New Dad's Guide to Night Feedings

There are quite a few things that seem terrifying to a man who is about to become a father, especially for those with little to no prior experience with children. Countless horror stories seem to arise the moment one mentions his impending fatherhood. Tales of disastrously dirty diapers, colic, and sleepless nights can seriously dampen a potential father’s enthusiasm for his impending parenthood.

The fact is, very few things are as bad as other parents might make them seem. Veteran parents just seem to enjoy making newcomers to the fraternity squirm as much as possible.

The night feeding schedule, for example, is something that causes a lot of dread. The reality, however, is that it’s far less difficult than most potential parents have been led to believe.

The 3am Feeding

Unfortunately, the dreaded and oft-maligned 3am feeding does actually exist. For the first three months or so of a baby’s life, she will rarely sleep for more than three hours at a time before waking to demand sustenance. This is an unavoidable fact of new parenthood. With careful planning, however, new parents can find ways to get something close to a full night’s sleep while still fulfilling their infant’s need to feed.

Most of the time, babies will only stay awake long enough to drink a quick bottle before drifting back to sleep. There will be those times that she just won’t go back to sleep no matter what. These are unavoidable, but not incredibly common unless parents have the misfortune of a baby who develops colic.

In the best-case scenario, a baby will wake three times each night for around 20 minutes, drink her bottle and then go back to sleep. This adds up to only about a single hour of lost rest each evening. New parents should find ways to adjust their schedule so that they can go to bed earlier to accommodate this extra time. New parents tend to be pretty tired every night anyway, so this adjustment shouldn’t be all that hard.

The quality of sleep may be significantly decreased by the multiple interruptions, but at least the quantity can be somewhere close to normal.

Keep Yourself Awake.

It’s important to find ways to keep the mind occupied to stay awake while feeding the baby. Twenty minutes can seem like hours while fighting the urge to fall asleep sitting up. The hands are pretty much occupied, so television is a good option. Quality programming is difficult to find in the wee hours of the morning, but it does exist.

ESPN, for example, reruns SportsCenter pretty much all night long. The news and highlights may be more or less interesting depending on what sports are in season, but watching while up in the middle of the night is a great way to stay awake while catching up on any scores that were missed because of evenings spent cleaning up strained peas and playing peek-a-boo.

DVDs are another alternative for those not terribly fond of sports or infomercials. Three to four periods of 20-30 minutes each night should be just enough time to get through an entire film.

Television shows on DVD are another great choice. Most 30 minute shows run just over 20 minutes on DVD, exactly the amount of time parents can expect to be up for each feeding.

Parenting is fun and few things in life are as rewarding. It’s important for new parents to remember this when faced with the initial deluge of horror stories they’re likely to hear. Keep in mind that few things are likely to be as bad as other parents make them out to be. All it takes to get through is a little planning and a lot of patience.

Your baby will need to feed at all hours.

Your baby will need to feed at all hours.

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