Baby’s Sleep And Breastfeeding – The Inevitable Connection

A friend of mine who had a baby recently believed in breastfeeding her baby to sleep every night, night after night.

She established a soothing comfortable evening routine, where she would sit in her favorite rocking chair with her baby at her breast, and put her to sleep.

She would lay her down carefully in her crib [Baby Crib] and walk away, only to return after a few hours when her baby stirred awake.

Although my friend did enjoy her evening routine with her baby, she soon grew to tired walking up and down through the night, from her room to her baby’s, to feed her and soothe her back to sleep, only to return again after a few hours. When she asked her doctor, here is what he told her:

  • There is absolutely no harm in breastfeeding your baby, but you must make sure that your baby does not associate breastfeeding with getting to sleep. This will mean that she needs your breast to go back to sleep, and since breast milk is much easier to digest than formula milk, she will need to be fed often during the night. To avoid this, you must make breastfeeding as a part of your daily night time routine, but you must do it early, so that your baby learns to not associate breastfeeding with getting to sleep. This way, even if she wakes during the night, she will simply get back to sleep without needing you, her mother, to get up and breastfeed her, not once, but several times during the night.
  • Learn to separate breastfeeding from the act of falling asleep, for your baby. She will then fall asleep without needing your breast.
  • However, please remember that you do not have to be guilty for breastfeeding your baby to sleep. Breastfeeding your baby to sleep is a normal developmental part of the first year of your baby’s life, and nursing has obviously been designed by our Creator as one of the perfect tools that can be used to soothe and calm a baby and make her go back to sleep.

If you feel that you need to break your baby out of the already formed habit of waking up every few hours during the night for nursing, then it is up to you to establish a routine in which she learns to separate sleep from breastfeeding. Start today and you will succeed after a few short weeks.

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