Sleepy baby

I'm going to start out this post with a disclaimer that it will discuss breastfeeding.  Not at length or with great detail, but you've been warned.  If you don't want to read any further, just know that our kid is a champion sleeper.  Through the night?  No problem.

Breastfed babies, I hear, eat every 3ish hours.  Natalie falls into that category during the day, and at night we had always switched to two 4 hour feedings.  It allowed for more sleeping.  At first, that worked out really well for the both of us.  But after the first few weeks, it was clear to me that she was not interested in eating that frequently at night and it was a waste of time and energy for me to get up to feed her multiple times a night.

Now I know that there are two main camps out there on babies eating and sleeping.  There's the feed-on-demand camp that says not to wake a sleeping baby and they will tell you when they are hungry.  There is also the schedule camp that says to feed ever so many hours.  Given my excessive milk situation along with her slow regaining of her birth weight, the scheduled feeding at night was almost a necessity.  Both the pediatrician and the lactation consultant suggested waking the baby to feed her in the middle of the night.  I know that some people are shaking their heads as they read this, but that was what worked for us for quite a while.

The older she got, the less interested she got in eating in the middle of the night and the more she just wanted to sleep so I stretched the interval between feedings.  For that past few weeks I had just been waking once in the middle of the night around 3 leaving a 5-6 hour gap between the last feeding of the night and then 3-4 hours until the next feeding first thing in the morning.  She is such a good sleeper, I wondered if I didn't wake her if she would sleep all night.  Aside from the first night she was home from the hospital, she has only waken us once in the middle of the night.  All other night feedings have been initiated by me.

Yesterday evening, our baby demanded to be fed hourly leading to 3 full feedings in 3 hours.  Clearly she was full before bed, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to let her sleep and see what would happen.  I had to get up in the middle of the night to pump for comfort at the usual 3 since I still produce milk even if she's not eating it.  She made some quiet noises in her crib while I was in the room and although she didn't wake up when I was in there, I was sure she would within the hour.  The next thing I knew it was 6 am and our baby had slept through the night without so much as a peep.  Seeing as it had been more than 8 hours since her last feeding I got up to feed her expecting her to be ravenous, but it was not the case.  She ate, and then went back to sleep for another few hours.  I was amazed and wondered if I hadn't waken her after the 8 hours how much longer she would have slept.  Silly girl was so sleepy she forgot to be hungry!

I'm not good with milestones and half the time I think they don't apply to my child due to her size.  I'm not sure when breastfed babies are supposed to sleep through the night, but our baby is a champion sleeper at 2 months.  Although I still have to get up to pump, it takes much less time than feeding her.  A week before I go back to workI find that my baby has no problem sleeping through the night.  What a wonderful discovery.