ep 12 - full feeds, snack feeds, cliuster feeds and sleep
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to this sleep by Alex podcast. I am a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of three, and I will be bringing you quick science backed sleep advice to get you and your baby or a toddler sleeping well.
Hi everyone. This week we are back with a really important topic. I want you to start thinking, what kind of eater is my baby? Did you know that your baby's feeding patterns actually influenced the way they sleep? Today, I'm gonna be covering different feeding patterns and how it may be contributing to your baby's sleeping well or sleeping like crap.
Okay? We're gonna talk full feeds, verse snack feeds, verse cluster feeds. I'm also going to talk reverse cycling, and is it better to have your baby formula fed or breastfed in order to sleep better? We're gonna cover all of this today .
This [00:01:00] episode is for all parents. Whether you breastfeed you formula feed, or you're combo feeding, I don't care. This can all apply to you. Also, before I dive in, make sure you consult with your pediatrician or your lactation consultant. If you have any concerns about the way your baby eats or their weight gain, or anything like that.
This is not meant to be medical advice. Now let me start by saying. The way your baby eats definitely isn't the only thing that affects their sleep. Of course, if it was, I wouldn't have this whole podcast, right? There are a lot of things that can go into why your baby isn't sleeping well, , but it is one of those really big important reasons for crummy sleep sometimes, especially in those first few months.
Why is that? Well, there's a few reasons. First of all, hungry and sleep, they're not gonna happen At the same time, if your baby does not eat enough and they are hungry, they may not sleep well. Right? Just like if you went to bed hungry, it might take you a little longer to fall asleep sleep.
If your baby hasn't had a good feed [00:02:00] recently before, you're putting them down for their nap, they might wake up 30 minutes later hungry. If your baby isn't getting enough nutrients in during the day, they might be waking up more at night needing to make up for that by taking in more frequent feeds at night.
Also, the way your baby feeds, their feeding patterns, which I'll get into in a minute, can affect the way they sleep, regardless of if they're getting enough calories or not.
If your baby is a snack feeder versus a full feeder versus a reverse cycler, their sleep might all look different.
Okay, let's start this by talking about full feeds versus snack feeding.
Prioritizing nice full feeds during the day is always one of the very first tips I give new parents. The moment your baby is born, this is something you can start doing right away to help with sleep, and obviously to help with their growth and their weight gain and all of that.
Ensuring your baby is taking in full feeds every [00:03:00] two to three hours during the day can help stretch their naps and the time they sleep at night. So what exactly is a full feed? How do we define a full feed? Well, every baby is different. I am not going to sit here and give you an exact amount of ounces.
Your baby should eat at each feed or an exact amount of minutes. Your baby should nurse before ending the feed, please chat with your pediatrician. If you are not sure your baby is getting enough to eat. Instead of worrying about an exact number, I want you to just keep an eye out for some of these signs to know if your baby is taking in a full feed or not.
Does your baby show signs of being full and satisfied after their feed? Maybe their body is getting more relaxed. Maybe they're sucking, has slowed down and they're just sort of suckling. Now maybe they are starting to turn away. They're taking, , their mouth off the breast or the bottle. They seem disinterested.
Is your baby able to take [00:04:00] a feed and remain content and satiated for two to three hours before needing another feed? And of course, is your baby gaining weight normally? . So these are all signs we wanna look for to make sure,
is my baby taking enough in at each feed?
Why is it important to prioritize these full feeds? Well, first of all, full feeds can help ensure your baby's taking in enough calories during the day. This can allow your baby to start to consolidate their nighttime sleep, to start to stretch that nighttime sleep longer. While it is completely normal for your baby to have feeds in the middle of the night.
For quite a while. We do wanna make sure they're getting most of their calories in during the day so they don't start reverse cycling, which is when they take in most of their calories at night. I'm gonna get into reverse cycling later, so stick around to learn more about that. Once again, it is normal for your baby to have feeds at night for a while.
But even when they have night feeds, we want to make [00:05:00] sure a majority of their calories are getting taken in during the day. Full feedings can also help you understand your baby's fussiness, your baby's cues and cries. If you are a baby, took a nice full feed in, and then 60 minutes later they're getting fussy,
you can know in your head, okay, they're most likely not hungry. They're probably tired based on this, this, and this, right? So you can actually start to read their cues a little bit better and read their fussiness a little bit better when they've had a full feed and you know that they can be satiated for a couple hours.
