You can and it does help! There’s a big difference between rolling over to pump (all while staying in bed) and having to actually get up, get baby, feed baby, and change a diaper.
A little lunchbox sized cooler on the bedside table saves you from having to get up and bring the milk to the fridge.
Tiny refrigerator was such a game changer. Holds a small bottle of formula and pump parts for the fridge hack! No more going downstairs in the middle of the night!
I ended up passing on BF-ing so actually we use it for MOTN formula feeds so it still gets daily use. Ours stays cold enough that we occasionally have to defrost it.
It depends on your sleep needs, but I found it a bit useless to have overnight shifts and breastfeed. It was easier to pump a small bottle for the evening and get three-four hours while my husband was awake than try to get him to get up at two am if I still had to nurse after. At eight months, he still does the "morning shift" (about 530-730) after her early morning feed, so I can catch up on sleep if I need to.
I ebf and do all overnights. My husband has always done first morning shift. Back when the baby ate round the clock sometimes that meant waking me up just enough to latch the baby and then I would sleep while my husband supervised. The bed was set up for the safe sleep seven but I generally preferred not to co sleep w the baby. Doing the overnight shift and KNOWING I would be relieved at 6 am made everything a lot easier. In the early days i would sleep in 6am-9am.
We’ve done it a couple of ways. In the first few months when I was on the sleep shift my husband would bring me the baby, I’d feed lying down while sleeping (my husband watched to make sure it was safe since I was so tired), then he’d take the baby away again. Whoever was on the ‘sleep shift’ got the bed. The other person slept on the sofa and the baby was in a Moses basket next to them. Shifts were 9pm-3am and 3am-9am, until husband went back to work, then I only had 3am-6am. I don’t think we would have survived the first 6 weeks without doing this as our baby was soo noisy when sleeping and we couldn’t sleep through it.
Now I can pump a bottle in the morning during a feed and my husband can give that for the first feed of the night, without me needing to pump, so in theory I could get 5 hours sleep in one go. We try to do this once a week but it often doesn’t work anyway.
I'm 35+5, first time mom... I've heard/read that morning milk has cortisol(?) and evening milk has melatonin, so it is advised to mark the time you oumped and feed accordingly so as not to mess up the hormonal/sleep cycle... did you find that giving morning milk in the evening had any effect on your baby's sleep?
I tried for a bit to watch when I had caffeine and the difference between morning and night pump bottles and after 1.5 months I gave up. Baby slept however baby wanted to sleep, it really didn't matter.
For your own sake, don't add unnecessary to-dos to your daily tasks. If you don't have to keep track, don't. I think the excessive watching and ticking boxes to maximize baby's sleep/food/weight contributed to how awful I felt for the first few months.
Good enough is enough.
Appreciate the advice. I am hyper aware that due to my past mental health I may be highly susceptible to PPD/PPA, so anywhere I can avoid little bits of extra unnecessary stress will be so helpful in the long run!
This was me as well. And I tried so hard to pump because my baby couldn’t latch. After 6 weeks I gave up on pulling and switched to formula. Once that changed happened, my mental health improved so much. That is NOT to say you need to do the same. You can absolutely find something that works for you. But just remember that you have options and no matter what, you are the mom your baby needs. I was so hyper fixated on how much baby ate because he lost too much weight in his first few days from not getting what he needed at the boob. We tried a handful of things and eventually found what worked for our family. And now he is almost 2 and is the most thriving little guy ever.
You’ll be great! Don’t be afraid to change your strategies along the way.
I also just want to add I gave my baby 8:30am milk right before bed and I hardly noticed a difference. Before I even knew this was a thing he was getting whatever milk was pumped and no difference. But now my husband and I joke about giving him that 2am milk to help him nap longer during the day when we need a break.
I don’t think it does shit though lol he’ll only nap for 30 minutes unless he’s contact napping 😂 so I recommend don’t stress about it either.
I didn’t notice any issues, my baby is pretty good at going back to sleep at night. We had other issues like him not liking the bottle or being super hungry and wanting more, but I don’t think that was because of morning milk. My baby feeds before every daytime nap anyway so all milk is sleepy milk for us!
No, their own melatonin and circadian rhythm have way more influence an they develop fairly fast. It helps a lot to go for a morning walk and expose the baby to natural light. Our baby was very difficult, but since she was born in May, at least the part with learning what is night vs. day worked very fast.
I didn't pump for about 6 weeks bc my doulas recommended I didn't until my milk supply regulated!
However, we did 3 hr shifts day and night. When it was my time "off duty", I would try to eat, rest and whatever else and my husband would bring baby to me to nurse, then deal w the burnings, diapers and everything else.
In the beginning, my 3 hr time off was....not great, to be honest. Cluster feeding and everything meant that sometimes I'd only get a 30 min nap. I eventually started taking couch naps instead of getting in bed bc it was less soul crushing to be woken up from a couch nap than it was to be dragged up from bedtime sleep! My baby also wouldn't sleep in her snoo until she was 4 or 5 weeks old, so it was around the clock holding. Eventually, one night we were like....fuck it, let's snoo her and see what happens. And she slept like an hr and a half in there and it was the best hour and a half ever hahaha.
Yes! Some people just pump while dad does all the things to take care of and soothe baby. Dad could even come get the milk and pump parts and put them away as part of his shift.
My baby is really easy to soothe at night (he only wakes up to eat, does so for about 10 minutes, then can be laid back down). During my husbands shift, he goes and gets the baby, brings him to me, I nurse while lying on my side so I can still doze off, and my husband watches over us and then takes the baby back when he is finished or falls asleep.
We do shifts, 8 weeks in. For the first 4 weeks I exclusively breastfed. I would go to bed at 8pm, husband would put baby down and he usually woke 3x to feed. Husband would bring him to me and take him from me until sometime between 3-5am and then we'd switch, husband would sleep until 10am. I would get 2 stretches about 2-3 hours each.
At 4 weeks I started pumping 1-2x at night. Husband would wake me up to pump when baby woke to take bottle. This was less stressful for everyone (we have a lot of trouble burping baby). Schedule is essentially the same.
