Baby's night feeds - birth to 1 year
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Because you will be responding to all of your baby's demands for food you may find that feeding him takes up quite a lot of your time - feeding can take at least 30 minutes each time. This will mean you are feeding for more than three hours out of every 24.
With night feeding on top of all the other things that you have to do to take care of your baby you may find yourself becoming extremely tired and tense. It won't be so much the number of hours sleep that you lose, but more the way in which your sleep patterns are broken up over long periods of time.
It is very important that you get adequate rest both day and night, so you need your partner to share the work with you. There should be equality of child-nurturing between you, and as you are doing most of the feeding it is only fair that he takes over some of the other jobs for the baby.
In fact, even if you've decided to breast-feed, the night feeds shouldn't be your entire responsibility. If your baby sleeps in another room, ask your partner to bring him to you as soon as he cries, and get him to take your baby back and change the nappy after he's been fed. He could take a turn at feeding with expressed milk.
Tips for night feeds
- Feed your baby in bed so that you are warm and comfortable, but always put him back in his cot afterwards.
- If you're very tired, and you are breast-feeding, express enough milk for the night feed and put it into a sterile bottle, and arrange for your partner to give the baby the bottle.
- Keep some nappy-changing equipment in your bedroom so you can feed and change your baby with the minimum of disturbance.
- It's easy to get cold sitting up in bed so have a sweater or dressing gown nearby.
- Have a drink by your bedside in case you get thirsty while feeding.
- If your baby's in another room and you're concerned about not hearing his cries, invest in a baby alarm.
Reducing night feeds
Until your baby weighs about 5kg (11lb) he won't be able to sleep for more than five hours at a time without waking with hunger. However, once this weight is reached you can try stretching the time between feeds with the aim of giving yourself about six hours of undisturbed sleep, and of painlessly getting your baby to drop the early morning feed.
Your baby will have his own routine, but as a general rule, it's sensible to try to juggle your baby's last feed so that it's given at around the time that you go to bed.
But do be flexible; it may be that your baby doesn't want to drop the early morning feed, and no matter how much you try to alter the routine he will still wake up and want feeding. If so you'll just have to try to make the night feeds as straightforward as possible and look forward to the time when he drops them.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 30.06.2010
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