Posts Tagged ‘Breastfeeding’

Welcome to part 4, the final part, of my Baby Sleep and Breastfeeding Series! If you are just joining us, you might want to start at part 1, where I discuss reasons why breastfeeding moms sometimes struggle with sleep. Today, I’ll go over options for breastfeeding moms when it comes to “sleep training coaching” or as I actually prefer to say “helping your baby learn to fall asleep unassisted” (who really wants to think of “training” your baby?).

How breastfeeding is different than formula-feeding

There are a few things that breastfeeding families should keep in mind when helping their babies learn to sleep unassisted, but in general, I do NOT change my recommendations THAT much from formula-feeding families and here’s why:

• Babies become dependent on bottles and pacifiers just as much as breastfeeding mom. DO NOT wean to try to fix sleep problems. They might not go away.
• Breastfeeding moms need sleep too.

The few things you need to keep in mind about breastfeeding are:

• Breastfeeding is about more than just food. If you are reducing the “touch time” at night because you are currently nursing very frequently at night and wish to change that, make sure you compensate during the day with more breastfeeding and touch time. Babies thrive most on a lot of touch time and by taking away some of that at night, you want to reassure your baby even more during the day.
• You will likely need to feed your baby more often at night and for longer (age-wise) than formula-feeding moms, because breast milk digests faster than formula. This does depend on the baby, too, though. I have seen parents with breastfeeding babies sleeping all night at 8 weeks and other formula-feeding moms still feeding twice at night at 7 months.
• For most, the rewarding feeling and bond are worth the sometimes extra effort. Breastfeeding is not for everyone, but many moms (including me) feel the extra feedings or nursing sessions are worth it.

Sleep Training Options for Breastfeeding Families

To be quite blunt, I don’t know why a line is drawn between breastfeeding and formula-feeding moms when it comes to sleep coaching options. The same options I give to formula-feeding moms I give breastfeeding moms. I *was* a breastfeeding mom and I’ve been there. The guilt you get from reading some of the articles out there is over-whelming. Just because you are breastfeeding does not mean you have to endure endless sleep deprivation and be a human pacifier once it’s longer than is comfortable.

Co-sleeping is a common solution for breastfeeding mothers due to the convenience and for awhile it was a MUST in our house. I was indeed a pacifier and that was not a problem…for awhile. My son simply would NOT take anything else, but looking back, even if he had, I would have just been up 10 times replacing a (real) pacifier, anyway. I get many parents with that problem to this site, too.

No cry sleep coaching methods are the first place to start when you are attempting to help your baby learn to sleep. It is the place I urge all families to start, regardless of where the baby gets his food. Until you know how your baby will react to changes, you really don’t know what is going to work in the long run. Once you see progress or lack of progress, you can modify your plan. The first step is MAKING A PLAN.

What about Cry It Out?

There is a prominent website that has an article saying “Sleep Training is NOT for Breast Feeding Mothers”. My biggest beef with this is the fact that some moms will eventually get this out of that statement:

If you can’t really hack the sleep deprivation, then maybe you shouldn’t breast feed (anymore).

Countless women will wean simply to try to “fix” sleep problems and honestly, that makes me sad. For some families, sleep deprivation will drive you to the unthinkable and when you have certain segments of society giving you an extreme view that you either have to withstand 2-3 years of sleep deprivation or scar your child for life, it becomes an impossible situation. Please just know there is A LOT in between sleep deprivation and don’t-go-in-until-dawn-hard-core-sleep-training-you-will-sleep-or-else. It is not cut and dry and you CAN find a solution for your family.

The first mistake people make is they call any form of helping your baby to learn to self-sooth “sleep training”. I recently had a family whose baby was waking often for a pacifier and I recommended not to use the pacifier anymore and you know what? The mom told me that she thinks her and her husband were more dependent on it than the baby, because their baby started sleeping just fine without it in a few days without much fuss! Sometimes you just have to try to make a change. Success like that, of course, highly depends on the baby’s temperament and how adaptable she is.

Does cry it out cause long-term damage? It is my opinion that it does not. What causes long-term damage is when parents routinely and systematically neglect their child. Relationships are complex and if your baby’s needs are not met day and night, that will surely cause damage. But, when needs turn into wants that affect the entire family’s sleep, it is my opinion that a little crying for a few nights does not cause any lasting harm, breastfeeding or not. I think Kia’s comment on another one of my articles sums it up nicely that we all need to find our own path and to take “studies” on cry it out with a grain of salt. Just be responsible and always remember that you know your own child and situation best.

Share your sleep training while breastfeeding story

Since some babies won’t sleep through the night without a feeding until some time after 9 months or longer, some parents swear by something called a “dream feed”, where you feed your baby while he or she is still asleep, before you go off to bed. Some parents breastfeed and others can give a bottle without even picking up the baby. The theory is that you will get a longer stretch of sleep, yourself. The question is, will this work and should you do it?

For some people, a dream feed will be a Godsend. This is how it works: Baby goes to sleep around 7 p.m., you dream feed (feed the baby when he is asleep) around 10 p.m. before you go to bed, and baby might sleep until 4 or 6 a.m. or later, giving you a glorious 6 to 8 hours of sleep straight. Go to bed early and have your partner/spouse give the dream feed and you can get even more sleep! When it works, a dream feed is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, they don’t always work.