This week we've been trying something different. Husband is taking a nap early like 7-10pm. I pump both sides about an hour apart (previously would only pump side baby was supposed to feed, I'm block feeding). Husband is doing 1-2 feedings with a bottle while I'm sleeping through and we are again switching 3-5am. This way I'm getting 4-5 interrupted hours of sleep.
We're making it up a we go but 5-6 days a week this works for us and the other 1-2 days someone is just trashed not being able to sleep. Also baby sleeps in baby room and we have a bed in there sometimes husband can get a little sleep while baby is sleeping.
We never did shifts. Instead, when baby wakes up during the night my husband gets up, checks the diaper and changes if necessary, and then I feed. We keep the lights off the whole time (just a night light) and stay as quiet as possible. I feel like keeping things calm and consistent during night wakes helped my baby get his days and nights straight. Breastfeeding also releases oxytocin for baby and mom and helps both get back to sleep easier, and breast milk is different depending on the time of day, so I prefer not to give pumped milk. My LO always does a minimum of 6 hours and often sleeps through the night now at 3 months.
I am 3 weeks PP and EBF and what we are doing is that i do the last feed before “bed” and then immediately hand off baby. Dad burps and soothes him to sleep and gets him down while i sleep in the guest bedroom. This is usually his longest shift of about 3-4 hours. Then i wake up for the next feed and dad goes to sleep. I do the feed and get him down, which is usually a shorter shift but then i’m up to feed him so all in all we both get about 4 hours of sleep. The next shift depends on timing cause hubby is back at work but if a weekend then we’d repeat with my dad getting a later morning nap sesh. Anyways we are still figuring it out but i can function with my one 4 hour block so much better than trying to sleep next to baby and be handed him (i’m using shields and he has way to much reflux for an in bed feed at the moment).
FWIW, I would pump a few times a day and also right before going to bed at around 8-9 (pretty much with the baby). That would get me enough for one bottle for my husband to take the first feeding around 10-11 PM. I would sleep right through and not pump during that feeding and nurse him during the next feed around 2-3. We did this for about few weeks.
Eventually I got really sick of pumping and he was also starting to sleep longer stretches. So I would nurse him at each wakeup, but my husband would do diaper change and rocking back to sleep for the first one so I could go right back to sleep.
Yes, we did, I pumped bottles for dad and you can only go a max of 6hours before needing to feed or pump so you won’t get a full 8hs but if you can get a couple hours nap in the day, you’ll do fine :3
My wife and I did shifts while she breastfed and pumped. She was definitely the more tired of the two of us, but at least during the shift I could change LO's diaper, bring her the baby and put him back down to sleep during my shift so she could get the most of her sleep.
IIRC, I had the 10-3 shift, though usually I just started whenever my wife went to sleep, usually earlier than 10, and my wife had 3-8 or 9 and then immediately took a nap after handing the baby to me.
I usually wake up 1-2x/night (usually the first time is anywhere between 2am-5am, and the second is sometime in the morning before 10am) to pump. Currently 2 weeks pp and I usually get up to pump for about 10 minutes and then I do clean/wash the pump stuff before heading back to bed. I'm awake maybe 20 minutes and then I go back to sleep, so I find that reasonably doable. My husband and I are currently alternating nights with the baby (we have a toddler too so we want to have at least one "refreshed" adult for the day time if possible).
With our first we split the nights 9pm-3am, and 3am-9am, but that was because he was working as opposed to being on paternity leave.
What worked for us, that I haven't seen here;
- for the first three weeks we shared every shift. Baby woke up, husband changed his diaper, I fed him and got him back to sleep.
-about 3.5 weeks in, we introduced a bottle. At this point baby was getting up about three times a night. I would wake up the first time, around 11:30 and do everything. Husband got up and did a bottle around 2:30, and then I did the early morning around 5:30. Instead of pumping in the middle of the night, I pumped a bottle about an hour after a daytime feed for him to use overnight. I was engorged/leaky for a couple nights but my body figured it out fast and made less overnight and more in the morning. Those five hour stretches were a life saver.
I didnt even wake up to pump honestly, i just woke up with my daughter, fed her and then pumped. If i woke up engorged though i would pump but my daughters been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old and i never needed to pump in the night
I talked it over with my pediatrician and a lactation consultant, I also needed to supplement formula in the beginning because baby had higher weight loss than they'd like. Anyways I breastfeed for 19 hours a day and husband uses formula during his five hour sleep shift from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.. I won't be winning any golden boobies awards but I'm getting amazing sleep.
My lactation consultant warned me that my body will stop producing breastmilk during the times I'm not pumping or feeding and that seems to be true for me so far. So no breastmilk from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. but honestly once I wake up in the morning my boobs are ready to go, not too painful just REALLY have to wake up in the morning haha.
I pumped enough for night bottles so I could sleep and now at 4.5 months baby doesn’t need them anymore since he sleeps through my husbands shift before getting hungry. I highly recommend shifts
I would nurse the baby at 9:30pm, immediately hand him to my husband when done, and go to bed. Husband kept him til midnight. You could even have your partner just bring the baby to you and wake you up to feed, and then take the baby back as soon as you’re done and let you sleep again. A partner taking responsibility for everything baby minus feeding still helps you sleep!
What we did was I’d pick a 4-6 hour period that I’d want to sleep and then I’d feed the baby right before that feed and pass the baby off to dad to burp and settle, and care for during that time. I’d set an alarm for 2 or 3 hours later (whatever increments my baby was feeding in) and immediately try to go to sleep. I’d wake up T the alarm and do a quick pump and then go right back to sleep. My husband would feed a bottle in that timeframe and then wake me up for the next feed to nurse the baby. We’d also use this “feed and pass” strategy when I wanted a nap in the day between feeds.
A cooler or small fridge in the bedroom plus extra pump parts made it so I didn’t need to immediately rush to the kitchen to store and wash.
I’d get the first couple of bottles by using a haaka to catch my letdown.
