This. My wife went half crazy from sleep deprivation when our baby was about 1 month. One time both she and our daughter fell asleep after late night feeding. I went to make a sandwich, and when I came back my wife was crying in bed trying to wake the sleeping baby because she thoght she had been sleeping for 5 hours but in reality it was more like 20 minutes. She was desperate because the baby wouldn't wake up and eat.
After that we realized that we were heading in a dangerous direction. We started the baby on formula instead of breast milk (at the time there was a somewhat agressive push from the baby doctors to keep breast feeding as long as possible).
This meant we could share feeding duties. When she was comfortable with formula we actually left our (about 2 month old at that point) with my parents for 1 night a week so we could both sleep.
Grandparent help would have been far more common in the past due to shared living arrangements. Makes you think it might be harder today when coupled with both parents working.
I agree, but this also in opposition to the prevailing (maybe cultural) drive for everyone to live their own life. Most people I know wouldn't want to live with their parents or their inlaws. Most parents don't want their grown up kids around.
So we build kindergardens and other social services to help with that. And underfunded schools somehow gets stuck with actually making functioning adults out of kids. In Sweden, where I live, stay-at-home parents don't get a full share of the pension funds so the system discurages staying at home with kids. So much for the vote-yourself-rich democrazy.
It's a mess. It should be noted though: The small family unit came first, with industrialization. The social network is there to support the industry, not the family.
A few years ago here in Argentina the advice from many/most doctors/nurses was to wake up the children and breast feed her/him every 3 hours, even if the kid was sleeping. It was insane, because the mother could not do anything and barely sleep. Not every doctor agreed with that, and I'm not sure if they changed it.
And there is also a lot of peer pressure. Other women put a funny face when someone discuss not 100% breast feeding.
My wife tried breastfeeding, it was too much for her and wasn't really working how much she tried.
We had all the pumps, techniques, just wasn't worth the stress.
The important thing is your child is being fed.
There have been multiple cases where infants have starved to death after being born because the mothers were convinced only to give breast milk, and couldn't produce enough.
We switched from 50% formula/breast milk to strictly formula.
If u aren't giving breast, there's additional vitamins you need to give aswell
Do what works best... In many cases it's not breast milk for everyone's health and sanity.
When we switched to ready made Enfamil, that was such a lifesaver for me and my wife
