New parents often have two big concerns. How will they get enough sleep? And is baby getting enough to eat? Though two separate concerns, they impact each other quite a bit. Most parents will do nearly anything to get more sleep. However, how can they make safe sleep choices without impacting milk supply?
As a Certified Breastfeeding Counselor (CBC) you can aid in helping parents understand the normal physiology of breastfeeding. You can also help them understand how sleep hygiene, sleep training, etc. can have a positive or a negative impact on breastfeeding.
Are Sleep Training And Breastfeeding Contradictory?
As a CBC, it is a bit challenging to cover all the ins and outs of sleep training, methods, safety, etc. However, as a CBC, you can provide evidenced based information, rather than opinions, regarding infant sleep and feeding.
One very important thing to note is informing parents of the importance of frequent feeds in the newborn days. I always ensure parents are aware breastfed newborns should eat a minimum of every 2-3 hours during the day, and only one 4-5 hour stretch max per night until their pediatrician tells them otherwise.
While most newborns wake without issue, occasionally some early term and jaundiced babies will sleep through their hunger cues. This can lead to dehydration. For safety and liability, I always default to their pediatrician’s recommendations for when they can stop waking baby for feeds.
In short, sleep training and breastfeeding aren’t inherently contradictory. Why? Because sleep training isn’t a single defined term. When some parents say sleep training, they may mean hoping their baby learns to self-soothe a bit before falling asleep in a bassinet. For others, they may consider sleep training stretching out as long as they can between overnight feeds.
As you can see, one might negatively impact feeding, the other might not. Aside from personal opinions about sleep training, we cannot say that sleep training negatively impacts supply across the board.
When Could Sleep Training And Breastfeeding Be Contradicted?
There are times where sleep training, depending on how it’s defined, could negatively impact the breastfeeding relationship. If we are defining sleep training as stretching the time between feeds overnight. There are times it isn’t advised from a breastfeeding standpoint.
Times where one should not incorporate sleep stretching include:
- A jaundiced baby
- Slow weight gain
- Not back to birth weight within two weeks
- Any milk supply concerns
- During illness
- Potential growth spurts
- Premature infants
- Anytime a parent has been advised by a pediatrician not to allow baby to sleep through the night without feeds
There are additional times, such as when an IBCLC, nutritionist, or pediatrician recommend more frequent feeds. These are just a few basic times where as a CBC you can advise parents that stretching sleep could negatively impact breastfeeding and baby’s wellbeing if they are exclusively breastfeeding.
Why Is Sleep Training And Breastfeeding Sometimes Incompatible?
As a CBC, you know that breastfeeding is a supply demand process. As the baby demands milk, the body supplies it. Every breastfeeder has a different “storage” capacity for lack of a better word. Every baby varies in the quantity of milk they can take in at once. These two factors play a role in how frequently a baby needs to eat to get adequate intake.
Best practice advice, or what works for most pairs to achieve their feeding goals, is to allow a baby to feed on demand. When a baby is not fed on demand, this risks a drop in milk supply. In many mother baby dyads, the shift is manageable to increasing intake during the day versus at night. However, for some pairs, this can cause significant supply concerns.
Again, personal opinions about sleep training aside, it is helpful to share with parents how the milk supply process works.
For parents hoping to get more rest or hoping to help baby fall asleep with less support, there are many options that are compatible with breastfeeding. Some parents opt to have the non-breastfeeding parent attempt to settle baby with alternative sources of comfort (e.g. rocking, patting, pacifier, etc.) first. If baby persists beyond a short time period, they assume baby is hungry and then breastfeed. In other cases, parents will feed on demand but place baby down to falls asleep on their own.
As a CBC, help parents understand the physiological process of breastfeeding. Provide resources about sleep hygiene and typical infant behavior. Then support parents as they seek to maintain breastfeeding and getting rest.