This week we introduced a new schedule for Clara to try and reduce the number of milk feeds that she has and to help her sleep better at night as it was starting to get a bit ridiculous. I’ve been breastfeeding her on demand up until now but as she is so used to being fed whenever she cries, wakes or needs sleep, it has also resulted in her asking for food several times during the night as comfort more than anything and we are really starting to feel the strain from the broken sleep that we are getting each night.

Typically, she has been having anywhere up to 12-13 milk feeds in 24hrs. A lot of the time she doesn’t even commit to the feed properly and gets very distracted with what is going on in the room so I thought it might help to space her feeds out a little bit more so that she is a bit hungrier for each one. We also decided to attempt to reduce her night feeds to a maximum of 2 instead of the average 3-4 that we are currently giving her.

We planned a schedule based around her current waking and sleeping hours and tried our best to stick to it. The daytimes have gone surprisingly smoothly – she seems to be a lot more capable of settling for her naps without a feed than I have given her credit for! I’m not going to lie though, the nighttimes have been TOUGH. We have been trying to cut the typical 4-5 night feeds back to a maximum of 2 so decided to try singing/rocking/shushing her back to sleep at any point that she woke up before 3am (whenever she wakes after this time we feed her). After a couple of nights of hysterical sobbing and some serious perseverance (and sleep deprivation…), she finally seems to be getting better and it looks like we may have broken the frequent nighttime feeding cycle. Yay!