I think they encourage F-P-S so that baby isn't encouraged to fall into a pattern of falling asleep on the breast or bottle. However, if you ensure baby is awake during feedtime and then put baby to sleep I don't see why P-F-S is a bad idea. To be honest neither is feeding to sleep if it is necessary.
I can't help you anecdotally as TBH I can't remember most of my child's first year of life but it is YOUR child and YOUR parenting... do what you find works for you. If you are doing it out of worry for baby getting a sleep association with breast or bottle - actively ensure baby is awake during a feed. You are doing a great job.
My babies all did Sleep-Feed-Play-Feed-Sleep. I found they slept really well if I did that routine but they would often sleep so well and for so long they woke up hungry. I just made sure that I offered the same side for the second feed so that they were getting the hind milk and not just the sugary fore milk because that can give them bad habits for snacking. I have had problems with supply so that was really helpful to my milk.
Once my babies are on solids, as DD2 is now, I tend to give her some solids when she first wakes up, let her play, and breastfeed her before her nap. It works for us. I just follow what my baby seems to want and we have happened to fall into that routine. Even with the S-F-P-F-S, it was all baby led. All three just happened to enjoy doing it the same way.
FWIW, I stopped stressing about things like SFPS because I found it all confusing and some of the information can be very conflicting. I did try to do it at first because I was scared that letting them fall asleep while feeding was going to create bad sleeping habits or because I thought that I was doing it wrong. I have now got 3 kids and I just follow what my babies want to do. It hasn't affected the sleeping behaviours of my older kids to let them do whatever they want to do as babies, it just meant life was more pleasant for me because I could meet my babies' needs when they had them, rather than the stress of making them follow a routine they don't want to follow.
I guess what I am saying is that FPS is not wrong if that is what your baby wants, but I think more important than anything else is just following your baby's lead. Do what you are comfortable with and if you want to feed your baby to sleep, you are not going to harm your baby in any way or cause problems for yourself down the track. It is okay to follow your baby's lead if that's what you want to do
Hi I didnt mean to be opinionated in my last post as for the first 6 months I was just letting V choose what happened..The only reason I changed things was daycare is coming up and I was just so tired..
Some babies can go four hours between feeds - DD fell into a regular, four hour feeding pattern at around 6mths. So we fell into FPS, but not through me actively trying, it just happened.
Basically that is because she has never fed to sleep - maybe twice in her whole life? We have been BF since birth and she is now 15mths. So feeding just before sleep never worked for us, it might have made her sleepy sometimes but most of the time it was (and still is) like a tonic that wakes her up!
I think you have to try a few things out and see what works for you and baby.
It really does depend on the baby.
If you think your baby is better with F-P-F-S than go for it - it has to be aboout what works for you, not what other people tell you. We only know what has worked for us
DS1 liked this and his day sleeping settled down once we move to feeed-play-feed-sleep
DS2 is a lot more flexible sleep wise FPS or PFS both work wel for him.
I only have 1 babies worth of experience to go from, but the general answer was no, my baby didn't necessarily sleep better directly after being fed. Her actual sleep was pretty much the same regardless of whether it had followed play or feeding. So we mostly did F-P-S. In fact she wasn't really very good at feeding to sleep (would go to sleep then wake up 5-10 minutes later) so even when she was going through a growth spurt and wanted F-P-F-S there would need to a bit of awake time between the feed and the sleep to ensure she stayed asleep. A bit weird but it worked so we did that.
But as the others have said different babies have different preferences so there is no hard and fast rules, more like a variety of different strategies that you try out until you hit the one that works for you.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds.
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