Sleepy feeder

Breastfeeding my almost four week old newborn has been challenging, since she falls asleep almost the minute she latches on. I am forced to take long breaks (on average 10-15 minutes, often longer) in an attempt to wake her up. Techniques I've used to wake her up include undressing her, flicking her feet, and changing her diaper. As a result, each feeding takes approximately 1.5 hours to complete, with my baby falling asleep a number of times during that period. While this is annoying during the day, it's downright agonizing at night, when I need to be sleeping (and when I have an 18 month old who will be needing all of my energy the next day). Even when my baby goes for a five hour stretch at night, I wake up exhausted, since I am up attempting to feed her for at least an hour and a half. When I try to put her down at night after the first one or two times that she falls asleep (without completing the feeding) she inevitabely wakes up screaming 20 minutes later. This issue also prevents me from establishing a good routine with her, and from having her learn to fall asleep on her own (since she always falls asleep when she's nursing.) It's also a vicious cycle--since she ends up "snacking" a lot during the day, she is not hungry enough to stay up for a full feed. I would appreciate help dealing with this issue!

written 14 weeks ago by Sleepy10219 - 1 reply - viewed 32 times

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