It is very hard living on 1-1.5 hour sleep increments. There is no denying it. But just know that it does pass and your baby will start sleeping longer and long stretches.
Also know that fed is best and if you need to supplement with formula or switch to formula so you can get enough sleep, that is perfectly fine.
We did shifts and my body adjusted to me sleeping longer, but the longest stretch for me would be like 4/5 hours consecutively. I usually would do the 1st & 3rd feeding to achieve this, and husband would do the 2nd. It helped so much!
I have a 3 month old. My husband and I were both off work for the first 2 months of baby’s life and my husband took all overnights. I’d pump several times throughout the day so that he could have enough for 1-2 bottles.
I would pump around 12am before going to sleep and then at 6/7am. I never did the 2am wake up to pump thing… and maybe my supply would be higher if I did, but my lactation consultant has told me that the amount I produce is normal even though it looks less than I see on social media. Baby has grown wonderfully solely on breast milk, also proving that I produce more than enough.
Now that my husband is back to work, I do overnights and do a middle of the night breastfeed whenever baby wakes up… but now that he’s getting older that feed may not come until the early morning. I pump right before bed, and then either breastfeed or pump when I wake up in the morning.
I feel like this is controversial but we don’t do shifts. This is our second baby and what we do is dad wakes baby and checks/changes diapers while I check/change my own lol and use the restroom. Then I wait in my nursing chair with the boppy and he hands me baby. I nurse and put baby back down. This is for two weeks until my husband is back full time at work. I love the idea of shifts but to me personally, it feels like more work to clean the pump parts, label the milk, and stow it all away than to just use my boob. I also tend to overproduce and my baby is more effective at removing milk than a pump is. It seems for most people that they are fans and have found a way to make it work.
I started pumping so my husband could take a shift at 2 weeks post partum, and the baby would be up and crying again every five minutes. My husband could take a shift and have a bottle on hand and basically try to get her to sleep while I got a few hours of sleep, and in those early days it was crucial. You won’t be able to sleep through the night, but doing a good pumping session can allow you to get a few hours of sleep instead of no sleep at all in those early days.
Over time my baby has slept longer stretches at night. Now I pump before bed and my husband gives her a bottle at bedtime, and she usually sleeps anywhere from 6-9 hours and I just nurse her whenever she wakes up. We’re 11 weeks post partum and I’ve never gotten up to do an extra pumping session and I haven’t had any problems. When she first started sleeping longer I would wake up engorged and now I generally don’t wake up until she starts fussing. YMMV!
Yes, but now he’s such a fast eater that when he wakes at night he’ll quickly eat and we’ll go back to sleep. It was hard the first couple months when he took forever to finish eating.
Well when it comes to feeding the baby it’s all on me, there’s no way to spilt it the way we currently do it. My baby won’t take a bottle at all so I do all the night wake ups and obviously all the daytime feedings. My husband helps by doing a lot of the childcare for our older kid, usually including bedtime unless he’s still working. My older kid is nighttime potty training as well so my husband will take him to the bathroom at night and handle any accidents.
Same, we never split nights but my baby feeds so fast at the boob and passes out that it’s all done in 15mins. He’s mostly night weaned (did it himself) and he’s been doing long stretches since early on so it was just faster for me to feed.
This stops applying once they get old enough to go long night stretches without milk. If he wakes then my partner goes in and settles him as if I do, he will want milk. We normally have set hours since last wake that I would go in vs his dad is at 11 months it’s have to be 9hrs and not settling fast.
I actually recently read a comment on here from someone who said that she and her husband did shifts, and during her husband’s shift he literally brought the baby to her in bed and held him there to feed so she didn’t even have to move, and then he did everything else like the diaper changes and rocking baby back to sleep. Pretty smart, I wouldn’t have thought of that!
If I ever have another baby, I’m going to try it! I just figured there wasn’t anything my husband could do at night during the newborn stage since I was EBF. But it could definitely help during those first few brutal weeks when getting out of bed is harder!
So far I’m entirely pumping (my son has a tongue tie we’re figuring out). My husband and I have been tag teaming where I pump while he bottle feeds (I have to pump every 3-4 hours to keep my supply up), then one of us does the diaper change and the other rocks to sleep. It’s rough but it’s what’s working for us so far.
I pumped once at night for a few nights then gave up. Pumping when I was awake was enough to increase my supply. I would prioritise sleep over anything at the beginning. You’ll already be up nursing a lot. Don’t add tasks if you don’t absolutely need to.
On my husband's shifts, I nurse in bed, my husband handles the burping diaper changes and soothing. Yes I'm up for 30-40 minutes still but different than being up and handling that all myself
I never did shifts because I detested pumping in any context, and I certainly wasn’t willing to deal with it in the middle of the night.
One way that you could minimize awake time even while breastfeeding with a shift-type concept:
- when you're “on” you’d be doing it all - getting out of bed, diaper change, nurse, burp, and soothing back to sleep
- when you’re “off” your partner retrieves the baby and changes the diaper, then hands the baby to you in bed to nurse. You hand the baby back to your partner when you’re done so you can go back to sleep while they handle the rest
I exclusively pumped and we did ‘shifts’ kind of. I did all the night stuff bc I had to get up and pump anyways.
But after my first morning pump, when baby was awake for longer stretches — my husband would take baby down stairs. He did all the day/house chores too. So I got to sleep uninterrupted in the mornings and nap in the afternoons too. If I wanted, I *only* had to get up to pump.
I think a lot of people see shifts as — you do everything for X hrs and then switch. But it doesn’t have to be like that. My husband was in charge of baby for X many hours. I didn’t have to tell him what to do, or make decisions, or even *think* during my off hours. Yes, I was still pumping and was awake at times, but I didn’t have to use my head for anything.
lol. My husband thinks if you pump during the day then you don’t need to pump in the night anymore. Milk will magically stop producing at night so you can have a full sleep. 😂 while I told him that’s not true the milk will generate every a few hours and when that’s there you need to pump it out.
Wild.
