Readers, you probably know by now that we’re a little (or maybe a lot) passionate about sleep training at the Baby Sleep Site™. But here’s something we’re equally passionate about: helping breastfeeding moms sleep train in a way that won’t jeopardize their commitment to breastfeeding.
Nicole’s written before about the relationship between baby sleep and breastfeeding. Today, though, we’re bringing you a fresh perspective. It comes from Miriam, who is highly qualified to speak on this subject since she’s an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant with experience as a labor and delivery nurse.
Today, Miriam will be answering a few common questions that many breastfeeding moms have about sleep training.
Will sleep training affect my milk supply?
Miriam: It can, but it definitely doesn’t have to. And The Baby Sleep Site will work to make sure that it doesn’t. Sleep training with The Baby Sleep Site™ is very personalized. They take into account you and your baby’s unique needs and develop a plan that will help you protect your breastfeeding relationship while achieving better sleep for you and your baby.
What is “sleeping through the night”, and how does it work with breastfeeding?
Miriam: Newborns (1-4 months) are sleeping through the night when they sleep five hours at a time. Most breastfeeding mothers can go one five hour stretch per 24 hours without breastfeeding and experience no ill effect on milk supply. Newborns should NOT be left to cry it out in order to achieve this five hour stretch, however. There are other techniques that can promote this five hour stretch in the middle of the night. Essential Keys To Your Newborn’s Sleep outlines newborn-friendly sleep coaching strategies for your newborn, including sample sleep-inducing routines. You may also want to consider a special newborn-focused Personalized Sleep Plan™ that is crafted to guide your baby to better sleep in a gentle, safe way.
Babies (5-9 months) sleep through the night when they achieve 6-8 hours of continuous nighttime sleep. Many breastfeeding mothers can go one 6-8 hour stretch per 24 hours (at 5-9 months) between breastfeedings without causing a drop in milk supply. A few mothers can go even longer.
Can I really go 6-8 hours straight without nursing? How can I know for sure that this won’t ruin my milk supply?
Miriam: You first have to determine the size of the milk storage inside your breasts. Some breasts look big on the outside but have small storage capacities on the inside. Others look small but can store a lot of milk, so it’s all about the amount of storage capacity inside the breast.
Think of your breasts like two measuring cups. Each woman has a different sized set of measuring cups. In fact, some women find that each breast is a different size! Most women find when they pump that one breast will supply more milk than the other. For instance, one breast may provide 3 ounces and the other breast may provide 4 ounces. You can pump* your breasts when they feel full to find out how much milk your breasts can store at one time. Usually, you will get the most milk just before the first nursing of the day.
If pumping isn’t the best solution for you, you can have your baby weighed before and after a feeding by a nurse or lactation consultant. Many hospitals, lactation consultants, and clinics will do this for free. Babies take different amounts of milk at different feedings; so for an estimate of how much your breasts store at one time, weigh the baby before and after they’ve had one of their larger meals. Of course, your breasts are more like a river than a lake, in that the milk is constantly being made, but some breasts do store more at one time than others, and this will affect how often your baby needs to nurse.
If you are able to store 6 or more ounces in your “measuring cups,” then you can probably go 6-8 hours without affecting your milk supply. Most babies who are exclusively breastfeeding drink 25-35 ounces of milk per day. Moms who routinely store 6 or more ounces of milk in their breasts at one time may be able to feed their babies 5-6 times per day (although this also depends on the appetite of the baby.)
Remember too that some babies have reflux or small stomach capacities and cannot tolerate large amounts of milk. These babies will need to eat more often even if the moms can store a great deal of milk at one time.
* Note: If you want to pump in order to find out approximately how much milk your breasts hold, be sure to use a good, hospital-grade pump, like this one. Also, remember that no pump is going to be as effective at emptying your breasts as your baby, so leave a “margin for error”. The amount you’re able to pump out with a high-quality pump will be at least slightly less than your baby can draw out of your breasts. Finally, don’t be overly concerned if you’re not able to pump out much milk. This exercise isn’t meant to frighten or frustrate you!
Help, Miriam — my “measuring cups” are small! What does that mean for my baby’s sleep?
Miriam: Moms who store less than 6 ounces at a time (those who have smaller “measuring cups”) can still make plenty of milk, because overall milk production is not dependent on the size of the “measuring cups.” Your body can make plenty of milk as long as there is a place for the milk to go. Moms with smaller cups need to feed their babies more frequently to keep room in the storage space for more milk. So a mom who has a storage space of 3 ounces can still exclusively breastfeed; however, she will need to feed her baby 9-12 times per day for the entire time of exclusive breastfeeding. This is much different than a mom who can store 8 ounces and may need to feed her baby just 5 times per day. What’s important is for your baby to get the number of ounces he needs to thrive. It doesn’t matter so much if he gets that amount in 5 feedings or 10 feedings.
