LOL. Their not supposed to do that. But frankly we are making our own rules at this point since feeding and waking have been such an issue for us. The downside is that when she wakes up, she is SO hungry that she is panicky and basically tries to drown herself by drinking too fast.

I did a little research to find out some sleep info. Newborns sleep between 16-18 hours a day. Which means that if each feeding takes 1 hour, and you are supposed to feed 8 times a day, they are never actually awake to play with them. Only sleep/eat, unless your feeding times are shorter. However, with Ashley this was never the case. Feedings took up to 2 hours because she kept falling asleep while eating. So as a result she was getting sleep deprived I think. At 1 month, the schedule can get down to 14-16 hours a day of sleep, but the feedings should stay at about 8 a day. Again, though this doesn’t work out with Ashley.

At least none of that works out when we breast feed… Last night we fed Ashley breast first for a bit until she started dozing. Took her off, and finished her with formula. She slept 7 hours… When she woke up at 3:30am, mom fed her formula only. Feeding took 40 minutes, and Ashley went right back to sleep for another 3 hours. Far less stressful. Ashley seems to be getting much more satiated, mom is rested finally, and everyone seems happier.

The breast becomes such a focus, and there is so much “bad mommy” bullsh*t associated with stopping, that it creates way too much stress that shouldn’t be there in the first place. Breastfeeding is easier when everyone involved actually wants to participate and is happy with everything about it. When the baby doesn’t seem to be happy about the food quality, and mom is not happy about the time-sinkage, and dad still ends up feeding her formula while mom pumps out the last bits to try to get her milk level up higher, it’s generally a bad deal all around. If you take all the man-hours that we are involved in feeding the baby, including pumping, feeding, heating up pumped milk, etc, we spend over 12 hours a day are spent feeding. Your only supposed to feed 8 times up to an hour each. We are doing double duty because of the pumping, while I feed her. It’s stupid.

So we are probably just gonna use breast feeding as a comfort thing, and formula as the nutrition source. Otherwise life will not move forward, and Ashley will continue to be a source of frustration outweighing the source of joy we are supposed to be feeling. Still not fully decided, but I think we are leaning to that decision.