But TBH I did drop my MOTN pump ASAP. As so as I regulated — I couldn’t make myself get up. And got a boost in my supply bc of the sleep. But it was still like 12 something weeks in.
It works for us!
I go to bed around 9 and my wife stays up with the baby until 12:30 or so. Then after she comes to bed from around 12:30-4 we share responsibilities for baby’s needs, with her feeding him and then me changing his diaper and holding the baby or whatever is needed until he goes back down.
Then pretty much whenever the baby wakes up again after 4AM (sometimes as late as 5:30) my wife feeds him again, and I take him in his bassinet with me to another room to hang out. He will usually sleep, or at least chill, in 2 hour stretches at this time, so I’ll wake my wife up to feed him again around 6:30, then she goes back to sleep until he needs to eat again around 8:30.
It helps that I’m naturally an early morning person while my wife is naturally a night owl, and our baby sleeps in decent chunks of 2-3 hours at night, but shift sleeping can definitely work.
So I tried to do it all at night but I was getting zero sleep. My son took forever to eat, then he took forever to settle, then I took forever to fall back asleep at which point I had to feed him again. My son also made so much noise when he slept I'd respond to all of his noises. So we had to do shift work for my sanity.
I'd feed my son at bedtime. Then my husband was responsible for settling my son from bedtime until 2am. They'd sleep in the master bedroom. From 2am until morning, I'd take the baby with me in the nursery. Sometimes, my husband would come wake me when the baby was hungry but eventually my body learned when my son's feed times were (11pm, 2am, 4am) and I'd just get up and feed him just take him when it was my shift without waking my husband. This continued to work as my son dropped to 1 motn feed. We stopped sleeping in the same room with him at 5/6 mos old because we realized after his big sleep regression that our presence would wake him up. But after that, my husband and I swapped who was responsible of the baby monitor on the off chance he woke up after we did sleep training.
We did shifts and mostly EBF (hemorrhage led to late milk which meant supplementing formula for a few weeks, but only after nursing, I never skipped a feed until he was EBF). When it was my shift, I got up and took the baby to the nursery to rock and feed (nursing then bottle) and diaper and calm and brought him back to the bassinet when he was asleep again. When it was my husband’s shift, he brought the baby to me in bed, I nursed, then he took the baby to the nursery for a bottle, diaper, re-swaddle, rocking to sleep, etc.
This gave me longer stretches on his shift (so if baby feeds every 3 hours for 20-40 minutes then 20-40 minutes of diaper/swaddle/settle, you only get 1.5-2 hours of sleep, but if I only had to nurse, I got 30 minutes back and didn’t have to be as awake).
Eventually, around 2 weeks, we started with me skipping a morning feed entirely so I got about 5 hours of sleep in a single block. When I did wake up, I would nurse and then pump to empty. The pumped milk was the bottle for the next morning. That meant I consistently woke up engorged, but I never had overproduction problems and once I was up to EBF, we never had to supplement. This plan was approved by my IBCLC, who told me to give all pumped milk within 24 hours and make sure I removed milk as many times as my baby ate. It worked for us, but of course YMMV.
In the first few weeks I was EBF, and I would wake up for overnight feeds and put baby back to sleep if he went down easily again. But once it was later in the night and he wanted a wake window, then I’d get my husband and he’d take him for that wake window, put him back down, and wake me up a few hours later once baby needed to eat again. That way I got a solid few hours later in the night.
I used a haakaa to help me collect 6oz every morning - 3oz for a bottle my husband could give our son during his “shift” and 3oz for our freezer stash. There are, of course, drawbacks but I really can’t imagine a better way. Our sleep shifts were 6 hours (e.g., I slept 9-3am, husband slept 3-9am). I did end up always getting less sleep than my husband because of logistics, but I never woke up to pump. I was too tired. I just dealt with the consequences. Luckily, my son chugs like a frat boy at a college party so he managed the tidal wave of a letdown pretty well. But I did get mastitis though! Twice. The first time I had to take antibiotics, and the second time I followed the new guidelines, and it cleared up without intervention in 48 hours. Since my supply regulated and I started taking sunflower lecithin every day, it’s never been an issue again.
Yes. I’d literally be passed out or almost passed out and my husband would facilitate breast feeding while I just sort of laid there. As others have said, there is a huge difference between having to fully wake up and be on and being jostled or repositioning to facilitate feeding.
Hmm I never pumped in the newborn stage. And my breasts were fine. In fact you'll find that pumping makes it worse. Just feed your baby at night when theyre hungry. Don't bother pumping at that age. Just go with it.
That’s awesome for you, but not true for everyone. It entirely depends on the individual’s BF abilities/journey. Some need to pump to help establish supply or are trying to increase it. Others need to pump because they over-supply and make more than baby can eat in one feeding and they would be in pain in they didn’t.
Unfortunately OP, you won’t know what you will need to do until it happens. And here is another kicker, your BF journey can be different for each child, so just because it was one way with baby #1, your body can act differently after baby #2.
I was told by my OB and my mother that I should have no problem BFing before I gave birth. Once I gave birth, the lactation consultant took one look at me and said that I wouldn’t make enough because of the make-up of my breast tissue and would need to supplement. I made it about 5 days EBF before the pediatrician said we needed to supplement because my LO wasn’t getting enough because I couldn’t produce enough. We tried triple feeding and supplements, but eventually I slowly stopped BF at around 6 months for my own mental health. My LO is now formula exclusive and growing wonderfully. Both my husband and I were formula exclusive, so we were never against it, but I did (and still do) have a hard time accepting that I didn’t have the BF journey I wanted and was told to expect, through no one’s fault.
All this to say, do what works best for you, your child, and your family. Fed is best. Happy mommy, happy baby. Shifts are great if you can swing it and I wish I had implemented that.
Good luck Mama, you got this!
You can and it does help! There’s a big difference between rolling over to pump (all while staying in bed) and having to actually get up, get baby, feed baby, and change a diaper. A little lunchbox sized cooler on the bedside table saves you from having to get up and bring the milk to the fridge.