As I explained how we sleep at 4 months old, the first part of the night is the deepest sleep of the night for all babies and children over 4 months (approximately). Therefore, it might be very difficult to rouse your baby enough to feed any old time you want to. Some babies will awaken just enough to eat and stay asleep, but others might not wake up enough and others will wake up too much and be somewhat cranky that you woke them up (especially if they aren’t hungry!). Another way sometimes a dream feed doesn’t work is that even if you can successfully feed your baby, even when she didn’t ask for a feeding, is that she might also wake up at 2 a.m. (or whenever) anyway. Some babies also tend to wake up more frequently after waking up the first time of the night.

I generally don’t recommend dream feeds as a solution. Of course, I personally am not against dream feeding, philosophically (some people believe it goes against the idea of demand-feeding and is not respecting the baby to force a meal on him), and I don’t think it hurts to try it (though it might take a week or two to get back to where you were if things go crazy), but, in general, I think they can be problematic. Dream feeds can make a night-waking habit that otherwise might not be there and it is difficult to know just when to stop dream feeding and your baby is fully capable of sleeping all night without that feed. After all, some babies start sleeping all the way through the night as early as 3 or 4 months. Given how hard it was to get my son to sleep, I generally would not risk waking him up just for my sake. I did try it exactly one time, he was too sleepy to eat, and I felt guilty for even trying, so I didn’t try it again. LOL

Of course, I know all too well how difficult it is to wake up to feed a baby once or twice a night for months on-end, so I certainly know why people do it. Even waking just once when you reach the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, is downright brutal. That, to me, is just part of having a new baby and something I just had to live with (even beyond 9 months for my boys). Their tummies are small and as I always say, there are many adults that can’t go 11-12 hours without a feeding, so I am not sure why we expect our babies to. Instead, I typically recommend, night-weaning down to just 1 feeding around 6 months old and attempt a full night-weaning by 9 months old, if baby hasn’t done it on their own by then.

Have you dream fed? Did it work for you? If so, share your tips

I breastfed my first son for 13 months and am still breastfeeding my second (he’s now 5 1/2 months as I’m writing this). As I’ve said before, we also used a crying sleep training method with my first and a no-cry sleep training method for my second (so far). They are just two very different temperaments.

Although I used a crying sleep training method for my first son, I was pretty turned off by an article I read that promoted crying it out to wean breastfeeding. Part of my philosophy is that we all must find a method of sleep training that works for our families.

Another part of my philosophy is that you need to be fair to your child. For example, I never recommend cry-it-out to families who have been co-sleeping for a lengthy amount of time. I believe you need to start slower. With my son, I made sure he could fall asleep unassisted before I expected him to do it alone. Some babies have more trouble self-soothing than others. Once my son knew how to fall asleep, it was more of a matter for us to set limits that he had to do it daily, without our “help” only because our “help” turned into a 3 hour marathon event.

Back to that article. She mentions going on a vacation, separating from baby abruptly, for a week or more and another method is to sabotage your breast milk so it doesn’t taste good. Her final method is to let your baby cry and increase the time before you nurse until you work your way up to letting your baby “cry itself out”. First of all, my baby is not an “it”.

Second of all, there is another method (and there are others!) that worked well for me and that is the “Don’t offer, don’t refuse” method. I had plenty of time, so I could take my time and we took 2 months to wean. Even going slow, my son showed signs of weaning too fast, so I can’t imagine if I had used any of the methods outlined in the article I read!

Granted, had my son taken “too long” (whatever that means to each of us) to wean, I do understand that sometimes you do have to set limits and yes, they might cry, but just like sleep training, there is a range of things you can try before you jump to cry-it-out. I was completely turned off that the article seemed to only list extreme methods. At least give a variety of methods like I have on this site about sleep training with my sleep training series, ya know?

I know this post isn’t really about sleep, per se, but when I read the article and it mentioned “cry it out” for weaning, I felt compelled to write. Cry it out gets such a bad rap, sometimes, and this doesn’t help. What I want to emphasize is that you let your baby cry-it-out to fix sleep problems, but only after your baby is fed, dry, comfortable, and any other needs are attended to. A baby’s cry is protesting the changes you are making when you are breaking sleep associations and other habits. But, breastfeeding is about more than just a mother’s milk as it’s a source of comfort and a connection between mom and baby, too. Even when you sleep train, you can (and should) breastfeed or bottle feed your baby. The idea is just not to do it until baby is all the way asleep. Easier said than done, unfortunately.

I hope this article lets you get to know me and my philosophy better. You may also want to read more about my definition of cry it out and at what age I recommend it. For more weaning techniques, please visit Kelly Mom. You can also visit BabbleSoft for breastfeeding support.

What do you think about cry-it-out to wean?

Today’s sleep tip is brought to you by Parent Hacks, a useful site with all kinds of parent tips.

