Falling Asleep on the Job - BFing at night!

[ciaobella]

I am hoping that some more experienced Mommies can give me some advice / ideas / or reassurance!

My DS is almost 5 weeks old and wakes several times during the night to nurse. This in itself is no big deal as I expect a baby his age to need to nurse every couple of hours. The problem is that I fall asleep while he is nursing! Then he falls asleep at the breast and I wake up several hours later with him on my chest. This creates 3 problems in my mind.

1 - I am not awake to encourage him to stay awake to eat so he 'snacks' and then is up sooner because he did not fill his tummy.

2 - If he is really not hungry and just looking to be cuddled / rocked back to sleep I don't want him to use my nipple as a pacifier to get him back to sleep for fear of creating bad habits. The reason I this is a concern is that during the day when he nurses if he loses my nipple he gets really fussy trying to find it again, but this never happens at night. So, I am wondering how hungry he really is - or if he is in snacking mode.

3 - I really want DS to learn to sleep on his own in his bassinette and eventually his crib. I worry that if he sleeps on me he will not want to sleep on his own - plus I am concerned about the increased risk of SIDS.

Any advice / recommendations / stories to share would be greatly appreciated! I feel that these boards are such a great resource!

TIA!

Anne

[hez]

Will it make you feel better to learn that my DS started a lot like yours (we often fell asleep together during nighttime feedings) and he now falls asleep fairly well in his crib at night? He still wakes once to eat (and finishes the night in bed with me), but I haven't worked very hard on phasing out that feeding because it's extra cuddle time for us that I wouldn't get during the day because I'm back at work.

I don't want to mislead you. We had a bit of work to do on getting him into his crib. It took a couple weeks of a consistent routine/bedtime and a lot of patience (thank goodness for my DH!) to get DS to sleep in the crib for the first 5 or 6 hours at night. And we didn't really start this until about 6 or 8 weeks ago. We coslept 'til then once DS grew out of the bassinet.

I would say to follow your mommy instincts. I generally could figure out if DS was really hungry (i.e. it'd been a few hours since he last ate) vs. if he just wanted to be soothed (i.e. it'd only been 15 minutes since he last ate!). More than 50% of the soothings were done by my DH-- that was something he could do on his own since we were BF'ing. I think that's why DH does much better with the bedtime routine than I do now!

Feeding and sleeping were our two biggest concerns at that point (and I daresay that's the same for most parents of healthy babies). Good luck sorting through what's going to work best for your family!

[lines]

I think one of the most important things I was told by a friend was that babies give similar cues when they are hungry and when they are tired (i.e. rooting, etc.) I think its tricky but important to try to differentiate. For instance, a couple of times my dd would wake up and start crying and when I would nurse her, she only nursed for a couple of minutes and went back to sleep. This tells me that she just needed to be soothed not really hungry. Its hard in the middle of the night, but maybe when she wakes up, you can try soothing her in other ways first and if all else fails then feed her?

My dd was also so hard to keep awake during her feedings! I tried rubbing her feet, changing her diaper (with a wet wipe), everything, but it was definitely difficult. I tried to pop her off if she started to doze so that she wouldn't associate the breast with falling asleep, and that sometimes helps to wake them up a little (instead of letting them be soothed to sleep by nursing) so that they can continue eating. Also, I found that putting her down was often more effective in getting her to wake up to continue eating than many other means. I think holding my dd put her to sleep, no matter what else I was doing (tickling her feet, etc.) to try to keep her awake. But when I put her down, she wasn't being soothed to sleep anymore!

I found the first month or so to be the hardest, but it definitely does get better so don't give up. Keep trying your best to keep her awake through the feedings (I bet that will help you stay awake too!)

[psophia17]

My DS was a C-section, so DH was the man in charge of both bringing him to me in the middle of the night when he was hungry and of putting him back - which turned out to be a good routine since we were both aware of when DS was in the bed nursing. We would both wake up pretty often, though, positive that Nathan was still in bed with us. I liked the tip of trying to keep the baby awake to keep yourself awake, which I didn't do but which I'm sure would have helped.

What worked for me was to keep a light on that was just a little brighter than was comfortable to my eyes and to have a routine when it was that time again - besides the light and husband, I'd always sit up in bed but lean my head against the wall, not a pillow (too comfy), I'd look at the clock and keep repeating what the time would be 20 minutes from then, and keep checking, and I'd quietly sing little songs including that time and how I wasn't going to fall asleep until Nathan was done. Also, if you give yourself a time limit, that will give both you and the baby a goal to get to - you so you can get back to bed and the baby will learn to nurse quickly (that was our Ped's advice, given when Nathan would gladly have sucked for an hour and a half, and it was GREAT to only have to be up 1/2 an hour - it took a month to get down to 20 minutes, and then he slept through!)

At 5 weeks I wouldn't worry too much about him needing to be fed vs. needing to be comforted, one and the other are about the same this young. I'd also develop a routine for putting DS back in the bassinette/crib starting now - at 8 mos, I'm still doing the same thing with Nathan as I did at 1 mos. He's used to it, and knows it means it's sleepytime.

Good Luck!

-Petra
DS - Nathan 12/29/03