Welcome Cherie! Goodness me Darcy was a good size!! How are you recovering?

Krystie, . I sort of half co-sleep - Tom starts off in his cot at the end of our bed at night, and then after his first feed stays in bed with me. It's taken me a while to get used to it as I'm afraid of rolling on him but if we are tummy to tummy, it seems to be okay. I must have put him back in his cot without waking properly the other night because I woke up and couldn't find him next to me and freaked out!! I've just got him used to his sling, now, so the baby-wearing thing can kick off properly. He spends most of the day in arms except for the afternoon sleep. I have to watch my back and shoulder as I have an injury that flares up a fair bit.

Dee, it's pretty normal at this stage for a breastfed baby to feed every one to two hours, unfortunately! Their little stomachs are only about the size of their fist, and the breastmilk is digested quite quickly. It's also quite normal for them to want to feed a lot in the wee hours of the morning - your hormones mean that your body responds really well to nighttime stimulation and your milk production is at its peak. This kind of nighttime feeding often settles down by about four weeks and then ramps up again at six weeks when they have their growth spurt and are telling your breasts to produce more milk!

Unfortunately we live in a culture where we are being told that they "should" be feeding only every three or four hours, so when they demand it more frequently we think there's something wrong with our supply, or we're doing something wrong. And so we delay feeding or supplement, not realising that we're interrupting that amazing hormonal and behavioural relationship between the baby and our bodies, and it's often a slippery slope to thinking we aren't producing enough milk, and then giving up.

One way of encouraging a longer sleep is to only offer one side at each feeding, but to offer it for as long a time as you would offer both, that is, offer him the same side after you've changed his nappy. This encourages more let downs in one breast which means the baby gets much more of the fatty "hindmilk" rather than the watery foremilk, and this might help settle them a little better. One encouraging thing I heard today from my excellent MCHN was that if you feed a baby absolutely on demand in those first weeks, they are more likely to put on a good deal of weight and reach the weight earlier where they have more reserves to help them sleep longer. So demand feeding now might cost you something in the short term, but may help with sleeping better later!