Ep. 29: What is the relationship between feeding and sleep in infancy?

"You must breastfeed!" says the medical professional. "Don't you dare sleep with your baby!" says the same medical professional. The tension between how we feed our babies and how we sleep with them is a real problem for many new families. As primates, we are expected to stay close to our young, and that includes nighttime, and this has profound implications for our feeding journey. As we discussed last week, breast or chestfeeding grief is real and many families struggle with it, but some of this comes from advice that may be well-intentioned but harms that feeding relationship. This week I got to talk to the expert herself - Dr. Helen Ball - researcher of the effects of sleep location on feeding and vice versa about this very issue. She also happens to be one of my favourite people to talk so this episode was an absolute joy for me. If you think that how you sleep doesn't affect how you feed your baby or how you feed your baby doesn't affect how you sleep, you're likely in for a bit of a surprise. Dr. Helen Ball: https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/staff/?id=121 Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre: https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/durham-infancy-sleep-centre/ BASIS Website: www.basisonline.org BASIS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BabySleepInfoSource/ BASIS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/basis_babysleepinfosource/ Articles of Interest (a small selection of many): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1523-536X.2003.00243.x https://adc.bmj.com/content/89/12/1106.abstract https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0264683021000033147 https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.143 https://adc.bmj.com/content/91/12/1005.short https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/icd.519 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helen-Ball/publication/30053712_Breastfeeding_and_mother-infant_sleep_proximity_implications_for_infant_care/links/0fcfd50c45a22d9d36000000/Breastfeeding-and-mother-infant-sleep-proximity-implications-for-infant-care.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-015-1798-7