Babywise Works!

I chose to breastfeed my daughter, Grace. I also pump. Breast milk is excellent nutrition for babies, and it's free. It's also more convenient in most scenarios.  You just stick the baby on the boob, and don't have to rush around preparing a bottle then warming it. At times, it's inconvenient, particularly, when you can't, (haha!) but for the most part, it has worked well for me thus far. Don't get me wrong, breastfeeding has its challenges.  I experienced them too, like most other people. I wanted give up on day 3, got engorged, had bleeding and cracked nipples, discovered a nipple shield, etc. In fact, I could elaborate more on all of that, but that's a topic for another post. This post is about why the Babywise methodology works.  Also, it's important to know that this post is judgement free. It's simply an account of my personal experience with breastfeeding and sleep patterns after reading the book Babywise. 

When my daughter was born, (just 8 weeks ago,) I was told to feed her on demand, at least for the first 4 weeks. It sounds selfish, but this was really disruptive to my life, so it lasted only a week. It's important that you know I love feeding my daughter.  It's special because I'm the one with the milk and I'm so happy to do it. I enjoy the bonding time too. I started back work sooner than most Moms, so somewhat of a schedule was nearly a necessity for us. I am very happy that we decided to implement a schedule so early on. Call me crazy, but it has worked well. My daughter is 8 wks old and just slept through the night. 

Let's start at the beginning. Sure, baby knows when she wants to eat, but she also wants to sleep!! She could sleep for really long spells. I wanted to make sure she was eating enough times during the day, and getting plenty to eat each feeding. 

Like I said, I also pump so my Husband or Nanny can feed her when I'm gone. I would pump initially to gauge how much each boob was yielding in a certain time frame. One yielded more than the other, but that's ok. At first, I let her eat for as long as she wanted on each breast. That got old fast, so I stuck to about 15 min on each breast. My Doula assured me that was ok. Plus, it seemed to meet her tummy requirement according to how much I was pumping. For example, each boob produced about 2 oz in 10 - 15 minutes of pumping. So if she nursed for 30 min total, she would get about 4+ ounces each feeding. Bottles go faster than that. 

So at 1 week old, I began feeding her every three hours. Feeding times were at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm, 10 pm, 1 am and 4 am. I would wake her to feed her during the day if she was sleeping, but not at night.  It's important to state that I never let her go hungry. If she was inconsolable in between thosse feeding times, I fed her, but this didn't last long. She quickly seemed satisfied with eating every three hours. After just 2 weeks, she only needed one night feeding. Some nights, she needed two, but it wasn't the norm. If she woke up crying to eat, I fed her. Otherwise, I didn't. I let her sleep. My Doctor said this was ok. She never went longer than 5 hours without eating at night. In an 8 hour sleeping period during the night, she would wake once, on her own, around 2 or 3 am to eat. A typical night looked like this...

Ate 10 - 10:30 pm 

Slept 10:30-2:30 am (4 hours)

Ate 2 - 2:30 am 

Slept 2:30 -6:30 am (another 4 hours) 

I am no longer dead set on the times of 7, 10, 1, etc.  Her feeding times are now dictated by when she wakes up in the morning and first eats. We are actually on more of a 6, 9, 12 schedule but it's still really similar. There is a little bit of flexibility with times but it's about the same daily give or take 30 minutes or so. 

She gained appropriate weight at all of her check ups. And trust me, I went to the doctor alot. We went at 1 week (first appointment,) at 2 weeks, at 1 month (took advantage of this because it was recommended for new Moms by my Doctor,) at 5 weeks (suspected cold,) and at 8 weeks. 

Since she was 1 week old, Grace has been a pretty good sleeper at night. For 7 weeks, she's only waken up once in the night to eat, on average.  And now at 8 weeks, she's slept through the night. I suspect this pattern will stick. I will continue to pump at night to keep building my milk supply.  I really feel that reading and following Babywise had helped get Grace on a good, healthy schedule.  

Here is the cliff notes version of Babywise. Eat, Wake, Sleep. Feed baby (every 3 hours by day,) keep he or she up after eating for an activity (like tummy time, swing or reading,) then put baby down for a nap. At the end of the day, they've eaten enough and are tired enough to sleep well at night, and then eventually sleep through the night. 

Hooray!