The fussiness is probably due to something else. Full feeds can also help your baby obviously feel happier. More content during their awake windows. They feel more satisfied. They're more comfortable between their feeds, we don't want to have to worry about them being uncomfortable or hungry during their awake windows.
Finally, full feeds will help with longer naps and longer nighttime stretches. Your baby can be [00:06:00] satisfied long enough to take a solid nap, and your baby is used to taking in a full feed and then staying satiated for a few hours, which is going to help with that nighttime sleep.
So how do full feeds compare to snack feeding? What is snacking? Snacking is when babies get in the habit of taking smaller or shorter frequent feeds throughout the day. This might look something like your baby taking an ounce or two, and then maybe an hour later they take another ounce and then maybe, you know, 45 minutes after that, they take another ounce.
Maybe an hour after that, they take two ounces. Maybe 90 minutes later they'll take another two ounces and so on and so forth. While this may eventually get your baby the same amount of calories or amount of milk in a 24 hour period as full feeds every two to three hours, babies stuck on a snacking cycle, often take short naps and have more frequent night wake up .
I see this all [00:07:00] of the time.
First of all, your baby may just not be used to taking in enough to stay satisfied for a couple hours. They get so used to taking in a small amount of milk every 45 minutes, every hour, every 90 minutes. That they just don't take in enough to stay satiated for a few hours so they are truly hungry an hour later after their feed.
This can make it really hard to fit in a solid nap or even get a couple hours stretch of sleep at night before your baby wakes up hungry again. Right? If they're not taking in a whole lot, they're naturally going to be hungry sooner.
How do people get stuck on this sort of snacking cycle? , the most common reason I see for getting on a snacking cycle is using feeding to soothe versus using it for hunger. So a parent will feed their baby and then maybe an hour later their baby is crying, their baby is fussy.
They think, okay, milk will fix this. They must be hungry. So they offer more milk, and now we're taking a [00:08:00] smaller feed because we just fed an hour ago and so on and so forth. Anytime baby is fussy, we offer milk. So baby naturally starts taking smaller feeds really frequently 'cause they just aren't getting hungry enough to take that full feed and to stay satisfied for a couple hours.
Distractions can be another reason that you get on a snacking cycle. So maybe you have. A six or seven month old who is now just busy as can be, cannot chill even for a few minutes to take in a feed. They nurse for a couple minutes. You keep offering the boob all day long at any moment just so that you can get more milk in them.
And so inevitably they stay on these snacking cycles. 'cause all day we're just like here. You want more here? You want more here, you want more? 'cause we can only get them a minute at a time. Right.
So that can be another reason we sort of get stuck on these snacking cycles.
Once again, while snack feeding and full feeding may both get your baby the same amount of calories in a 24 hour period, if you were to add it all up, [00:09:00] snack feeding can often lead to shorter naps. More frequent night. Wake up while full feeds can help consolidate sleep and reduce the hunger based wake ups.
So how do you move away from snack feeding? I am definitely going to give you some tips on how to do that. Before I do that though, I do wanna talk about cluster feeding because some of you might be thinking right now, but wait, I've heard of cluster feeding. I'm told that this is normal. How do I avoid cluster feeding?
So let me touch on cluster feeding and then I'll talk about how to move away from snack Feeding,
cluster feeding is also a pattern of feeding frequently, but it's usually one time in the day. It is typically only in the newborn months, and it usually is in the evening, very common to go along with their like quote unquote witching hour or witching hours as I like to call them, or growth spurts. This can happen with both breastfed and bottle fed babies and it is completely normal.
It can help your baby sort of like tank up [00:10:00] with milk before their longest stretch of sleep at night. , it's usually temporary. Like I said, it's usually most common in the newborn months, and it's only one time of the day.
Often in the evening, hours before bedtime. If your baby eats more frequently at one time of the day, like every evening, they wanna eat every 45 minutes. Don't worry about starting the habit of snacking. Feed your baby if they need it. A baby on a snacking schedule is going to have those small frequent feeds all day long from morning to night, right?
