Baby sleeping/eating

*EDIT: L made a good point in saying that sleeping through the night can mean different things to different people. I’m talking specifically about expecting young babies to sleep more than 8 hours straight, and I realize I could have worded that better. There is also a huge difference between giving unsafe advice based strictly off of personal experience and providing information given from doctors, IBCLCs, legitimate sources, etc.

I feel like this needs to be said. Young babies ARE NOT meant to sleep through the night*. There isn’t something wrong with your baby if they don’t sleep 8+ hours, and you shouldn’t be trying to overfeed your baby to get them to sleep more. Babies need to eat frequently to keep their blood sugar regulated, and because their bellies are small. They need to be eating every few hours, especially if they’re breastfed.

Going along with this, unless your child’s ped says it’s medically necessary, you should NOT be putting rice cereal, oatmeal, cows milk or any other solid/adult food food in your baby’s bottle. Bottles are for human milk and formula, and babies guts can’t tolerate solids properly until about 6 months.

The amount of potentially dangerous, and completely false information and advice that is given in this group is unreal. If you have questions about your baby’s eating or sleeping, you should be asking your baby’s doctor. Just because Sally Smith feeds her baby 8oz of breast milk/formula mixed with rice cereal at 7pm and then leaves her baby to sleep until 7am doesn’t mean that’s safe or what you should be doing for your child. Please for the love of god, use your pediatrician as a resource instead of asking a bunch of strangers on the internet that likely have no qualifications aside from “I did this with all three of my kids and they’re all fine 🤷🏼‍♀️” because what was “fine” for their kids could be potentially dangerous or deadly to yours.