Difference in sleep patterns BF vs. formula fed babies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t notice a big difference in sleep habits, but middle of the night feedings were so much easier when I was breastfeeding. No filling bottles or cleaning them, mixing formula, just roll over and pull down my nightgown.

There’s a FF hack for this: line up 3 bottles filled with plain water, put three Dixie cups of powder next to them. Roll over, dump and shake, clean the bottles in he morning.

[Anonymous]

I have two EFF kids (thanks to my thyroid disorder, I produce little to no milk) who both slept like garbage.

[Anonymous]

One FF baby who slept through the night early and is/was a dream sleeper. To this day, she's a very easygoing child. My BF baby was/is a terrible sleeper and has anxiety. He's a more challenging kid for sure.

[Anonymous]

I EBF my daughter and she was an awesome sleeper. I can’t really remember, but at least 8 hrs at 9 weeks, possible 12 hrs, and definitely 12 hrs by 4 months. I will say, I did not use pumped milk except for like once a week. My milk at nighttime was super creamy and in the morning it was like water. Sometimes when I hear that breastfeeding moms have their husbands give a bottle of pumped milk in the evening, I’m not sure that’s a smart choice.

[Anonymous]

My anecdata is as follows:

Baby #1 - first 12 hour stretch at exactly 3 months. Solidly 10-12 hours by 4 months.

Baby #2 - first 12 hour stretch at 10 weeks. Solid 10-12 hours from then on.

I exclusively breast fed.

And I got stupidly lucky.

[Anonymous]

It’s all bs if you ask me. My EBF daughter slept through the night at 8 weeks. My formula fed son didn’t until about 5 months.

[Anonymous]

Always use formula for the last bottle before bed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both my BF babies were down to one feeding fairly quickly, then STTN at about 6 months.

We never co-slept; I didn’t do the side-lying nursing thing very often.

+1. My BF babies were sleeping 8 hours by 6 weeks and 12 hours by 5 months. No cosleeping. We did use swaddles and pacis.

[Anonymous]

It’s a lot more work for baby to BF so they usually get less than they would get from a bottle. In my experience (3 kids) there is more than what they are eating. I hunk pumped milk and formula aren’t that different and my newborns could usually take up to 100-120 ml and sleep for 4 hours. When I breastfed, they would sleep for 2-3 hours.

[Anonymous]

There is actually evidence that FF babies sleep up to one hour longer stretches. I think it makes the most difference in the early months. I EBF FWIW and thought the relative ease/quickness of BFing really made up for it (& the other benefits, though I agree there’s a lot of confounding in the data).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Always use formula for the last bottle before bed

Why? Both my breastfed babies STTN at 4 months. (We also used formula later when I didn't want to pump at work, so not anti-formula; just asking, what's the point of a formula bottle before bed?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t notice a big difference in sleep habits, but middle of the night feedings were so much easier when I was breastfeeding. No filling bottles or cleaning them, mixing formula, just roll over and pull down my nightgown.

There’s a FF hack for this: line up 3 bottles filled with plain water, put three Dixie cups of powder next to them. Roll over, dump and shake, clean the bottles in he morning.

NP. That's a good idea, but how did you warm the bottles?

[Anonymous]

I have 4 children, all EBF, no bottles. They were all STTN (8 hours) between 6 and 8 weeks old. I've not experienced any sleep issues with any of them, and didn't do anything special, either. I did the exact same thing for all of them, and nursed them to sleep. My niece was FF and never STTN until she was 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t notice a big difference in sleep habits, but middle of the night feedings were so much easier when I was breastfeeding. No filling bottles or cleaning them, mixing formula, just roll over and pull down my nightgown.

If you’re cleaning bottles and mixing formula in the middle of the night then you’re doing it wrong.

[Anonymous]

I supplemented my first, horrid sleeper.

My second was all BF’d and sttn at 6 weeks. He was the one where I saw the 4 month sleep regression. The first never slept more than a two hour stretch until she was 8 months anyway, so I simply never noticed any regressions, there was nothing to regress from!