Night feeds

[Coffee]

Hi all,
my little fella is 3 weeks old and excl. breast fed. During the day he is the easiest baby! Wants feeding every 3 hours and happily has awake / sleep times between and pretty much hardly ever cries. Nights are a different ballpark though! The clock hits midnight and the furious crying starts! He will only stop if he is at my breast. He isn't really feeding tho- just has a few sucks then falls asleep. As soon as I try to move him off my breast he wakes up and screams until I put him back! The lack of sleep is so hard! Is this just normal or please has anyone got any tips for getting a slightly better routine at night?! I feel like I must be doing something wrong?!
Thanks in advance!

 

[Celesse]

It sounds perfectly normal behaviour. Some babies want to be close to mummy all night long. The comfort sucking is great for your supply.

Have you considered co-sleeping?
Abigail co-sleeps with me and when I keep her in bed all night she helps herself to boobie without waking up, and with me only kinda waking up. If I put her in her cot she is awake 2 or 3 times, but sleeps though if allowed to co-sleep with self service boobie. There are safe co-sleeping guidelines in the Natural Parenting forum iirc.

If you aren't comfortable co-sleeping you could try letting him suck for longer and get into a deeper sleep. Or try compressions and keep him awake for longer so he gets a decent meal in, though is suspect he just wants to comfort suck.

 

[MelanieAnn]

Babies rarely want to be put down alone at night. There's an extremely funny explanation here: https://www.thefoodoflove.org/why-babies-cry.htm

There's also another very funny explanation by the same author about typical nights with normal small babies here: https://www.thefoodoflove.org/breastfeed-in-your-sleep.htm

But if you think that the crying is something more, then obviously it needs considering. Is the problem partly to do with not wanting to be horizontal? That can be an issue for babies with reflux. Some of them also do non-nutritive sucking for hours.

 

[celine]

Dont have any advice but wanted to say congrats on your lil man Coffee xxx

 

[samface182]

have you considered co-sleeping?

my little man was exactly like that for the first two weeks. it was stressful for both me and him, so i decided to start co-sleeping. now he sleeps beside me, i hear him wake in the middle of the night, pop him on the boob and i fall back asleep! life is SO much easier since we started and we both get alot more sleep.

 

[venusrockstar]

Co-sleeping is a life saver