Exclusively nursing

I guess it depends on how many time your baby wakes up and for how long? Mine wakes up around 1-2 and 5-6, for about an hour. I go to bed at 21-22 and my partner keeps him downstairs to get him to sleep while he watches TV. Then around 7 my partner wakes up and he takes him downstairs (he's usually either awake or in loud active sleep), he keeps him until 9 since he works from home. The extra sleep means I can deal with the nights no problem, although sometimes the active sleep keeps me up 🙈

What you need to try and do (if you and baby are okay with this) is try and stretch the time between feeds slowly overtime. So try and not pick up/feed baby in the night unless they’re crying. Mine never cried anyway but fusses/suckles in the night so what I did was I waited to see how long she can go for without getting too worked up and most of the time she went back to sleep for another hour and I kept doing that until she started sleeping 5-6 hours before wanting a feed. There’s been a few nights where she went 7-8 hours without feeding (wish every night is like that 🥲) but usually she only does 5-6. Not sure how often you’re waking up to feed baby and how old they are?

On a good night: He eats and falls asleep on my lap at about 20:00 and then dad does a nappy change, we get into bed and feed at about 22:00 and he usually only falls asleep by 23:00 and lately he wakes up at 3am or 4am and his dad changes his nappy and I feed him and we contact sleep (he never wants to be put down again). Then he’s up again at 6am and we do another feed then change because he’s usually pooped and nice for my partner to change him before he leaves for work at 7am/8am. There’s usually a difference on his bath days, he baths at 21:00 and we’re in bed by 22:00. Also depends on how he feels, there was a night last week where he was up from 8pm until 4am cluster feeding. I still very much follow his lead, so when he wakes up and stirs or starts crying I usually just nurse him. I think he’s too little for routine at the moment. Baby is six weeks.

We’re exclusively breastfeeding and i definitely found the first 6/7 weeks of nights quite difficult, however in the last 10 days or so the nights have started to get abit easier with him sleeping longer stretches. I think with breastfeeding there is no magical formula or routine you can follow and it is a case of surrendering to your babies needs and sacrificing on your own sleep for the time being. I personally don’t think it’s right to try and force your baby to go longer between feeds if they’re waking and rooting, especially during such an important growth phase. I try and see the day as a full 24hrs and not so much night and day, so I try and get as much sleep during the day as and where I can, meaning the nights don’t feel as difficult if I’ve managed to catch up on an hour here and there (I know not the case if you have other children)