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Breastfeeding
Lusitano8
member
Newborn BFing questions about night time
Lusitano8
FTM and I'm trying to get prepared for what to expect for BFing. I plan to feed my newborn on demand for the first 3 months at night before trying any type of schedule.
So when I bring my baby home do I wake him up every 2-3 hours to feed or wait for him to wake up? Did you set an alarm or will he just cry and wake me up?
Also do I change his diaper each time we get up before feeding? or just check if it's wet by sticking in a finger?
Any other tips on the newborn phase and BFing?
Thanks in advance!
So when I bring my baby home do I wake him up every 2-3 hours to feed or wait for him to wake up? Did you set an alarm or will he just cry and wake me up?
Also do I change his diaper each time we get up before feeding? or just check if it's wet by sticking in a finger?
Any other tips on the newborn phase and BFing?
Thanks in advance!
Re: Newborn BFing questions about night time
Usually, when you leave the hospital they tell you to wake the baby up at certain intervals (typically 3-4 hours) to nurse. but once you are back at birth weight, which is generally at your 2 week doctor visit, if not earlier (my visit was at 10 days), they tell you you can let the baby sleep. It will wake up when it is hungry and let you know. If you're trying to pump for a freezer stash, once the baby is sleeping longer stretches, you can get up and pump while it is asleep. I did that until the 4 month mark.
We used the Pampers Swaddlers for the first several months at night (until LO was regularly sleeping 8+ hours, then we switched to Overnight diapers), and the Swaddlers have a stripe on them that changes colors if they are wet. For us, LO was wet basically 100% of the times she woke up at night, so we did change her before feeding her.
Schedules are hard - my kid didn't really accept even a loose schedule until about 6 months. Basically we know she'll want to eat every 2-3 hours during the day, and she can usually only be awake for about 3 hours between naps, but that's as scheduled as it gets. It's often better to deal with whatever the kid wants its schedule to be than it is to enforce one on them. We were lucky that DD has always been a great night sleeper (save for the standard regressions, which for her typically involved only one night waking, she has slept 10-12 hours straight through since about 3.5 months), but her daytime sleep was atrocious until about 6 months, and even still now she naps well at home but terribly at daycare. Daycare doesn't enforce a schedule until they're in the 1 year old room (the infants just sleep whenever they want), so even if we had one, it wouldn't be enforced 5 days out of the week. So we're just dealing with whatever she wants to do until she's in a room with a set schedule during the week.
DS also had constant diaper rash problems till he was over a year old, so we always erred on the side of caution when it came to diaper changes, but I understand that diaper rash is actually fairly uncommon with very young babies, so this may not always be necessary.
BFP 08/05/12. EDD 4/15/12 m/c 08/27/12
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I also used pampers swaddlers so I could see when her diaper needs changing. Now I change her after naps and after she eats.
At 17 weeks tomorrow, she still rarely goes more than 2 hours without eating. I wouldn't force a schedule- we have one that is based on what she normally does. She usually eats, plays for an hour, sometimes eats a little more then takes a nap. We repeat that routine until bedtime- which we set based on when she was going down for a longer stretch.
When she wakes, I feed her one breast, then my husband takes her downstairs to change her nappy, then second breast and back down. I have a chicco next2me side sleeping cot so I don't even get out of bed.
This works for us as she won't take the second breast without the nappy change as she's too sleepy, and the upright jiggling up and downstairs burps her well without having to sit there and wait. We feel like it shares the responsibility well between us. With one breast she would sleep for barely over an hour. With two she would sleep for 3 hours, then 4, and now at 12 weeks on the dot she's started sleeping 7 hours!
Those first weeks are HARD, and you will feel like you're not doing it right as baby will ALWAYS be hungry. That's normal, and it does get better, we promise!
When baby gets older you might be thinking, "Oh my gosh, he's been asleep for six hours! Should I wake him up and feed him!?!" And that's entirely up to you. Those who push for sleep training would say to wake baby up, while those (me included) who focus more on baby's cues say let baby sleep when baby's sleepy, and feed baby on baby's time table.