Sometimes snacks are going to happen. I'm not expecting every single feed you ever do to have at least two hours between it, right? That's just not realistic, but.
Don't worry about it unless you feel like every day, all day you are on a snacking cycle from sunup to sundown. Just try to go with the flow. Prepare for that sort of evening cluster feed, remain calm. , don't worry about that. Turning into snack feeding. This is really normal and it will pass.
Okay, so now let me give you [00:11:00] some tips for moving away from snack feeding if you're interested in that. Of course, if the way you feed your baby works for you, please do not change a single thing. But if you are noticing now that you hear more about snack feeding versus full feeding, that you are struggling with sleep or struggling with just your feeding patterns in general, because maybe you're on a snacking cycle, here are some tips for how to move away from that.
After I give you those tips, I am going to chat, reverse cycling, which you really need to know about, and then I will talk breast milk versus formula before we wrap it up.
Okay. Moving away from snack, feeding, first, let me say that I will never tell you to put your baby on a strict feeding schedule or to make your baby wait to eat even if they are hungry. If your baby is hungry, feed them. If your baby is cluster feeding, feed them. But if you're ready to move away from snack feeding all day long, here are some things you can try.
The first is keep your baby awake while they eat. This can [00:12:00] feel really tricky , especially during those first couple months when they're just fresh newborns and they're really sleepy. When your baby is ready for a feed, try making sure you've swaddled them. You've undressed them all the way down to their diaper.
While they're feeding, you can gently tap on them. You can wiggle their limbs. You can talk to them while they eat, keep them awake for as long as possible so they can finish most of their feed before they inevitably pass out. Okay?
Along those same lines, maybe you don't have a baby falling asleep outta feed, but maybe you have an older baby who's distracted at the feed. So during feeding time, try moving to a quiet room. Try moving to a room without other people or distractions around.
Oh my gosh. With my third baby, by the time he hit five months old, I could only nurse him in his rocking chair in his nursery with a lullaby playing. This was the only way he could eat. So every few hours I had to take him in there and go do the feed or else he just wouldn't take a full feed in. There was just way too much going on, especially being the third kid.
Tip number [00:13:00] two. Feeding on demand does not mean feeding your baby every time they whimper. Of course, you should feed your baby when they are hungry. If your baby's hungry, give them a feed. But take note, parents often confuse tiredness and hunger in the newborn months.
Okay?
Your newborn might not necessarily be hungry 45 minutes after they woke up and just had a feed. They're most likely tired and need a nap. Tip number three, look out for some hunger cues. Do you see them putting their fist in their mouth, maybe smacking their lips, maybe rooting around? These are just as few signs to look out for.
The last tip, tip number four, is see if you can start stretching the time between feeds. Just by like 20 minutes at first. It doesn't need to be long. You don't need to jump straight from feeding every hour to feeding every three hours, right? You can start with, okay, we're approaching that hour. Let's see if we can get another 15 or 20 minutes outta them, and then we'll give the feed.
Your baby is most likely [00:14:00] not going to take a full feed if they just ate 60 minutes ago, so just slowly stretching the feeds bit by bit, can help them over time, take in bigger feeds and get hungrier. And then stay satiated for longer.
Okay. Now let's talk reverse cycling. What is reverse cycling? This is when a baby eats more at night and less during the day. So maybe during the day it's hard to get your baby to eat. They take short feeds or they don't feed until it's been four or five hours, and then at night, all of a sudden they're up every two hours.
Eating reverse cycling can make them wake up more frequently at night due to hunger because they haven't had enough during the day. So they're gonna wake up more frequently at night for feeds to make up for that, which of course can disrupt those long stretches of sleep that we wanna get at night.
Reverse cycling can start to occur for a few reasons. Maybe you are a breastfeeding mom and you go back to work and your baby isn't taking bottles very well while you're at work, and then you're up breastfeeding all night long, right? That can be one reason that you get [00:15:00] stuck in this sort of reverse cycling.
Maybe it's happening because during the day your baby's really distracted and they're taking short feeds all day long, or they're waiting four or five hours in between feeds, and then at night your baby has to make up for that and it's nice and quiet and peaceful at night.
So they will wake up and take full feeds in frequently, all night long.
