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How To Get Breastfeeding Mom More Sleep
When they are first born, infants feed every 2 to 5 hours depending upon how big the baby is, and how much the mother’s milk has come in. Most babies eat between 6 and 10 times per day (24 hours). Unfortunately, it isn’t always very consistent. It is fairly rare for a baby to eat every three hours on the nose.
As you can imagine, this schedule can be brutal on new moms. Fortunately, once Mom and baby are comfortable breastfeeding, meaning that baby latches on and eats for a full feeding without any real trouble and without needing any real encouragement, you can start doing bottle feedings.
Many pediatricians recommend doing at least one bottle feeding per day once the infant has established good breast feeding habits. Make the most of this feeding by taking one of baby’s usual feeding times that would give mom plenty of extra sleep.
For example, if an infant normally feeds around 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM and then again at around midnight, followed by another feeding between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM, consider doing a bottle feeding for that midnight feeding. That way, when Mom is done feeding baby in the evening, she can go to bed.
If she gets to sleep at 10:00 PM, she would normally only get 2 hours of sleep before having to breastfeed again. But, by having someone else (Dad, we’re looking at you) do the midnight feeding, she could sleep straight through until the 3:00 AM feeding. On a lucky day, maybe all the way until the 4:00 AM feeding.
Now, instead of 2 hours asleep, then awake from midnight to 1:00 AM, then two more hours of sleep (adds up to 4 interrupted hours), mom could sleep from 10:00 PM until 3:00 AM, all uninterrupted. That adds up to 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That plus a couple of hours in the morning and a nap or two here and there, and Mom can be way less sleep deprived than she would be otherwise.
The best way to make the bottle feeding work is for baby’s mother to pump breastmilk during the day and then store that breast milk in a baby bottle in the fridge for use during the night. Formula, of course, can be used as well, but check with your pediatrician first to make sure that switching back and forth between breastmilk and formula won’t be too much for baby.
If an infant will drink breast milk from a bottle with no issues, but won’t drink formula without a lot of assistance and encouragement, take that as a sign, that baby isn’t ready for formula yet.
Baby Formula Rules
Baby Formula Has Rules
A lot of parenting comes with rules that are really more “best practices” than anything else. But, when it comes to baby formula, there are some real rules that have to be followed.
First, baby formula bottles cannot be re-used no matter how little the baby drinks. Bacteria from the baby’s mouth gets into the formula and it THRIVES there. A bottle that has been in the baby’s mouth for even one second is done for withing an hour. That’s the other rule. 1 hour shelf life once a drink has been taken, so if it is taking a long time to feed Junior after one hour a new bottle has to be made.
Do Not Microwave Baby Bottles
Rule number 2 is just as important. Never, ever, ever microwave baby formula inside a baby bottle. One reason is that it can get too hot and even with shaking one part might be hot enough to burn the baby’s mouth. Even worse is that baby bottles are routinely made from plastic using a compound that has been shown to cause cancer in over 100 studies. However, the FDA chose not to regulate this process because 2 studies said it didn’t. Guess who paid for the two studies? Hello, Plastics Industry. Yet again, goverment cares more about dollars. So our kids get cancer, at least no one has to worry about getting their campaign contributions next year. Microwaving any foodstuffs in plastics is a bad idea, but especially the formula that your super-sensative baby will be drinking. Heat the bottle another way, or if you want to microwave, make sure you do it outside of the bottle and then pour it in after.
Sanatizing Bottles
We read, and our pediatrician confirmed, that there is no need to “sanitize” your bottles or nipples by boiling them or using some sort of specially purchased steaming contraption. Your dishwasher gets hot enough, plus the soap does what it is supposed to do. Our doc said that unless you can keep them sealed inside the steamer, they won’t stay sanitized anyway once they are exposed to the air. He says that way more parent introduce bacteria into their baby’s system by re-using an unfinished bottle of formula than ever will by not sanitizing a nipple.
Now, you don’t want your bottle nipples flying around the inside of your dishwasher, so what do you do?
First, get yourself one of these dishwasher baskets. Pop the rubber part of the nipple out of the plastic ring. The rubber part goes on the top part of the basket through the holes. If you pull them upward a little they should sort of “set” in the hole. Then, through the plastic rings in the bottom part. Don’t overload or they’ll block the water. I’m a little paranoid, so I give them a under the faucet rinse when I take them out.
Second, get one of these. Actually, get two of these. It will be about four days after you bring your baby home when you realize that you are washing bottles and nipples all the time (unless you are exclusively breastfeeding), and you really don’t have any place to put them to dry. Frankly, you really don’t need to bother putting them away considering how fast you go through them. This thing is your answer. This is what I give everyone for their baby shower. I always get the “Gee, thanks,” when they open it. A week after they bring home the baby, they’ll tell me it’s the best gift they got (besides the big stuff).
These two things will set you up for cleaning and storing your baby’s bottles. Take back all the sanatizers and other fancy stuff. Go ahead and get store credit. You’ll end up needing so much stuff that you’ll blow through it in no time.
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