When baby sleep makes you question everything you know about parenting!

Isn’t it crazy how baby sleep makes you question everything you know about parenting!

Freddie is almost 5 months old.  This month his sleep has gone downhill!  He’s always slept so well, getting up 1-2 times a night for a feed.

“It’s the 4 month sleep regression” I hear you say.
With Arthur I read all about sleep regressions and it made total sense to me, I had always fed him to sleep so I got that I needed to teach him to fall asleep on his own, without me!
But with Freddie, we have always put him down awake, he knows how to self settle.  So I can’t understand why his sleep has turned upside down all of a sudden!?!

The last few nights Freddie has been having around 4 night feeds.  I know that he doesn’t really need this much, but I start playing mind games with myself.  I question if he has had enough milk at his bed time feed. I start to get so frustrated that I don’t really know how much milk he’s had.

My problem comes when I think Freddie has woken too soon after a feed in the night.  He can’t need feeding already, I tell myself if it’s only been a couple of hours since his last feed. But then doubts start to creep in and I can’t stand the thought of leaving him to self settle when he’s hungry.

I did this with Arthur too.  I gave myself a hard time about it all.
We had done sleep training with him but he still would wake a couple times for feeds when I knew that technically he didn’t need it any more.
I never got the hang of expressing, Arthur was not keen on the bottle anyway and I so desperately didn’t want to give him formula.
I felt like I would be failing as a Mum.

When I did eventually try him on Formula one night, he gulped it down and had the best sleep ever.

This of course led to extreme mixed feelings from me.  I was of course really happy Arthur, and I, was getting the sleep we needed.  But then there was the guilt; guilt that I hadn’t switched him to formula at night sooner, and the guilt that my milk hadn’t been enough for him.

So this time round, I decided I’d be way cooler about it all.  That it didn’t matter, as long as Freddie was getting what he needed I didn’t need to stress.
Well, clearly that’s not quite gone to plan else I would not be sat here now writing this post!!

My latest reason for stressing out is that Freddie is nearly a month younger than Arthur was when I started giving him formula at night time.  That by itself is not too much of a problem, but I know that Freddie is a way better feeder than Arthur ever was.  So, perhaps it’s not the amount of milk he’s getting, its something else….but I have no idea what!

As I got myself all stressed and upset about it this morning, after another rubbish nights sleep, Mark asks me what I want to do.  I tell him how I’m feeling about it all.
He then said something that made me snap out of my upset.  He reminded me that we are about to start weaning Freddie so asked why is trying him on formula any different?
He is right.

So, Mark picked up a can of formula tonight and at bed time we gave him a bottle.  He didn’t drink it all but about 2/3rds.  We put Freddie to bed awake and as always he drifted off no problem.  We will see what the night brings!

I’m not giving up breastfeeding all together yet.  I’m not ready.  If it works tonight then great, I’ll have my guilty feelings the same as last time of course, but at least he will be sleeping better.  If it doesn’t work, well at least we can rule it out and then try something else.

This post is just a reminder to us parents to stop being so tough on ourselves!  A reassurance that all will be fine, whether he has formula or not!  Arthur was on formula totally by 8 months and he’s doing great!

At the end of the day we are all doing our best, and worrying is just part of the job right!?

Anyone else as neurotic about their babies sleep as me?

I haven’t even started on proper routine nap times yet with Freddie yet, that’s a whole other area for me to get crazy about!