Frequent flexible breastfeeds help make baby sleep easy

It's normal for babies to fall asleep with a breastfeed

Babies often fall asleep with a breastfeed, day and night. This is biologically normal, and makes baby sleep easy.

Some parents or carers don’t breastfeed directly, but feed their baby expressed breast milk with a bottle. Some parents or carers feed their baby with a bottle using formula. There are ways in which parents and carers using bottles are also able to get in sync with their baby’s evolutionary needs. You can find out about supporting your young baby's sleep ecosystem using bottle feeds here.

Breastfeeding doesn't only bring your little one the extraordinary nutritional and myriad other bioactive protections which come with drinking in the living tissue of your milk. Breastfeeding is a form of sensory motor nourishment. From an evolutionary perspective, breastfeeding meets both these fundamental biological needs. It usually doesn't help to think about these two roles of breastfeeding as if they were separate.

Babies often fall asleep with breastfeeds because breastfeeding causes

A rise in the neurohormones of relaxation due to physical closeness and loving interaction
Dialling up of the parasympathetic nervous system, the ‘rest and digest’ part of the involuntary nervous system, activated by milk in the tummy (though not all breastfeeds transfer much milk and this is normal too as long as your baby is gaining weight well overall)
Dialling down of the sympathetic nervous system activated by the soothing sensory motor experience of suckling.

From a biological perspective, breastfeeding is a crucial part of your baby's sleep ecosystem. You might have heard that you shouldn't breastfeed baby to sleep because it creates bad habits, which is not true. You can find out more here. If your baby is breastfed but you don't feel you can breastfeed to sleep, then sleep often becomes a lot harder than it needs to be for the whole family.

What are frequent flexible breastfeeds?

If you are a breastfeeding woman, offering baby your breast just whenever you think it will dial him down makes sleep easiest for your family. Your breast becomes a powerful tool for keeping your baby dialled down. This has a wonderful side benefit: the sleep regulators (both the body clock and sleep pressure) kick in easily in a dialled down baby.

Offering frequent flexible breastfeeds is so helpful for families that it really is your #1 baby-sleep superpower.

Your baby’s sleep needs decrease throughout the first year of life. This means that your baby will drop off to sleep at the breast less and less often during the day. But many women breastfeed their baby to sleep into toddlerhood and beyond. They find it easiest. When they are ready to stop – they wean.

mum and baby go for a walk in the park

Breastfeeds don't need to last long

Often you'll hear that a breastfeed is like a meal-time, when your baby should fill up on milk. But the idea that a breastfeed has to be a satisfying meal comes out of routine-based approaches to breastfeeding. It places pressure on both yourself and your baby, and can even cause feeding problems and low supply, actually.

Most women need to offer each breast around 12 times in a 24-hour period, without particularly counting or focussing on this, in order to maintain their supply and their baby's weight gain.

Breastfeeds don't need to last for long - although there'll be some feeds when you're happy to settle down into a relaxed long breastfeeding cuddle together. The main thing is to feel you can use the breast to dial your baby down. Your baby might be on the breast just for a brief moment, and you might also offer the breast again even though you offered just a short time ago! Over a 24-hour period (if underlying clinical problems have been dealt with) you can trust your baby to take the milk he needs.

You can’t overfeed a breastfed baby

You really can't overfeed a breastfed baby. Some breastfed babies become very chubby, but this is not a problem and doesn't increase the chances of obesity later on.

Your baby will let you know if she doesn’t want the breast, by back arching, turning her head away, tensing up, clenching her fists, splaying her fingers, or keeping her little mouth firmly closed. These are not signs of reflux or allergy or gut pain.

Make sure you're not accidentally pressuring your baby at the breast

It’s natural to find ourselves feeling rather desperate to get the baby to sleep at times. Sometimes, in the hope of sending baby to sleep, we might be tempted to encourage baby to continue to breastfeed, even when he's pulling off or looking unhappy about it. But unfortunately, any pressure with breastfeeds can backfire, and result not just in a conditioned dialling up at the breast, but worsened sleep.

Often little ones dial up because they are needing a richer sensory motor experience, particularly when you're inside the home, which is a low sensory environment. But they'll take the breast because it's the most interesting thing going on!

It's also true that your baby might need only a very brief moment napping at the breast to take the edge off his rising sleep pressure. Then he's ready for (yet another) sensory motor adventure.

Recommended resources

Frequent flexible breastfeeds help make baby sleep easy

Breastfeeding your baby to sleep doesn't cause bad habits

How to support a breastfeeding woman so that baby sleep isn't entirely up to her

Would it help your baby's sleep to delay or space out breastfeeding in the night?

Is your baby (< 6 months) with sleep problems hungry and needing to start solids?

Is your baby (6 months +) with sleep problems hungry and needing more solids?

What to do about baby sleep when you're ready to wean from the breast?

What to do about daytime sleep if you're weaning your baby?

Would night weaning help your breastfed baby sleep better?

Selected references

Crawford E, Whittingham K, Pallett E, Douglas PS, Creedy DK. An evaluation of Neuroprotective Developmental Care (NDC/Possums Programs) in the first 12 months of life. Maternal and Child Health Journal. 2022;26(1):110-123.

Douglas PS. Re-thinking benign inflammation of the lactating breast: classification, prevention, and management. Women's Health. 2022;18:17455057221091349.

Kent JC, Mitoulas LR, Cregan MD, Ramsay DT, Doherty DA, Hartmann PE. Volume and frequency of breastfeedings and fat content of breast milk throughout the day. Pediatics. 2006;117(3):e387-395.

Kent JC, Gardner H, Geddes DT. Breastmilk production in the first 4 weeks after birth of term infants. Nutrients. 2016;8(756):doi:10.3390/nu8120756.

Moore ER, Berman N, Anderson GC, Medley N. Early skin-to-skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2016; Issue 11. Art. No.: CD003519

Schafer R, Watson Genna C. Physiologic breastfeeding: a contemporary approach to breastfeeding initiation. Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health. 2015;60:546-553.

Tracer DP. Evolutionary and empirical perspectives on 'demand' breastfeeding: the baby in the driver's seat or the back seat? Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. 2024:24-32.