Thursday, November 20, 2008

All Through the Night

Harry was asleep last night at 8:45. He got up at 6:45 this morning. I'm not holding my breath while I wait for it to happen again or anything, but it was nice to get a full night's sleep for the first time in a long while.

F0r anyone who is nursing and whose children do this regularly, do you get up in the night to pump? or do you just deal with feeling like you're going to explode come morning?

6 comments:

Jaymee said...

doing the happy dance for you. chanting "Sleep Harry Sleep".

maresi said...

Wow! YAY Harry! And I thought I had it good with Maria sleeping from 11:30-7.

I guess the pumping thing depends on if you want to keep putting away milk. I know that for me I've stopped pumping in the middle of the night, and the supply has regulated so that I don't wake up engorged and leaking anymore. I have a decent freezer supply but she mostly just nurses, and we save the freezer stock for when I absolutely can't be there to feed her. But since you're going back to work without him in a bit (*sob*, I know it's awful to think about) you might want to keep pumping to really have a ton of stored milk. However, sleep is so important too.

HereWeGoAJen said...

Good for Harry! Tell him to keep it up!

Intrepidgirl said...

Hello from a lurker --
I'm so jealous about the full night's sleep! Anyway, I talked to a lactation consultant about the sleeping through the night thing (not that it's happened but in case it does), she told me that if I woke up and was engorged, I could pump or wake the baby up to feed him. I'm sad to say I actually tried the latter option once when my baby slept for 5 hours. I had to work so hard to wake him to feed him...it was pointless because I ended up having to pump anyway. However, my friend with a 6 month old says that eventually your body does adjust and she rarely feels engorged during the night...hard to imagine. Good luck!

Nicky said...

Holy cow I'm jealous! LL had been regularly sleeping approximately 7pm to 1am, but then he's up at 4am and 6:30am, so it doesn't actually help me to get more sleep, because I don't go to bed at 7:00.

Having said that... I regularly pump around 10pm before going to bed (though not always). It helps me to feel better, and I like getting the extra supply of milk for the fridge. When that supply feels sufficiently large, I'll stop the pumping and let my body regulate itself, but for now, I figure I'm up at 10:00 anyway without anything better to do.

Enjoy your sleep!

Yo-yo Mama said...

I use to get up to pump if it'd been more than 3-4 hours. Unfortunately, the baby would always seem to wake up 30 min later and I'd have nothing.

I don't anymore, but it will impact your production if you decide not to.