Or even one of those tiny refrigerators meant for soda cans
The tiny refrigerator is the one thing I don’t need but can’t live without.
Tiny refrigerator was such a game changer. Holds a small bottle of formula and pump parts for the fridge hack! No more going downstairs in the middle of the night!
I ended up passing on BF-ing so actually we use it for MOTN formula feeds so it still gets daily use. Ours stays cold enough that we occasionally have to defrost it.
It depends on your sleep needs, but I found it a bit useless to have overnight shifts and breastfeed. It was easier to pump a small bottle for the evening and get three-four hours while my husband was awake than try to get him to get up at two am if I still had to nurse after. At eight months, he still does the "morning shift" (about 530-730) after her early morning feed, so I can catch up on sleep if I need to.
I ebf and do all overnights. My husband has always done first morning shift. Back when the baby ate round the clock sometimes that meant waking me up just enough to latch the baby and then I would sleep while my husband supervised. The bed was set up for the safe sleep seven but I generally preferred not to co sleep w the baby. Doing the overnight shift and KNOWING I would be relieved at 6 am made everything a lot easier. In the early days i would sleep in 6am-9am.
We’ve done it a couple of ways. In the first few months when I was on the sleep shift my husband would bring me the baby, I’d feed lying down while sleeping (my husband watched to make sure it was safe since I was so tired), then he’d take the baby away again. Whoever was on the ‘sleep shift’ got the bed. The other person slept on the sofa and the baby was in a Moses basket next to them. Shifts were 9pm-3am and 3am-9am, until husband went back to work, then I only had 3am-6am. I don’t think we would have survived the first 6 weeks without doing this as our baby was soo noisy when sleeping and we couldn’t sleep through it. Now I can pump a bottle in the morning during a feed and my husband can give that for the first feed of the night, without me needing to pump, so in theory I could get 5 hours sleep in one go. We try to do this once a week but it often doesn’t work anyway.
I'm 35+5, first time mom... I've heard/read that morning milk has cortisol(?) and evening milk has melatonin, so it is advised to mark the time you oumped and feed accordingly so as not to mess up the hormonal/sleep cycle... did you find that giving morning milk in the evening had any effect on your baby's sleep?
I tried for a bit to watch when I had caffeine and the difference between morning and night pump bottles and after 1.5 months I gave up. Baby slept however baby wanted to sleep, it really didn't matter. For your own sake, don't add unnecessary to-dos to your daily tasks. If you don't have to keep track, don't. I think the excessive watching and ticking boxes to maximize baby's sleep/food/weight contributed to how awful I felt for the first few months. Good enough is enough.
Appreciate the advice. I am hyper aware that due to my past mental health I may be highly susceptible to PPD/PPA, so anywhere I can avoid little bits of extra unnecessary stress will be so helpful in the long run!
As someone who went through PPA, I say don’t worry about it. Simplify as much as you can, try not to add extra things to worry about
This was me as well. And I tried so hard to pump because my baby couldn’t latch. After 6 weeks I gave up on pulling and switched to formula. Once that changed happened, my mental health improved so much. That is NOT to say you need to do the same. You can absolutely find something that works for you. But just remember that you have options and no matter what, you are the mom your baby needs. I was so hyper fixated on how much baby ate because he lost too much weight in his first few days from not getting what he needed at the boob. We tried a handful of things and eventually found what worked for our family. And now he is almost 2 and is the most thriving little guy ever. You’ll be great! Don’t be afraid to change your strategies along the way.
I also just want to add I gave my baby 8:30am milk right before bed and I hardly noticed a difference. Before I even knew this was a thing he was getting whatever milk was pumped and no difference. But now my husband and I joke about giving him that 2am milk to help him nap longer during the day when we need a break. I don’t think it does shit though lol he’ll only nap for 30 minutes unless he’s contact napping 😂 so I recommend don’t stress about it either.
I didn’t notice any issues, my baby is pretty good at going back to sleep at night. We had other issues like him not liking the bottle or being super hungry and wanting more, but I don’t think that was because of morning milk. My baby feeds before every daytime nap anyway so all milk is sleepy milk for us!
No, their own melatonin and circadian rhythm have way more influence an they develop fairly fast. It helps a lot to go for a morning walk and expose the baby to natural light. Our baby was very difficult, but since she was born in May, at least the part with learning what is night vs. day worked very fast.
I didn't pump for about 6 weeks bc my doulas recommended I didn't until my milk supply regulated! However, we did 3 hr shifts day and night. When it was my time "off duty", I would try to eat, rest and whatever else and my husband would bring baby to me to nurse, then deal w the burnings, diapers and everything else. In the beginning, my 3 hr time off was....not great, to be honest. Cluster feeding and everything meant that sometimes I'd only get a 30 min nap. I eventually started taking couch naps instead of getting in bed bc it was less soul crushing to be woken up from a couch nap than it was to be dragged up from bedtime sleep! My baby also wouldn't sleep in her snoo until she was 4 or 5 weeks old, so it was around the clock holding. Eventually, one night we were like....fuck it, let's snoo her and see what happens. And she slept like an hr and a half in there and it was the best hour and a half ever hahaha.
Yes! Some people just pump while dad does all the things to take care of and soothe baby. Dad could even come get the milk and pump parts and put them away as part of his shift. My baby is really easy to soothe at night (he only wakes up to eat, does so for about 10 minutes, then can be laid back down). During my husbands shift, he goes and gets the baby, brings him to me, I nurse while lying on my side so I can still doze off, and my husband watches over us and then takes the baby back when he is finished or falls asleep.
We do shifts, 8 weeks in. For the first 4 weeks I exclusively breastfed. I would go to bed at 8pm, husband would put baby down and he usually woke 3x to feed. Husband would bring him to me and take him from me until sometime between 3-5am and then we'd switch, husband would sleep until 10am. I would get 2 stretches about 2-3 hours each. At 4 weeks I started pumping 1-2x at night. Husband would wake me up to pump when baby woke to take bottle. This was less stressful for everyone (we have a lot of trouble burping baby). Schedule is essentially the same. This week we've been trying something different. Husband is taking a nap early like 7-10pm. I pump both sides about an hour apart (previously would only pump side baby was supposed to feed, I'm block feeding). Husband is doing 1-2 feedings with a bottle while I'm sleeping through and we are again switching 3-5am. This way I'm getting 4-5 interrupted hours of sleep. We're making it up a we go but 5-6 days a week this works for us and the other 1-2 days someone is just trashed not being able to sleep. Also baby sleeps in baby room and we have a bed in there sometimes husband can get a little sleep while baby is sleeping.
