My Baby Is Sleeping Longer At Night. Will This Hurt My Supply? When babies reach their birth weight and can sleep for longer stretches at night, the time between nighttime feedings gradually lengthens. Letting your baby sleep for longer periods during the night won't hurt your breastfeeding efforts.
Letting your baby sleep for longer periods (usually at around 3 months of age) isn't going to hurt your breastfeeding efforts. Your body readjusts your milk supply based on when you nurse and how much your baby needs.
Will my milk supply decrease if I choose to night wean? The short answer is, yes it probably will. However, for most breastfeeding mothers, the dip in supply will not be drastic enough to cause any adverse effects on the breastfeeding relationship.
Ultimately, if your baby has reached its birth weight and you're pumping enough milk during the day, it's okay to sleep eight hours without pumping at night. Keep in mind there is an adjustment period for your body as it begins to acclimate to the decrease in overnight milk removal.
If your breasts become engorged as the baby sleeps, pump or hand express milk to get relief and take notice of the time. The next night, try to stretch the time 15 minutes longer and think of the night time milk as an added bonus.
The majority of exclusively breastfeeding or exclusively breastmilk fed babies under six months old eat every 3ish hours with maybe one or two longer stretches overnight. They can't safely go 8-12 hours without eating.
Women Who Have To Delay Pumping or Breast-Feeding Risk Painful Engorgement : Shots - Health News Pumping breast milk may seem optional, but women who don't pump or breast-feed on a regular schedule risk engorgement, a painful condition that can lead to infection and other medical complications.
Whenever you drop a pumping session, there is a risk that your milk supply can be affected. Anything can happen – your supply can stay the same, it can go down, or it can even go up. This risk is something you have to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to continue pumping at night.
Your milk supply may decrease if you don't pump at night.
Whether you choose to be an exclusive pumper or combination feeder, you will have to wake in the middle of the night while your baby is young for night feedings or a night pump session.
Between the age of 2 to 3 months old, healthy babies are often able to sleep for six hours without feeding. Research suggests that about half of babies are able to sleep at least six hours without a nighttime feed by 3 months of age.
These sessions don't need to be evenly spaced, but you should be nursing/pumping at least once during the night in the first few months or anytime you notice a decrease in supply. Avoid going longer than 5-6 hours without pumping during the first few months.
Newborns who sleep for longer stretches should be awakened to feed. Wake your baby every 3–4 hours to eat until he or she shows good weight gain, which usually happens within the first couple of weeks. After that, it's OK to let your baby sleep for longer periods of time at night.
At that point, you can gently wean from the middle of the night pump session. However, every mother is different and every breast has a different storage capacity. A few moms might be able to go 10 to 12 hours between their longest stretch, while others can only go 3 to 4 hours.
Despite views to the contrary, breasts are never truly empty. Milk is actually produced nonstop—before, during, and after feedings—so there's no need to wait between feedings for your breasts to refill.
It is more important for you to get in eight or more pumps in 24 hours than for you to evenly space them every two to three hours. That said, ideally you shouldn't go longer than five to six hours overnight without pumping until six weeks postpartum or later.
You're not getting let down. If your breasts feel like they're full but you're not able to get the milk flowing out when you pump, it could be that you're not achieving let down. The let down reflex releases your milk from the milk ducts. This only occurs when you're either breastfeeding or pumping.
Missing one or two regularly scheduled pump sessions can leave you feeling uncomfortable and engorged, but it won't affect your supply. Just try to pump as soon as you can after your skipped sesh. But keep in mind that skipping more sessions over time will decrease your milk production.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that moms feed their babies only breastmilk for the first six months. Then they say to keep breastfeeding for at least one year. After that, it depends on how long the mom and child want to keep it up. Keep in mind that breastfeeding even for a few weeks has benefits.
On average, most exclusively breastfed babies will feed about every 2 to 4 hours. Some babies may feed as often as every hour at times, often called cluster feeding. Or may have a longer sleep interval of 4 to 5 hours.
Don't worry, baby will ask to be fed as usual as soon as his stomach feels empty again. Your baby may be constipated and appear less hungry than usual, however once this passes everything will go back to normal. Or it may just be that your baby was enjoying the sleep and took longer to wake up.
Sleep experts agree that adults need 7-9 hours of sleep per night to function properly. Newborns, however, sleep about 16-20 hours in a 24-hour cycle, but this sleep is disrupted with waking every 20 minutes to few hours - making it virtually impossible for a new mother to get those 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep.