Good luck!

[Rachels]

I agree! If you push your baby into a schedule for your own convenience rather than following her cues, you'll begin to miss the cues-- or she'll stop giving them to you. SHe won't stop being hungry or uncomfortable, though. The best thing you can do for her is to meet all her needs now as she has them. She'll settle into a schedule when she's a bit older. Hang in there! I know it's tough at times.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies...haracter39.gif

"When you know better, you do better."
Maya Angelou

http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbo...pphire_24m.gif Two years and counting!

[lampes]

We started a nighttime routine at about 2 months. We fiddled with it a few times, trying to find the best time for the baby and this is what works for us. We would go for a walk around 6:30 - 7:00 which usually made her tired. We give her a bath around 7:30 p.m. I read her a story and then BF and then try to get her to sleep. Sometimes we have good success and other times, it takes a while to get her to sleep (via rocking, walking, BFing). When I went back to work at 8 weeks, I would BF her before I left for work, around 6:00 a.m. Sometimes I would have to wake her up to do this and the LC told me that this was fine. Initially, she would take only 1 -2 oz in a bottle every 2-3 hours. I would BF immediately upon getting home around 4:30 p.m. and then I would BF her again prior to our walk. Now, at 4 1/2 months, I follow a loosely based every 3 hour BFing schedule. It may not be the most "AP" type of parenting, but it works for me and the baby.

[katenyc]

I would give it a few more weeks to try to see what your daughter presents you with. My daughter will be 8 weeks tomorrow and just when I think we have something established she throws me a curve. We had two whole weeks of two middle of the night feedings, a long morning nap, and wakefulness in the evening. Just yesterday, however, she woke up just once in nine night hours and napped for only 30 minutes at a time all day today. She went down much earlier than I had hoped (8:30), so I am going to try to wake her to feed her to get 6 hours myself.
If you have the luxury of waiting another month to try to figure her out a little better, I would just go with the flow.

Best of luck.

[HallsofVA]

Congratulations on the new baby. And on making it through the first month of breastfeeding! She'll get more incredible every day.

Regarding a schedule, I'd like to say we had one, but our son controlled our schedule in the early months. Particularly when he'd get into jigs and want to eat every hour. However, we did start early on trying to establish a nighttime routine that we would be able to stick with on a reasonable basis. During the day, we tried to keep his naps to reasonable times (under 2 hours typically) to distinguish night from day. Somewhere around 7:30pm we'd begin putting him down for the night. We'd change him, put him into his sleeper, turn off the lights, close the curtain, nurse, and then put him down. On bath nights, he'd get his bath before the rest of the stuff.

He started sleeping through the night at 2.5 months (just before I went back to work!). Before then, I'd generally nurse him again before I went to sleep (around 10:30 or 11), and generally get up 1 or 2 times a night to nurse as well, keeping everything as low key and dark as we could. Some things that seemed to help him sleep were: clean, comfortable diaper (we use Huggies Supreme), warm sleep attire (either cotton sleeper with a cotton sleepsack, or a long sleeve top with the fleece sleepsack), and a dark room (had to nix the nightlight). Also, it helped when I let him settle himself upon nightwaking, rather than rushing in at every sound.

Hope some of this helps. Enjoy!

[mudder17]

Congratulations on the new baby! I remember that age quite well! :)

Probably your daughter won't have anything resembling a schedule until at least 4 months. HOWEVER, there are a few things you can do to start giving her some consistency. First, if you're not sure when she typically goes down at night for a longer stretch (4 hours?), chart her sleep/feed/awake times for a few days and see when that time is. I will warn that the time may vary for most babies (it did for mine). Before every nap during the day, when you notice her sleepy signs do something simple like feeding her, then dimming the lights, swaddling her (we LOVED the Miracle Blanket (www.miracleblanket.com), as did many of the mothers in my support group), and rocking her to help her sleep.

For her "bedtime", do a similar routine, but maybe add a bath in your routine (if you like baths--DD only gets a bath every other day). But throw something in your routine that makes it slightly different from her daytime naps. When she wakes in the middle of the night to feed, keep the room dim, feed her on one side, change her if she needs it, reswaddle her, and rock her or soothe her (maybe feed her again on the same side if you don't think she got enough of the hindmilk the first time, or on the other side if you feel "empty"), and rock her or soothe her back to sleep. Try to minimize interactions during this time. We did this with DD (but without the routines because it didn't even occur to us) and by 2 months, her longer stretches were all at night.

