Would I Get More Sleep if I Switched to Formula?

I’ve been breastfeeding exclusively (my baby is five weeks old), but the sleep deprivation is brutal, and I feel like I would get more sleep if I switched to formula. Is there any data on this? Am I a bad mom if I even consider it?

—Tired of Being Tired

You are not a bad mom, period. There are many reasons why people choose to switch to formula or to combine formula and breast milk, and I’ve written a lot about how much we overstate the benefits of breast milk.

Second point: The sleep deprivation of new parenthood is extremely difficult for virtually everyone. It’s literally a form of torture. Recognizing this does not make it better, but it feels important to acknowledge that this is just hard.

On your particular question, we’ve got some new data from a recently published abstract. (An exciting part of this: a number of participants in the study were recruited from the ParentData audience. Thank you to those who participated so we can answer this question!)

The study has moms use their Fitbit to track sleep for a year postpartum, and the researchers measure total sleep and longest sleep duration. Although they see the whole first year, the abstract is focused on the period from 14 weeks through 52 weeks. Participants are separated into those who exclusively breastfeed for longer versus those who use formula or a mixed feeding approach.

The authors find that feeding mode does not affect total sleep duration but that those who are breastfeeding have (on average) about 0.4 hours less in their longest sleep stretch. The difference in this longest stretch persists through the first year of the child’s life.

These data suggest that introducing formula at some point could slightly increase your longest sleep stretch, although the effects are small. One reason for the overall impacts may be that with formula you can have a partner give a bottle, making it easier to split the night. This may be possible even if you are nursing, if you pump.

There is no magic bullet here, I’m afraid. It does get better.