Reverse cycling can also happen if you rely on feeding to get your baby back to sleep all night long. So any moment they stir, whether it's been 45 minutes since they last ate an hour, two hours, you pop them on the breast or the bottle in order to get them back to sleep.
So now inevitably we're going to end up with more frequent feeds at night than we are during the day.
To avoid falling into a reverse cycling situation, make sure you're encouraging those full awake feeds during the day. If you're returning to work, it's probably a good idea to start practicing gentle bottle introduction, even just once a day for maybe a couple months before you go back [00:16:00] to work. If you're already back to work and you're still breastfeeding, then spend some time in the afternoons or the evenings doing some skin to skin, lots of nursing in the evenings before they're eventually going to go to bed.
And finally, find other ways to get your baby back to sleep at night. It can get really exhausting and obviously lead to reverse cycling. Or snack feeding if we only rely on feeding to get our baby to sleep, right? We've talked about this a lot before. Yes, the first month or so, your baby may actually need a feed every two hours all night long.
This is really normal for those little newborns, but after the first month or so, most are able to go at least three hours between feeds at night. So if your baby is older than like a month old and is waking up and it hasn't yet been three hours since they last ate, see if you can spend some time offering the pacifier, rocking padding, something else like that before just popping them right on the breast or the bottle in order to get them back to sleep.
See [00:17:00] if you can just stretch them a tiny bit longer until their next feet. I obviously do not mean push them through hunger. If your baby is hungry, you should feed them, but if they're just waking up and it's comfort that they need, they'll mostly fall back asleep with some sort of other method of comforting them within 10 or 15 minutes.
If they haven't fallen back to sleep, then you feed them and hey, we stretched it 10 to 15 minutes longer than it would've been if we popped them right on the breast or bottle right when they woke up, and that's great.
All right. We've talked snack feeds, full feeds, reverse cycling, cluster feeding, all of the goodies. Now I just wanna touch on one last topic before we wrap up. And that is should I breastfeed or formula feed my baby for better sleep?
Although you may hear some myths or some facts about the way breast, milk and formula are digested, honestly, what your baby eats is not going to be a huge factor to how they sleep.
Yes, it is true [00:18:00] that breast milk can be digested quicker than formula. But this is not going to be make or break when it comes to your baby's sleep.
So often when I hear people say, well, my friend's like Formula Fed, baby sleeps all night, blah, blah, blah. Most of the time what I see is because of feeding habits that breastfeeding parents get into versus it's that they're taking formula rather than breast milk. Right? It's usually something else going on with your sleep habits rather than the type of milk your baby is taking in. Let me be super clear. If you want to stop breastfeeding because you feel like you need a change and it's no longer sustainable for you, or you want to try combo feeding and you wanna add, you know, some formula here and there, by all means, please do so.
This is your choice. It's best if your baby is fed and you are happy and you feel like you can sustain what you're doing right now. But don't [00:19:00] let the thought of possible better sleep, be the reason that you stop breastfeeding. Okay? There are so many other things we can do before we jump to maybe if I stop breastfeeding my baby, we'll sleep all night.
The best way to feed your baby is the way that works for you and your baby.
So as a little recap, aim for full daytime feeds to help support that consolidated nighttime sleep. If you feel like your baby does take full feeds every two to three hours and feeding is not an issue yet, you're still awake more at night, or they're stuck with those 30 minute crummy naps. Feeding might not be the reason that this is happening.
If you'd like to find out the reason that your baby is not sleeping well at night or not napping well, now is the perfect time for you to join my next group sleep coaching session, which begins next Thursday, July 3rd. It runs through all of July. You can join this next group for only $17 with [00:20:00] the code podcast.
That's gonna get you 50% off your first month. So for the price of a couple coffees, you can join our group and I will get you the help you need, the individualized support, you and your baby, your choir, and we will navigate getting your baby to sleep longer. Stretches and nap better for you.
You can cancel your membership anytime. You can leave after the month is over, or you can stay for additional support. If you're curious about joining our group, check out the link in the show notes. I created an actual, like new page on my website that really lays out everything you need to know about group sleep coaching.
So go check it out.
Once again, thank you so much for listening. If you found this helpful, please send it to somebody you know or leave a five star review, subscribe. All of these little tiny things just take you a minute and they really, really help me reach more parents. I hope you have a great week and we'll chat next week.