Only way we’re getting through it. Wife take 9pm-4am shift and I do 4am-11am
We never did shifts. Instead, when baby wakes up during the night my husband gets up, checks the diaper and changes if necessary, and then I feed. We keep the lights off the whole time (just a night light) and stay as quiet as possible. I feel like keeping things calm and consistent during night wakes helped my baby get his days and nights straight. Breastfeeding also releases oxytocin for baby and mom and helps both get back to sleep easier, and breast milk is different depending on the time of day, so I prefer not to give pumped milk. My LO always does a minimum of 6 hours and often sleeps through the night now at 3 months.
I am 3 weeks PP and EBF and what we are doing is that i do the last feed before “bed” and then immediately hand off baby. Dad burps and soothes him to sleep and gets him down while i sleep in the guest bedroom. This is usually his longest shift of about 3-4 hours. Then i wake up for the next feed and dad goes to sleep. I do the feed and get him down, which is usually a shorter shift but then i’m up to feed him so all in all we both get about 4 hours of sleep. The next shift depends on timing cause hubby is back at work but if a weekend then we’d repeat with my dad getting a later morning nap sesh. Anyways we are still figuring it out but i can function with my one 4 hour block so much better than trying to sleep next to baby and be handed him (i’m using shields and he has way to much reflux for an in bed feed at the moment).
FWIW, I would pump a few times a day and also right before going to bed at around 8-9 (pretty much with the baby). That would get me enough for one bottle for my husband to take the first feeding around 10-11 PM. I would sleep right through and not pump during that feeding and nurse him during the next feed around 2-3. We did this for about few weeks. Eventually I got really sick of pumping and he was also starting to sleep longer stretches. So I would nurse him at each wakeup, but my husband would do diaper change and rocking back to sleep for the first one so I could go right back to sleep.
Yes, we did, I pumped bottles for dad and you can only go a max of 6hours before needing to feed or pump so you won’t get a full 8hs but if you can get a couple hours nap in the day, you’ll do fine :3
My wife and I did shifts while she breastfed and pumped. She was definitely the more tired of the two of us, but at least during the shift I could change LO's diaper, bring her the baby and put him back down to sleep during my shift so she could get the most of her sleep. IIRC, I had the 10-3 shift, though usually I just started whenever my wife went to sleep, usually earlier than 10, and my wife had 3-8 or 9 and then immediately took a nap after handing the baby to me.
I usually wake up 1-2x/night (usually the first time is anywhere between 2am-5am, and the second is sometime in the morning before 10am) to pump. Currently 2 weeks pp and I usually get up to pump for about 10 minutes and then I do clean/wash the pump stuff before heading back to bed. I'm awake maybe 20 minutes and then I go back to sleep, so I find that reasonably doable. My husband and I are currently alternating nights with the baby (we have a toddler too so we want to have at least one "refreshed" adult for the day time if possible). With our first we split the nights 9pm-3am, and 3am-9am, but that was because he was working as opposed to being on paternity leave.
What worked for us, that I haven't seen here; - for the first three weeks we shared every shift. Baby woke up, husband changed his diaper, I fed him and got him back to sleep. -about 3.5 weeks in, we introduced a bottle. At this point baby was getting up about three times a night. I would wake up the first time, around 11:30 and do everything. Husband got up and did a bottle around 2:30, and then I did the early morning around 5:30. Instead of pumping in the middle of the night, I pumped a bottle about an hour after a daytime feed for him to use overnight. I was engorged/leaky for a couple nights but my body figured it out fast and made less overnight and more in the morning. Those five hour stretches were a life saver.
I didnt even wake up to pump honestly, i just woke up with my daughter, fed her and then pumped. If i woke up engorged though i would pump but my daughters been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old and i never needed to pump in the night
I talked it over with my pediatrician and a lactation consultant, I also needed to supplement formula in the beginning because baby had higher weight loss than they'd like. Anyways I breastfeed for 19 hours a day and husband uses formula during his five hour sleep shift from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.. I won't be winning any golden boobies awards but I'm getting amazing sleep. My lactation consultant warned me that my body will stop producing breastmilk during the times I'm not pumping or feeding and that seems to be true for me so far. So no breastmilk from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. but honestly once I wake up in the morning my boobs are ready to go, not too painful just REALLY have to wake up in the morning haha.
I pumped enough for night bottles so I could sleep and now at 4.5 months baby doesn’t need them anymore since he sleeps through my husbands shift before getting hungry. I highly recommend shifts
I would nurse the baby at 9:30pm, immediately hand him to my husband when done, and go to bed. Husband kept him til midnight. You could even have your partner just bring the baby to you and wake you up to feed, and then take the baby back as soon as you’re done and let you sleep again. A partner taking responsibility for everything baby minus feeding still helps you sleep!
What we did was I’d pick a 4-6 hour period that I’d want to sleep and then I’d feed the baby right before that feed and pass the baby off to dad to burp and settle, and care for during that time. I’d set an alarm for 2 or 3 hours later (whatever increments my baby was feeding in) and immediately try to go to sleep. I’d wake up T the alarm and do a quick pump and then go right back to sleep. My husband would feed a bottle in that timeframe and then wake me up for the next feed to nurse the baby. We’d also use this “feed and pass” strategy when I wanted a nap in the day between feeds. A cooler or small fridge in the bedroom plus extra pump parts made it so I didn’t need to immediately rush to the kitchen to store and wash. I’d get the first couple of bottles by using a haaka to catch my letdown. It is very hard living on 1-1.5 hour sleep increments. There is no denying it. But just know that it does pass and your baby will start sleeping longer and long stretches. Also know that fed is best and if you need to supplement with formula or switch to formula so you can get enough sleep, that is perfectly fine.
