DS is 10 weeks old, and has always been a pretty good sleeper - however in the last few days he's gone from waking once per night to nurse to sleeping the whole way through from about 9 until 6:30am. I know, lucky right?!! However, I'm just concerned that he's too little to sleep this long without eating. He is exclusively breastfed and I do nurse on demand - but if it's true that breast milk is typically digested within 2 hours, doesn't that mean that he's effectively going hungry for 6 or 7 hours? He's gaining weight really well so far (he was 6 lb 15 oz and birth, and 12 lb 4 oz at 10 weeks), and I assume that he will simply wake me up if he's hungry, right? I know each baby is different, and I'm also aware that this pattern could change at any moment, but I'm just after a little reassurance - it's tough for me to take advantage of all the extra sleep hours when I wake up at 4am worrying about this! I actually woke him up to feed him at 4am today, and he was totally disinterested and fell right to sleep, lol.
Related to this is the issue of engorgement - after 8 hours or so without nursing, my breasts are quite engorged. The question is: to pump, or not to pump? I don't want to necessarily encourage my body to keep producing milk it doesn't need, but I also don't want these long night time stretches of sleep to negatively impact my milk supply. I have toyed with the idea of setting my alarm for 3am and pumping and freezing (so I have a stash to go back to work with), but sometimes it really hard to drag myself out of bed just for a pump! Any thoughts?
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