When you are breastfeeding, it’s easy to forget which breast is next in the middle of the night. Most of us know about the safety pin idea, but that could hurt in the middle of the night. Here are some other things you can do to remind yourself which breast is next:

• Lie baby down facing the direction she last nursed, so next feeding you can switch sides.
• Put a hair band around the wrist of the side you last nursed.
• If you wear a ring besides a wedding band, switch the ring to the side you last nursed.

I usually just feel which side is fuller, but sometimes that is hard to tell.

Do you have any middle-of-the-night breastfeeding tips?

Is it a bad idea to rock your baby? It depends. It is never a bad idea to cuddle your baby and give him/her lots of love and affection! It’s only when rocking your baby becomes something you can’t keep up with is it a problem. Let’s take a step back and let me explain what a sleep association is.

What is your sleep association? How do you fall asleep?

What kind of routine do you do before you go to sleep each night? Do you watch TV? Talk to your partner? Do you read a book? Do you sleep on a pillow? These are the types of things you associate with going to sleep each night. What would happen if your power was out and you couldn’t watch the news or read your book? Would you have trouble falling asleep? Perhaps. Or, perhaps not. Would you have trouble going to sleep without your pillow? That might be more likely to give you trouble. Some sleep associations are stronger than others. What if you went to sleep with your pillow and covers and 2 hours later woke up and they were gone? Would you be able to go back to sleep without looking for the pillow? Now let’s look at how this concept might affect your baby/child.

What is your child’s sleep association? How does your child fall asleep?

Let’s look at how many babies fall asleep. They might fall asleep while their mother or father is rocking them in a rocking chair, bundled up and very cozy in their parent’s arms. Or, they may fall asleep sucking on a bottle of breastmilk/formula. Or, perhaps they doze off with the simple use of a pacifier. Minus the teeth issue with breastmilk/formula later on, there isn’t a problem with any of these methods of falling asleep until it is a problem.

From the time my son was an itty bitty baby, he loved to be walked, rocked and nursed to sleep. He also loved napping in the moving swing. At first this was not a problem. He would fall asleep quickly and we’d put him down. But, several weeks later, I found myself rocking him for 2-3 hours each night to put him to bed. He’d fall asleep easily, but then when I put him down he’d wake up! Ah! And, then I’d need to repeat it every 1-2 hours when he woke up. It was exhausting and I was at the end of my rope! So, we took to co-sleeping, which got us both more sleep, yet I was so nervous I’d roll on top of him or my husband or I would cover him with blankets. I’m not the best sleeper, so every time he’d want to nurse, I’d have trouble going back to sleep (and I never got good and switching sides without actually switching sides either). Co-sleeping works for many and I’m not knocking it. It just didn’t work for us and it is important for every family to learn what works for them best. After learning about sleep associations I was able to transfer him back to his crib at 4 months old and we both got a LOT more sleep then!

The problem with sleep associations lies in the fact that your baby needs YOU to recreate the environment in which they fell asleep. YOU become their “pillow” and when they wake up through sleep transitions (that we ALL have!) and their pillow is gone, they don’t know how to go back to sleep. So, the key is to allow them to go to sleep the same way they will wake up periodically throughout the night. If they wake up briefly and find you gone or the movement has stopped (as with my son) or their pacifier is gone or…they will wake up more and have to call out to you so you can “help” them once again. The beauty of this is that after they get to be about 3-4 months, they really don’t “need” you as much as you might think and they can actually learn to fall asleep on their own, if they haven’t learned already up to this point.

One final thought. I want to reiterate that rocking your baby, using a pacifier, nursing or drinking a bottle before bed, etc. are not bad things to do. If you don’t mind rocking your baby for 10 minutes and (s)he falls asleep, you transfer him/her to his/her bed and (s)he sleeps all night, then there is no problem. It’s only when you can’t keep up with the (insert sleep association) that it becomes a problem. Keep in mind that your sleep fragmentation that makes you exhausted is no better for your baby than it is for you. If you are cranky, don’t you think (s)he will be too over time? I would have LOVED to rock my son and boy did I try (unintentionally — just in my nature). We slipped back into bad habits more times than I wanted to count, but it just became a hitch for him EVERY time. In the end, I was able to continue to nurse him to sleep once he learned the necessary skills to go BACK to sleep throughout the rest of the night. With opportunity and practice we can all learn a new way to sleep, even without a pillow!

If you’re looking for ways to get your baby or toddler into a healthy sleeping routine during the day, I encourage you to explore Mastering Naps and Schedules, a comprehensive guide to napping routines, nap transitions, and all the other important “how-tos” of good baby sleep. With over 40 sample sleep schedules and planning worksheets, Mastering Naps and Schedules is a hands-on tool ideal for any parenting style. For those persistent nighttime struggles, check out Help Your Child Sleep, a Step-by-Step Guide. Using the same unique approach and practical tools for success, this e-book helps you and your baby sleep through the night. Or, join our Members Area packed with premium content and resources: e-Books, assessments, detailed case studies, peer support, and more. It actually costs less to join than buying products separately! For those looking for a more customized solution for your unique situation with support along the way, please consider one-on-one baby and toddler sleep consultations.

What kind of sleep associations do you have? What about your child?