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el_twirpo
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Bringing baby to bed
el_twirpo
member
so all of the resources online for maintaining milk supply suggest bringing baby to bed so they can nurse throughout the night, and i just can't figure out the logistics. are you nursing only in the side-lying position? and does the baby crawl himself to your breast? because it takes quite a bit of maneuvering for me to get DS lined up to my boob, and i can't imagine trying to do that in the dark while half asleep.
i'm only using cradle hold these days because he's getting too squirmy, and this is the only way i can pin his limbs down and get him calm enough to nurse. that takes quite a few pillow adjustments to nurse in that position in bed.
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Re: Bringing baby to bed
we cosleep after her first waking each night. she is usually on my side of the bed or between us, up high. i nurse on my side, which i greatly prefer to any other position. practice it some during the day and see how it goes, it takes a little maneuvering to get used to it, but now i love it. i rarely nurse sitting up with her if there is a bed nearby
for sleeping, i keep her up high and dh has his pillow to the far side of the bed with him. she's more where my head would usually be and i'm lower in the bed, with a small pillow down near her feet. even when i pull my separate blanket all the way up, it only comes up to her feet, so there is no risk of me covering it with her during the night.
there are some good articles online for how to safely bedshare if you're nervous about it. i sleep much better that way and do believe it's partly why i've never had issues with my milk.
Squirmy nursing baby syndrome starts around 4 months, so you're par for the course. He'll learn quick how to nurse and squirm at the same time!
That said, nursing while laying down is the only position mine ever stays even remotely still in. I had the hardest time laying down and nursing for months, but as she got bigger, it got easier, and I got better at it. Practice it some, and I bet you get the hang of it quickly. It's now one of my favorite ways to nurse. I usually start with her on the outside of the bed, nursing on that side. Then I hug her to my chest and roll over with her, so she is now in the middle of the bed nursing on that side.
My guess is that he'll wake up, which will wake you up, and then you can move him into position to nurse. When he's done, he'll drift back off and you can move you both back into sleeping position. Then repeat as needed whenever he wakes up.
I would side nurse and then in the middle of the night move him to the other side of me and move dh to the other side of the bed, so that ds was always between the 2 of us.
He would nurse great at night so I didn't have to worry about him squirming as much as I did during the day.
ah, i was just about to ask how you switch sides. i've had success nursing on the right side while lying down, but i haven't figured out how to position for the left side. always feels like i'm about to mash my boob right in his face.
Also, weekends are a GREAT time for upping your milk supply. Spend a weekend at home just hanging around the house. Spend as much time in bed with him as he'll allow, and keep the milk handy
. I usually wore a revealing tank top so she could see them and motion for them whenever she wanted. She'd nurse off an on all weekend and by Monday my supply would already be greatly improved. The more he nurses the more milk you should make. I find that the less we have going on, the more she ends up nursing because we're just not as busy and therefore she has more opportunity to ask for it.
Of course, this way of thinking has led to my 13 month old who's obsessed with my boobs. She demands to nurse about 357 times a day. The good side of this is we've had great nursing success. The bad side is, she often takes my boobs out around other people
Ha! Yah, she spent a lot of time with boobs smashed in her face in the beginning. As his head gets bigger, this will be less of a problem for y'all, and also you'll get quicker at finding the "right" position for you both. I'd say for the first 3-4 months, I couldn't side nurse at all. The logistics just didn't work out. At that time, I'd just have a big pillow handy next to the bed to do a lot of propping for the cradle position. Pillows beat the heck outta having to wake up and support the baby yourself in the middle of the night! However, once you master side nursing, you'll love it.
i like how you wear a sexy top for your kiddo and entice her with your ta tas. :-P
i really need to have a nurse-a-thon at home one weekend. we're in birthday season right now, so no open weekends yet. also, i gotta make sure my ILs don't try to do a last-minute drop by for whatever weekend we do this. don't want to be flashing them!
i do this too!
i've kinda always propped his head up on my arm and tucked my arm around him so its kinda a one-armed cradle hold and helps prop him up a little to get the positioning better. it was definitely awkward at first but i just kept trying it. its been my nighttime saving grace.
I brought DD to bed within her first two weeks. It was the only way she would sleep for any length of time.
DH flipped his sh!t about sleeping with her so DH slept in the guestroom.
I would go to sleep with the boob out (side lying position) and I would wake, or kinda wake, to her suckling. When I got up to pee in the middle of the night, I would switch sides. As she grew, I would just flip over her in the middle of the night. She never failed to latch or find the boob in the middle of the night, even early on.
We still cosleep and DH still sleeps in the guestroom. It works for us and keeps our rendevous interesting as we have to meet up in other places. lol
GL
Yes, we nurse in side lying position and he crawls to my breast. It's really adorable when he scoots his way over. It was kind of hard to get going at first but after a couple of nights we got a rhythm down. He is in between me and DH with his head just below the pillow, so about at breast level. I have my arm under the pillow (I sleep this way anyway) and usually the other arm around his feet. I sleep with a light robe on for covers on top and only pull the real covers up to the bottom of his feet. My hips and back get really sore so I usually switch sides with DH sometime in the middle of the night. I want him between us because we only have a queen sized bed.
Be prepared to have a long term addition to your bed. We're having a really tough time getting him to go back to his crib. Since we only have a queen, we never intended to have him sleeping with us full time. I do miss him when he's not there, but I also miss snuggling with DH when he is there. I absolutely love snuggling with DS and when he wakes me up to nurse it is one of the sweetest things ever. But, my body aches like never before. That probably could be avoided if I switched sides more often though. ETA - or we had a bigger bed!
How is he doing with bottles at daycare? Hope it has gotten better! Enjoy your little snugglebug, holding him close to nurse in the bed is an amazing feeling.
that's amazing that she was able to find your boob at night. i don't know how DS's mobile skills are. i've only seen him shimmy to turn his body, but not really move forward or backward.
brooke, we have a queen size bed too, so it's a tight squeeze. i'm not planning to keep him in bed full time - just want to try it for nights he seems more needy and to get my supply back up. i don't think i'm fully accustomed to pumping this much yet, so i need something else to help.
he's doing great with bottles now. he finally came around after 2.5 weeks of barely eating at daycare. i still can't be in his line of sight though or he'll get distracted.
You've gotten lots of helpful suggestions. Just wanted to add one more thing....I found that it helped me tremendously to put a pillow kind of wedged against my back so that I had something to lean on. If I'm just laying on my side, my natural inclination is to roll too far forward which would smash him and not expose enough nipple. In order for both of us to be comfortable I needed to be truly on my side, not 60% rolled to my stomach, so the pillow up against my back gave me something to lean back on a little, which helped get a great latch. It also helped me relax instead of trying to hold my body in a funky position.
I grew to love the side-lying nurse!
All of this just cracked me up! And they really do have a "way" about always finding the boob. I swear, DD could latch on in a drive by boobing. It's like vacuum mouth. SLURP and I'm stuck.
I'm so glad that he came around on the bottle!! That's wonderful! I know what you mean on the other, if I'm around he wants to eat from me, forget the bottle.
You'll get the bed nursing down, it just takes practice. I definitely have noticed an increase in supply since I became open 24 hours.
SLB - HA HA HA at "drive by boobing". Hilarious!