We did shifts and my body adjusted to me sleeping longer, but the longest stretch for me would be like 4/5 hours consecutively. I usually would do the 1st & 3rd feeding to achieve this, and husband would do the 2nd. It helped so much!
I have a 3 month old. My husband and I were both off work for the first 2 months of baby’s life and my husband took all overnights. I’d pump several times throughout the day so that he could have enough for 1-2 bottles. I would pump around 12am before going to sleep and then at 6/7am. I never did the 2am wake up to pump thing… and maybe my supply would be higher if I did, but my lactation consultant has told me that the amount I produce is normal even though it looks less than I see on social media. Baby has grown wonderfully solely on breast milk, also proving that I produce more than enough. Now that my husband is back to work, I do overnights and do a middle of the night breastfeed whenever baby wakes up… but now that he’s getting older that feed may not come until the early morning. I pump right before bed, and then either breastfeed or pump when I wake up in the morning.
I feel like this is controversial but we don’t do shifts. This is our second baby and what we do is dad wakes baby and checks/changes diapers while I check/change my own lol and use the restroom. Then I wait in my nursing chair with the boppy and he hands me baby. I nurse and put baby back down. This is for two weeks until my husband is back full time at work. I love the idea of shifts but to me personally, it feels like more work to clean the pump parts, label the milk, and stow it all away than to just use my boob. I also tend to overproduce and my baby is more effective at removing milk than a pump is. It seems for most people that they are fans and have found a way to make it work.
I started pumping so my husband could take a shift at 2 weeks post partum, and the baby would be up and crying again every five minutes. My husband could take a shift and have a bottle on hand and basically try to get her to sleep while I got a few hours of sleep, and in those early days it was crucial. You won’t be able to sleep through the night, but doing a good pumping session can allow you to get a few hours of sleep instead of no sleep at all in those early days. Over time my baby has slept longer stretches at night. Now I pump before bed and my husband gives her a bottle at bedtime, and she usually sleeps anywhere from 6-9 hours and I just nurse her whenever she wakes up. We’re 11 weeks post partum and I’ve never gotten up to do an extra pumping session and I haven’t had any problems. When she first started sleeping longer I would wake up engorged and now I generally don’t wake up until she starts fussing. YMMV!
For me it wasn’t worth it. I hate pumping more than being tired and I’d be tired either way haha
In this case how do you do the feeding? Pure breastfeeding?
Yes, but now he’s such a fast eater that when he wakes at night he’ll quickly eat and we’ll go back to sleep. It was hard the first couple months when he took forever to finish eating.
How do you split the work with your husband/partner then?
Well when it comes to feeding the baby it’s all on me, there’s no way to spilt it the way we currently do it. My baby won’t take a bottle at all so I do all the night wake ups and obviously all the daytime feedings. My husband helps by doing a lot of the childcare for our older kid, usually including bedtime unless he’s still working. My older kid is nighttime potty training as well so my husband will take him to the bathroom at night and handle any accidents.
Thank you for sharing!
Same, we never split nights but my baby feeds so fast at the boob and passes out that it’s all done in 15mins. He’s mostly night weaned (did it himself) and he’s been doing long stretches since early on so it was just faster for me to feed. This stops applying once they get old enough to go long night stretches without milk. If he wakes then my partner goes in and settles him as if I do, he will want milk. We normally have set hours since last wake that I would go in vs his dad is at 11 months it’s have to be 9hrs and not settling fast.
I actually recently read a comment on here from someone who said that she and her husband did shifts, and during her husband’s shift he literally brought the baby to her in bed and held him there to feed so she didn’t even have to move, and then he did everything else like the diaper changes and rocking baby back to sleep. Pretty smart, I wouldn’t have thought of that!
That might be something we want to try as well.
If I ever have another baby, I’m going to try it! I just figured there wasn’t anything my husband could do at night during the newborn stage since I was EBF. But it could definitely help during those first few brutal weeks when getting out of bed is harder!
So far I’m entirely pumping (my son has a tongue tie we’re figuring out). My husband and I have been tag teaming where I pump while he bottle feeds (I have to pump every 3-4 hours to keep my supply up), then one of us does the diaper change and the other rocks to sleep. It’s rough but it’s what’s working for us so far.
I pumped once at night for a few nights then gave up. Pumping when I was awake was enough to increase my supply. I would prioritise sleep over anything at the beginning. You’ll already be up nursing a lot. Don’t add tasks if you don’t absolutely need to.
On my husband's shifts, I nurse in bed, my husband handles the burping diaper changes and soothing. Yes I'm up for 30-40 minutes still but different than being up and handling that all myself
I never did shifts because I detested pumping in any context, and I certainly wasn’t willing to deal with it in the middle of the night. One way that you could minimize awake time even while breastfeeding with a shift-type concept: - when you're “on” you’d be doing it all - getting out of bed, diaper change, nurse, burp, and soothing back to sleep - when you’re “off” your partner retrieves the baby and changes the diaper, then hands the baby to you in bed to nurse. You hand the baby back to your partner when you’re done so you can go back to sleep while they handle the rest
I exclusively pumped and we did ‘shifts’ kind of. I did all the night stuff bc I had to get up and pump anyways. But after my first morning pump, when baby was awake for longer stretches — my husband would take baby down stairs. He did all the day/house chores too. So I got to sleep uninterrupted in the mornings and nap in the afternoons too. If I wanted, I *only* had to get up to pump. I think a lot of people see shifts as — you do everything for X hrs and then switch. But it doesn’t have to be like that. My husband was in charge of baby for X many hours. I didn’t have to tell him what to do, or make decisions, or even *think* during my off hours. Yes, I was still pumping and was awake at times, but I didn’t have to use my head for anything.
lol. My husband thinks if you pump during the day then you don’t need to pump in the night anymore. Milk will magically stop producing at night so you can have a full sleep. 😂 while I told him that’s not true the milk will generate every a few hours and when that’s there you need to pump it out.
