Will this affect my supply?

[Sarah lo]

This may sound like a silly question but my LO will be 6 weeks old tomorrow and in the last couple of days she's started sleeping a lot longer at night. She used to go to sleep at about 8pm and wake up for feeds at about 1am, 3am and 5am. However recently she's started sleeping right through till about 3:30am, feeding for just 15 minutes or so (used to take about an hour!) then not waking up again till morning.
Its great because i'm getting loads more sleep but when she does wake me up, my boobs are completely engorged and sore, and when she's finished feeding, i sometimes have one boob that's still full.
So what i was wondering is does the fact that she's dropped a couple of feeds mean my supply will be reduced and should i therefore be waking her up earlier to feed her?

 

[austinsmom]

I always found that it's very hard to wake up a sleepy baby to nurse. My LO would wake up, latch, and not even take one gulp before passing out again.
My advice is, as long as she's gaining weight, and has enough wet diapers, let her sleep.
As far as engorement... you could always pump the extra feed and start a small freezer stash. That's what I did anyways.
Nursing is supply and demand... so if she skips out on a feed, eventually your supply will regulate to not produce as much. But, if she starts waking up more fequently for a feed, your body will produce more. I never noticed a dramatic change when my LO's schedule started changing. At 8 months she still nurses 8+ times a day even though she pretty much sleeps through the night.

 

[Palestrina]

I disagree about getting up in the middle of the night to pump. If you make that a routine of that then you'll always have to do that and let's face it, who wants to wake up every night eventhough LO is sleeping? Why would you want to signal your body to make more milk in the middle of the night when your baby doesn't even need it?

First of all, is baby gaining weight and having enough dirty diapers through the day? If the answer is yes then don't wake her up, she's past the point of needing to be woken up to feed, she knows what she's doing so let her sleep.

It won't take too long for this state of engorgement to pass. When I was at 6wks I would wake up in puddles of milk on my bed. Now my LO sleeps erratically, some nights waking up 3 or 4 times to feed, sometimes sleeping through without waking at all and I have no issues with engorgement. So relax and it will pass. What I did was started sleeping on towels and using pads until the engorgement phase passed.

Enjoy the sleep.