Making nights easier?!

[Daffodil]

Hi

We are OK in the daytime....

but at night I'm finding things difficult to cope with.

Meadow is up every 1.5 hours for feeds / changes and it seems like every night is SO LONG...

Come morning things are better again but how can I help myself make nights easier?

Thanks in advance and heres hoping you can help ! lol

Dawn
xxx

 

[CoreysMummy]

If you are BF then thats how things will be going for the 1st few weeks...!

I can hardly rmbr back to the 1st few weeks, It was a blur of no sleep, nappys and crying. Stick with it, things do get easyer... try not to stimulate her in the night, only change her if she NEEDS it - my LO goes 7pm till about half 7am in the same nappy mainly because he dosent wake up, so nor do I. Shes still so young, and will need to demand feed for mabey up to the 1st 6 weeks - if you are BF theres some very knowledgeable people on here that may be able to lend a hand, I only BF for a week due to LO having GORD so I coudnt.

Sleep when baby sleeps - even when thats in the day time

 

[Sherlock]

Diito what HertsMummy said. Esp if breastfeeding, night time in the early weeks are a struggle. One of those things you just need to go with.

Our way round it as our LO was a monster feeder (and still is) is that I would go crash out around 8pm and OH would then cuddle him and keep him content till he needed the next nappy change and feed. Usually around 11pm. I'd wake to feed him then OH would have him back and go in to the spare room and catch a few Zzzzzz's while I zonked out totally in our bed. So he dealt with LO if he stirred. Then when time for next feed came round, usually between 1-2am he would change him and hand over to me and the go to bed for the night. I'd then do the rest of the night snoozing when LO slept and being up for as long as was needed inbetween. Wasn't perfect but it meant I got a few hours kip at least.

I used to keep LO on my boob more or less all night then tbh. Mostly as he could take up to 3 hours to feed, would fall asleep in my arms and then wake to feed all over again.

Joys of parenthood in the first few weeks. The sleepless nights really can be hard work, but it does pass. Keep telling yourself this Sleep when LO sleeps, day and night. Things do improve as time goes on. Honest. If you and your OH are sharing the load, ie he does nappy changing etc and you do feeding then it should be easier. Also you go to bed as soon as you can in the evening and leave LO with OH so you can get some kip. He can take care of her till his bedtime then while you get some sleep in.

 

[BabyMagic]

There is some good advice here already, but yes it WILL get better. Keep napping during the day, just stay in bed for a full day watching films and sleeping.

You are doing brilliantly x

 

[Daffodil]

Thanks

I'm not breastfeeding as such ....see my other thread re breastfeeding problem

Good suggestions though, especially getting sleep in evening whilst OH looks after her then taking over later on.

Dawn

 

[Sherlock]

If you are still trying and wanting to breastfeed then doing so through the night is worthwhile. The old, the more LO feeds from you the more likely your supply will increase thing.

FWIW Galen spent about 18 hours out of 24 on my boob in the early weeks. I kid you not. It really was a case of very little sleep and just keeping feeding. I think on the nights where OH took over some of it I got aout 5 hours total, but for the most part I was averaging about 2 hours a night.

Have you thought about co-sleeping for a while? Might also help to stimulate your supply as LO will be near you and your milk supply will hopefully respond. I hear Galen cry and my boobs would start leaking

 

[Tick-Tock]

I was given advice by my midwife quite early on to try to get the majority of Evie's calories in her during the day and she'll sleep longer at night... so I let her feed whenever she wants during the day (sometimes every 1-1.5 hours) and she normally sleeps 3-4 hours at a stretch overnight... I have had a problem recently where she was hardly feeding during the day and she woke up pretty frequently during the night (she was relying on her dummy - in preference to the boob- and I was trying to establish some sort of 3 hour feeding routine) I have now dropped the dummy and let her feed whenever she wants again and her night time sleeps are better she has been going for 4 hours (and she even slept for 6 hours straight last night!!!! although I don't expect that to be repeated tonight).