While it may be ideal to let them completely control all the timing of eating and sleeping, my LC did say that if you know you're going to be going to work fairly soon, it's okay to wake them every morning at the same to time to be fed. It will be disruptive at first, but they will adjust to eating at the same time every morning. Eventually, they will probably wake up at that time on their own.

Babies differ and some babies just happen to be really good sleepers (mine is so-so). So I do have a friend who started "training" her daughter when she was a month old by doing the routines I've outlined above. Her daughter is almost 4 months old now and pretty much sleeping through the night with one feeding (I believe). Her daughter started with a 9 pm bedtime and then slowly moved herself to 8:30, then 8:00, and now I believe she goes to bed at 7. She's never had to let her daughter CIO, but her daughter goes to bed VERY EASILY. The one thing she emphasized, however, is that from the very beginning, she started watching for her daughter's sleep signs very carefully, and rarely let her get overtired. The other thing she did was dissociate feeding from sleeping by feeding her then changing and playing with her (however short the time was) and then putting her to sleep.

Obviously, most babies are NOT like hers (to varying degrees), but I do believe that her use of a routine from early on (she would swaddle her baby and hold her sideways next to her chest so that her baby could hear her heartbeat and jiggle her until she fell asleep) really helped.

That said, I did not do all that! However, I did sleep train (a la Marc Weissbluth) my baby (don't hate me everyone). My husband basically reached our wits end because she was pushing her bedtime later and later and she was getting fussier and fussier and having a harder and harder time sleeping during the day. But, my LC said don't start the CIO until at least 16 weeks of age or you're not going to get very consistent results, and you'll end up frustrating you and your baby. We started at 17 weeks of age. My baby now sleeps from around 5:45 (we're shooting for 5:30 eventually) until ~6:30 (+/- 15 min) with one feeding in between. And she's sooo much happier! One of the things I've learned during this time is that consistency is really important. But the other thing that's important is remaining flexible and a watching your baby to find out what she's trying to tell you (I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm bored).

Anyway, I encourage you to try developing some routines in terms of what you do to wind her down and get her to sleep (but don't expect her to fall asleep on her own). Also, I would probably also wake her at the same time every day. I wouldn't expect her to fall asleep on her own, but if she is soothed into a sleepy state and you put her down and she falls asleep, go for it! If she wakes or cries, pick her up and go ahead and soothe her. But otherwise, I don't see any harm in using routines and trying to give her some consistency. For eating, though, I would go ahead and feed her on demand. I think especially at this age, you want her to be able to eat as much as she wants.

Anyway, good luck!


Eileen

Mother of Beautiful Kaya
born 22 February 2004

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http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbo...equartz_3m.gif Breastfed 3 months and counting

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[strike71]

A couple more questions...on eof yo metnioned their baby feeeding only 10 min and wanting to snack hourly at times. What do you do about that? Is that just feeding on demand? Or shoudl I be focusing on 2-3 hour regular feedings.

[tarahsolazy]

To make sure your milk supply meets her needs in these early days, its best to feed her whenever it seems she's hungry, even if its every hour for a day or two. It is common for babies to have a growth spurt at around 6 weeks, and they often feed extremely frequently. But it doesn't last forever. I'd be leery of advice that recommends a feeding schedule that is dictated by the clock, it should be dictated by the baby at this age. I have always fed my DS whenever he seemed hungry, "on request" I like to think, and he has naturally gone to an every 3 hours or so routine on his own.

[HallsofVA]

My son started his 3-week growth spurt around 2 1/2 weeks, and would often want to nurse every hour or so, with an occasional 3-4 hour stretch at night. This continued until 5-6 weeks. At 5 weeks, my LC and ped both suggested that I start trying to "stretch" him to 1 1/2 - 2 hour increments, and we were able to get to 1 1/2 hour stretches over the next week. At 6 weeks, they suggested that I try stretching him to 2-3 hours. Luckily, sometime after that, we were able to go first every 2 hours, and then every 3 hours.

Take your cues from your baby, but if they're not in a growth spurt, and you just fed 'em, see if there's something else bothering them before you go to the breast. And if you can't find anything else, then nurse 'em and don't worry about whether it's too frequent or not.