Breastfeeding and Sleep
My baby is officially 4 months old. At new mommy and baby play groups the most frequent topics of conversation are usually around feeding and sleeping. This post pertains to both! I've been the proud momma at the play group to brag about how my little one falls asleep all by herself with just five minutes of effort and our nighttime sleep routine is also quite predictable... lesson one million of parenting: predictable routines last just a few days, maybe a few weeks if you are lucky. These past few nights have been sleepless for both my husband and myself. The question begs: is it right to allow her to cry herself back to sleep? Should I allow her to breast feed this frequently over night, how do I know if it is a comfort feed or a nutritive feed? What are our options? Of course these questions come up for everybody and the answers are endless and they aren't black and white. I like to fall back on the "Momma knows best" concept but below is some information I found helpful.
For those first few months of life baby requires frequent feeds over night while he or she develops a circadian rhythm and enough stores to get through longer periods. As they approach four to six months of life there are a few different theories which speak to how we can teach ourselves and the baby how to stay snoozing.
Firstly creating bedtime routine helps babies to learn and understand that it is now time for bed. In our house this includes bath time then extra long feeding time where we are both lying down and two special songs that we only use before sleep. Then I put my baby down in her crib and turn on the music box. Sometimes this works like a charm, other times she cries and cries. There is the attachment parenting theory which promotes co sleeping and responsiveness to crying. When, after diligently practicing our routine, Lila starts to cry something inside of me says that she needs a little for affection for the night so usually my husband takes her back out and rocks and rocks until she gets that calm look where she is just staring off, not distracted by anything. Eventually she falls asleep but about 3-4 hours later she is back awake, this is when we pull her into bed with us.
Sometimes I just feel too tired to stay awake with her. As you may very well understand, my daughters cry shakes me to the bone. Especially when I am not focused or task oriented during the overnight it's hard for me to just ignore her cry. Eileen Henry recommends trying to distinguish between struggle and suffering in the child’s cries. Since struggle is inherent in all development, we can be confident that our child can develop a healthy relationship with struggle by allowing them to have their struggles. I've learned to buck it up and instead of immediately giving Lilith the breast I remain awake and pat her on the tummy, saying "I know you are accustomed to cuddling up with me and having some warm milk when you wake up at night but you will feel more rested if you can learn to sleep through the night so I'm going to stay with you until you fall back asleep, we can do this together". What a reward it is that she does sometimes just go back to sleep!
But, occasionally she doesn't. In the book The Nursing Mother's Companion by Kathleen Huggins, she points out that not only do breastfed babies sleep in shorter bouts than do bottle-fed babies, nursing babies also sleep less overall. This might be because nursing babies can actually feed in a light sleep state, obtaining needed rest. Additionally, formula fed babies or weaned babies are less likely to have the desire or need to be close to their parents because they've developed alternative coping and mechanisms to soothe themselves. This rational points to the emphasis of promoting breast feeding or, if this isn't possible, pumping. We'll get to that later. This book is a great resource and has many more ideas that I won't go into here.
Good luck getting your own routines and practices down! Remember to embrace these sleepless nights and try to slow down a little bit. If you feel frustration or tension, take time to relax. This will help your baby more than anything.
Cesarean Section and Birth Trauma
This is an article that I discovered because of my own journey in preparing for birth. It has some great tips on what to expect postpartum so you can think about how you might react if you had to completely change your vision of birth. My baby is in a footling breech position (sitting like a little frog in its womb) so our plan is to have a cesarean birth. We tried everything to turn this baby around. Acupuncture and moxibustion, chiropractic maneuvers, yoga, praying... nothing seemed to convince the little one that vaginal birth was worth the flip and no provider we have met is comfortable with supporting us in a vaginal delivery. My partner and I have felt every emotion in the grief process as we've come to accept that a cesarean birth is our destiny. Luckily we know ahead of time and can begin the emotional exploration now. In the United States one out of three women gives birth by cesarean and more than 90% of women with a prior cesarean have a routine repeat operation. Many of these are unplanned. These numbers are alarming and preventable! Having a doula has shown in clinical studies to reduce the number of unplanned cesarean sections and so can informing yourself!