I only store 3 ounces of milk at a time. This means that while I am breastfeeding my son, I need to continue offering night feedings. This helps him to be able to grow well. My sister, however, can store 11 ounces of milk at a time! She only needs to nurse 5-6 times per day to maintain a supply. I’m so glad I’m the older sister and had my baby first, because my expectations would have been way off, if I had expected to only need to nurse 5-6 times per day. Our different storage capacities mean that we have different daytime and nighttime feeding and sleep routines. The great thing is that we can both have healthy, breastfed babies.
So if my “measuring cups” are small, does that mean I’m going to spend the next year being chronically exhausted?!
Miriam: Not at all! Each of us is different. Our babies are unique individuals as well. It seems a little silly to expect all mother-baby pairs to need the same schedules and routines! The good news is that all moms can get better sleep with a little help.
Even a mom like me who only stores 3 ounces at a time can still get better sleep at night. Here is a sample feeding and sleep schedule for a mom with a small storage capacity of 3 ounces and a baby over 2 months:
Wake up time 8:00am /feeding
Feeding 10:00am/nap
Feeding 1:00pm /nap
Feeding 2:00pm
Feeding 4:00pm/nap
Feeding 6:00pm
Feeding 8:00pm
Feeding 10:00pm
Feeding 3:00amNote that newborns may need one (or even two) extra feedings between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. After 7-9 months, the amount of feedings may drop to 7-8 if baby does well on solid food, and it is cleared with the baby’s doctor, because the baby will be replacing some breast milk calories with calories from solid foods.
Remember, if you have concerns about your baby’s growth or the number of feedings he needs, contact his doctor or a lactation consultant who can evaluate your baby in person. Keep in mind, too, that a baby’s weight gain is the BEST indicator of adequate growth.
So there it is: breastfeeding and sleep training really CAN go together. You don’t have to forsake sleep in order to breastfeed well, but you also don’t have to forsake breastfeeding in order to get some sleep! You can breastfeed and teach your baby to sleep through the night. You can breastfeed and help your baby learn to nap soundly.
That’s right, readers — when it comes to breastfeeding and sleep, you can “have your cake and eat it, too”! 🙂
Polling all nursing moms: have you found a way to make sleep training and breastfeeding work together? Scroll down to share your wisdom with us, and to hear from other moms!
Additional Resources on Breastfeeding and Sleep:
Breast Milk Storage Capacity: What It Means and How To Measure It
4 Part Breastfeeding and Baby Sleep Series
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Emily DeJeu says
@ Alison — I would urge you not to “worry” about this at all. I personally pumped just a few times with all 3 of my kids, so I never had a very accurate guess as to how much milk I held at a time. I think Miriam’s recommendation is more for moms who are really struggling to get their babies to sleep well, and who want to know how they can safely stretch the time between feedings without jeopardizing their supply. Does that make sense?
As for how to pump — I think a good way to handle this would be to try and wake about 30 minutes before your baby (not always an easy thing to do, I know!) Then, pump yourself dry, and offer the milk to your baby in a bottle. Of course, if your baby won’t take a bottle, then it gets a bit more complicated…
Let us know what ends up working for you, Alison!
Emily DeJeu says
@ Nicole — woot! Sounds like things are going really well for you. So glad to hear it! Thanks for this update. 🙂
@ Briony — thanks for sharing the details of your experience, and for encouraging breastfeeding moms that breastfed babies really can sleep through the night!
@ Lois — you must be so, so tired. 🙁 We do have a number of resources on helping toddlers sleep through the night; you can access our free guide on toddler sleep here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/toddler-sleep-training-secrets-free-ebook/ However, I don’t know if there’s much info in that guide about how to manage breastfeeding a toddler on demand with sleep training.
You could start with the free guide, and if it doesn’t speak to your particular situation closely enough, you could consider setting up a consultation: https://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-toddler-sleep-consulting-services/ We’ve worked with parents who practice attachment parenting before, and we’ve found solutions and methods that allowed them to parent in the way they wanted while still maximizing sleep.
Hang in there, Lois! And keep us posted on your progress.
Emily DeJeu says
@ krystle — I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling. 🙁 I don’t have any real answers for you, other than to point out that this might be a sleep regression. Many young infants will sleep just fine up until about the 4 month mark. Then, their sleep patterns permanently change and become more like our adult sleep patterns. That’s the point when most parents find their babies are suddenly waking up frequently and are unable to go back to sleep without help.
You can read more about the regression here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/4-month-old-sleep-regression/ You can also access a copy of our free guide on how to help your baby sleep better at night here: https://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-sleep-through-night-free-ebook/ Those would be good starting places for you.
Keep us posted on how it goes, krystle!
Holly says
I followed what I read in the Baby Whisperer book and increased my day feedings by 5 min to increase calories during the day. By 3 mos our LO was sleeping 11-12 hrs with one night feeding and at 4 mos we dropped the dream feed because it was making him poop too much. We never did CIO and at 4mos our LO did 11-12hr nights exclusively breast fed. I’m still nursing him at 22mos.