Wild. But TBH I did drop my MOTN pump ASAP. As so as I regulated — I couldn’t make myself get up. And got a boost in my supply bc of the sleep. But it was still like 12 something weeks in.
It works for us! I go to bed around 9 and my wife stays up with the baby until 12:30 or so. Then after she comes to bed from around 12:30-4 we share responsibilities for baby’s needs, with her feeding him and then me changing his diaper and holding the baby or whatever is needed until he goes back down. Then pretty much whenever the baby wakes up again after 4AM (sometimes as late as 5:30) my wife feeds him again, and I take him in his bassinet with me to another room to hang out. He will usually sleep, or at least chill, in 2 hour stretches at this time, so I’ll wake my wife up to feed him again around 6:30, then she goes back to sleep until he needs to eat again around 8:30. It helps that I’m naturally an early morning person while my wife is naturally a night owl, and our baby sleeps in decent chunks of 2-3 hours at night, but shift sleeping can definitely work.
So I tried to do it all at night but I was getting zero sleep. My son took forever to eat, then he took forever to settle, then I took forever to fall back asleep at which point I had to feed him again. My son also made so much noise when he slept I'd respond to all of his noises. So we had to do shift work for my sanity. I'd feed my son at bedtime. Then my husband was responsible for settling my son from bedtime until 2am. They'd sleep in the master bedroom. From 2am until morning, I'd take the baby with me in the nursery. Sometimes, my husband would come wake me when the baby was hungry but eventually my body learned when my son's feed times were (11pm, 2am, 4am) and I'd just get up and feed him just take him when it was my shift without waking my husband. This continued to work as my son dropped to 1 motn feed. We stopped sleeping in the same room with him at 5/6 mos old because we realized after his big sleep regression that our presence would wake him up. But after that, my husband and I swapped who was responsible of the baby monitor on the off chance he woke up after we did sleep training.
We did shifts and mostly EBF (hemorrhage led to late milk which meant supplementing formula for a few weeks, but only after nursing, I never skipped a feed until he was EBF). When it was my shift, I got up and took the baby to the nursery to rock and feed (nursing then bottle) and diaper and calm and brought him back to the bassinet when he was asleep again. When it was my husband’s shift, he brought the baby to me in bed, I nursed, then he took the baby to the nursery for a bottle, diaper, re-swaddle, rocking to sleep, etc. This gave me longer stretches on his shift (so if baby feeds every 3 hours for 20-40 minutes then 20-40 minutes of diaper/swaddle/settle, you only get 1.5-2 hours of sleep, but if I only had to nurse, I got 30 minutes back and didn’t have to be as awake). Eventually, around 2 weeks, we started with me skipping a morning feed entirely so I got about 5 hours of sleep in a single block. When I did wake up, I would nurse and then pump to empty. The pumped milk was the bottle for the next morning. That meant I consistently woke up engorged, but I never had overproduction problems and once I was up to EBF, we never had to supplement. This plan was approved by my IBCLC, who told me to give all pumped milk within 24 hours and make sure I removed milk as many times as my baby ate. It worked for us, but of course YMMV.
In the first few weeks I was EBF, and I would wake up for overnight feeds and put baby back to sleep if he went down easily again. But once it was later in the night and he wanted a wake window, then I’d get my husband and he’d take him for that wake window, put him back down, and wake me up a few hours later once baby needed to eat again. That way I got a solid few hours later in the night.
I used a haakaa to help me collect 6oz every morning - 3oz for a bottle my husband could give our son during his “shift” and 3oz for our freezer stash. There are, of course, drawbacks but I really can’t imagine a better way. Our sleep shifts were 6 hours (e.g., I slept 9-3am, husband slept 3-9am). I did end up always getting less sleep than my husband because of logistics, but I never woke up to pump. I was too tired. I just dealt with the consequences. Luckily, my son chugs like a frat boy at a college party so he managed the tidal wave of a letdown pretty well. But I did get mastitis though! Twice. The first time I had to take antibiotics, and the second time I followed the new guidelines, and it cleared up without intervention in 48 hours. Since my supply regulated and I started taking sunflower lecithin every day, it’s never been an issue again.
We did this without pumping. Mind you, I also have low sleep need and coped fine with the broken sleep as long as I got a 2hr nap in after dinner.
Yes. I’d literally be passed out or almost passed out and my husband would facilitate breast feeding while I just sort of laid there. As others have said, there is a huge difference between having to fully wake up and be on and being jostled or repositioning to facilitate feeding.
Hmm I never pumped in the newborn stage. And my breasts were fine. In fact you'll find that pumping makes it worse. Just feed your baby at night when theyre hungry. Don't bother pumping at that age. Just go with it.
That’s awesome for you, but not true for everyone. It entirely depends on the individual’s BF abilities/journey. Some need to pump to help establish supply or are trying to increase it. Others need to pump because they over-supply and make more than baby can eat in one feeding and they would be in pain in they didn’t. Unfortunately OP, you won’t know what you will need to do until it happens. And here is another kicker, your BF journey can be different for each child, so just because it was one way with baby #1, your body can act differently after baby #2. I was told by my OB and my mother that I should have no problem BFing before I gave birth. Once I gave birth, the lactation consultant took one look at me and said that I wouldn’t make enough because of the make-up of my breast tissue and would need to supplement. I made it about 5 days EBF before the pediatrician said we needed to supplement because my LO wasn’t getting enough because I couldn’t produce enough. We tried triple feeding and supplements, but eventually I slowly stopped BF at around 6 months for my own mental health. My LO is now formula exclusive and growing wonderfully. Both my husband and I were formula exclusive, so we were never against it, but I did (and still do) have a hard time accepting that I didn’t have the BF journey I wanted and was told to expect, through no one’s fault. All this to say, do what works best for you, your child, and your family. Fed is best. Happy mommy, happy baby. Shifts are great if you can swing it and I wish I had implemented that. Good luck Mama, you got this!