Night Clusterfeed... what do I do today?

Knottie8adbc93f9d018d6e

Hi there,
My 11 day old baby has overall done quite well at night. The first few nights he would clusterfeed until midnight or so but then have 2 good solid 3 or 4 hour sleep stretches after that. We have a good routine where he is swaddled to sleep at night, white noise, dim lights, etc etc. He has gradually started to clusterfeed earlier so that he settles earlier. He has a great latch and eats pretty fast.. was back up to birth weight within a week. 

Anyways, 2 days ago he had a 36 hour period where he was ravenous and was breastfeeding for basically 3 hours straight multiple times in the day/ evening and was fussy. Even with this he was sleeping okay at night, just waking every 3 hours to eat, but would eat fast and go back to sleep. I figured it was his first little growth spurt, and while I was exhausted I was relieved yesterday when he seemed back to his normal self. He was a little more sleepy yesterday but still got in solid feedings every 2-3 hours all day. I did the normal routine last night, fed him thoroughly, changed him, swaddled him... and he was up every 90 minutes eating all night long. I kept assuming we’d get caught up and he’d give me at least one decent sleep stretch but no luck. Its been from 9pm-7am. It’s the worst night he’s had by far. So my question is, what do I do with him today? I assume he’ll be exhausted (I am and my nipples are too). I know that sleep begets sleep, but I don’t want to start a pattern of reversed sleep cycles. Do I try to keep him awake more? Or let him sleep more this morning and try and keep him awake more this afternoon? Or just let him do his thing? 

harpseal135

If a baby sleeps, let them sleep.......over tiredness is not good for baby and makes things worse.  Babies sleep patterns change a bit (mine did) and the best thing to do is not to try and keep them awake, and let them sleep as needed   

kbear28

Agree with the above. At 11 days let him give you the queues and go with his flow. Don't worry about routine just yet, especially after a crap night. My little guy was a term baby, breastfed with a good latch and it felt like no two days were alike or consistent for several weeks, but he figured it out, fixed his sleep/feeding cycles and finally we hit a routine. Hang in there!