Alison says
I have a question about measuring your capacity. I’m expecting my second. My first hated a bottle, and so my question is: If I pump my breasts dry first thing in the morning, what do I feed the baby? Is there a way to at least guess based on when or how much baby seems to want to eat?
It never occurred to me that I should worry about how much I can store when trying to get baby to sleep.
Lois says
I’m glad to see that you support breastfeeding, however I would be interested to know how to go about sleep-training my 14 month old (i.e. night wean him) – he still wakes up multiple times a night and the first couple of times my husband will put him back to sleep, but after that we’re too tired to do anything except bring him into our bed and let him nurse whenever he wants. I know we’ve caused this situation but I’m too tired to resolve it. Vicious cycle! I don’t want him to feel like he’s not able to breastfeed whenever he wants during the day (or even at night if he has a nightmare or something) but I do want him to sleep through the night most nights now! 14 months with almost no sleep is taking its toll.
Briony says
I exclusively breastfeed my 4 1/2 month old daughter. She has done 5-6 hours at night since around 5 weeks old and has gradually lengthened this time (she always cluster fed in the evening, sometimes for almost 5 hours when she was very tiny! but once she finished she slept until morning) For the last 3 weeks she has started her bedtime routine at 7pm and is usually asleep in her cot by 8pm. She usually sleeps through until 6am ish. I do feed her to sleep but on the few occasions she has woken crying shortly after placing her in her cot I have not taken her out of her cot and I have soothed her by sitting next to her cot.
When she is going through a growth spurt she does wake for a feed, but so far she has returned to sleeping through a night or so later.
I’m not being smug as I am prepared that things could change, but I do want to encourage mums who breastfeed that exclusively breastfed babies can sleep through the night!
krystle says
I can do good at the beg of the night if needed, but im so exhausted by the middle of the night. hubby is up at 430am for work i have work at 7am. and baby is in our room so im sure that doesnt help. she on only takes one nap during the day usually 3-4 hrs. that’s how she has been… she was sleeping all random times, and one day she started sleeping 4 hrs around1030am-230pm and that’s how its been since. she wakes up happy and full of it. occasional y she will have a 45 minute nap and then a 2 hour nap later in the afternoon but its always the same amount of sleep. she also gets rice cereal, an ounce 3 times a day always followed up with breast feeding, and breast feed only the rest of the times. she never wakes up crying except at night, and she never did until we put her in her bed. for 4 months, she would wake up at 230 am, eat, go back to sleep until 5am eat, back to sleep till 8am. granted she was sleeping on me, but she NEVER cried. now she wakes up screaming if its after 11pm or midnight. i have held her while she screamed for 45 minutes straight. not even crying, but like she is yelling. sometimes i wonder if she is scared? we keep it pretty dark in our room.
Nicole says
Take note: today is only day 4 of nap training and night 4 of sleep training. Prior, our almost 7-month baby boy was waking hourly and I fed him each time simply because I knew it would put him back to sleep and he was used to nursing often.
It’s going well so far! I nurse him around 7pm, let him go for a long time and then I break the latch when I see he is sleepy, the sucking has slowed down, and he is no longer actively swallowing. I rock him a little, stand up and do some “shh shh-ing” then lie him in crib.
He fusses and we go into training mode (CIO a minute with us outside bedroom door, then CIO a minute as I stand by his crib, with my hand on his belly and tracing his eyes/hair petting..etc! If crying continues, pick up and sooth until calm, them crib transfer and do it all over again as needed! Goal is to not have him cry for long periods, and sleep on his own…)
I then only nurse once in the middle of the night (11pm to 1pm I consider middle of the night) and once early AM (5,6am). He is now eating more during the day since he is getting less milk at night, woohoo!
Again, it’s only day four. We’ll see what’s in store for our future!
Currently: 3 naps in day, over an hour each (trying the “not awake for more than 2 hours” plan to avoid an over-tired babe. Bedtime 7pm, wakes 3-4 times if you include his 5 or 6 am nursing then back to sleep, awake for the day around 8:00am.
krystle says
not yet! my baby is a very happy smiley social 5 month old girl. she puts her self to sleep fine… she has never fought sleep. i have never had to “put” her to sleep. if its her daytime naptime, i lay her down she sucks her thumb and goes to sleep. took 3 nights to get her to sleep in her bassinet after 4 months of sleeping on mom. WITH THAT SAID….. she will go down for her night sleep in her bed no problem. after midnight, 3am on a good night, she is back in my bed. she wakes p SCREAMING kicking, pulling legs up ect. im going to look into the possibility of reflux. its the hours between midnight and 4-5am. 5am till whenever we get up (on non work days she cazn go to 9am) she sleeps GREAT next to me without comfort nursing. lost…. have already expending money on bogus sights for sleep trainging that was cruel, and did not work. i feel like we are right to the hump… but just cant quite get over it 🙁