question about sleeping while eating

[ronitko]

sometimes, when my son - 7 weeks old - is eating he closes his eyes but continue sucking - is he sleeping? and if he is, is it a problem? will he have trouble going to sleep later for his nap?

Ronit

[maggieruth]

without watching your baby bf its hard to tell if your baby is actually getting a feed or not but if you want to see if a baby is really eating or just sucking for comfort or to drift off to sleep, check out the video, this guy is a bit of a bfing guru and will show you how it looks if a baby is actually feeding
(all the articles i have read by him are pretty good!)

http://www.thebirthden.com/Newman.html

[Erin (redstarfalling)]

It's really common when they're small to fall asleep on the breast!  You want to watch for the sucking to go from the slow suck-swallow of drinking to the short butterfly suck-suck-suck of comfort sucking.  Breast compression can really help to increase the flow and wake your lo up (check the site that maggieruth kindly provided!).  I would also change my baby's diaper halfway through to wake her up and get her to eat more.

Once she gets a bit older, she'll start staying awake more and you can worry then about feeding to sleep!  :wink: