Baby just turned 4 weeks today and I'm pretty much exclusively breastfeeding. So I have a question abut baby sleeping at night. Am I still supposed to wake baby up every 2-3 hours to eat or let them sleep and wake up on their own to eat?
That depends on how baby's weight gain is going. If she's gaining enough weight, you should be able to let her sleep longer. I would ask the pediatrician just to be sure.
If your baby is healthy and gaining weight appropriately then you don't have to wake them up at night to feed. My daughter is 4 weeks old and I let her wake me up. She will sleep for 5-6 hours at night but nurses every 1-2 hours during the day.
I read in the "Baby wise" book that you can let baby sleep the number of hours for the number of weeks old. So if baby is 4 weeks then the max number of hours to let them sleep at one time is 4 hours. And then this continues to increase each week. This worked great for us. I always felt weird waking her when I could tell she would keep sleeping but now she is 10 weeks old and goes down for the night between 8-9 and sleeps till 7-8 the next morning.
I also have a terrible time of getting engorged so I wake up and pump in the middle of the night. I pump right before going to bed then I can manage to go 4 hours before getting uncomfortable so I set an alarm to wake up pump again and then usually 4 more hours later baby is waking up so I get back on her schedule. It's exhausting and I would love to sleep longer but it's so painful and I also have chronic mastitis so I have to stay on top of it.
Re: 4 week baby
I also have a terrible time of getting engorged so I wake up and pump in the middle of the night. I pump right before going to bed then I can manage to go 4 hours before getting uncomfortable so I set an alarm to wake up pump again and then usually 4 more hours later baby is waking up so I get back on her schedule. It's exhausting and I would love to sleep longer but it's so painful and I also have chronic mastitis so I have to stay on top of it.