Why won't your bottle fed baby feed off to sleep during the day?
Babies don't bottle feed off to sleep during the day if their sleep pressure isn't high enough
The usual reason why a bottle feeding baby doesn't feed off to sleep during the day is that her sleep pressure isn't high enough yet for sleep.
Since you've just used your superpower #1 for sleep, a feed, and your little one didn't fall off to sleep, then you know the sleep pressure isn't that high. It's time to turn your attention back onto enjoying the day, using superpower #2 for sleep, sensory motor adventure.
Feeding offers rich sensory motor nourishment: a quick dose of your body, your warmth, your scent, the reassurance of your surrounding closeness and touch. Milk is not only about filling up your baby's tummy. In the first months of life, it is often not possible to distinguish between when your baby wants milk in the tummy and when your baby wants to be close to your body receiving a rich dose of sensory nourishment from a loving adult.
As your bottle feeding baby gets older, you'll find yourself more frequently experimenting with sensory motor nourishment first to see if you can dial her down, before you go and make up that bottle (or use up that hard-won expressed breast milk)!
Frequent and flexible bottle feeds won’t help make sleep easy if your baby has an undetected feeding problem
Sometimes, a baby who is unable to dial down with bottle feeds as a pattern over time has developed a conditioned dialling up with the bottle. (Other times, the baby just doesn't want any more but the parents are feeling worried about weight gain and keep persisting - which can accidentally create a conditioned dialling up with the bottle over time, anyway.)
It's usually very upsetting to find your baby has a conditioned dialling up with feeds. You can find out about it in detail here. The sooner we are able to deal with a conditioned dialling up with the bottle, the better.
Unfortunately, a conditioned dialling up with the bottle is commonly misdiagnosed as reflux, wind, lactose problems, allergy or gut pain.
You don’t need to cuddle your baby after feeds to keep him asleep
Sometimes, you might decide to hold your sleeping baby close after a feed just because you are enjoying the closeness with your precious little being. Or you might really need some time out and you know that the baby is more likely to stay asleep if you hold her.
It's normal to have the occasional day when you decide to keep your baby asleep on you so that you can meet your own immediate need to sit and do nothing, or check out social media, or take a break or whatever!
But if you are holding your baby for long periods during the day to keep your baby asleep, as a pattern over time, it helps to know this often accidentally sets up disrupted sleep patterns and excessive night waking down the track.
Babies cry when put down because they need to be close to the body of a loving adult
Babies often wake when we put them down. This is normal. They often only need a small amount of sleep to take the edge of their rising sleep pressure. Babies cry on waking, not because of pain or because they need more sleep, but because they need the physical and emotional comfort of being up close to your body, which is a rich kind of sensory motor nourishment.
You might give your baby ten or 15 minutes to fall into deep sleep, and then try putting her down. If baby wakes when you put her down, then that’s all the sleep she needed.
Why burping, holding baby upright after feeds, and wrapping your baby can make sleep harder than it needs to be
Believe it or not, burping your baby or holding your baby upright after a feed, or even wrapping your baby for sleep, can interfere with your baby’s lovely neurohormonal sleepiness after feeds. These practices don't help babies sleep better, despite what you might hear, and can actually make sleep much harder than it needs to be for you and your family.
You can find out more about burping here and here. You can find out more about wrapping your baby here and here.
