If you're breastfeeding your baby and in a sleep emergency, consider asking another loving adult to do a shift at night

These six topics in the It's an emergency section of The Possums Sleep Program are the place to start if you're in a baby sleep crisis. To really turn things around over the next couple of weeks, so that the days and nights are as enjoyable as possible, and you're no longer so utterly exhausted and sleep-deprived, please go to the whole of The Possums Baby Sleep Program, starting here. Or you might like to go to the Brief & simple version first, starting here.

If you're in a baby sleep crisis, aim for workability rather than perfection

It can be helpful to know that

• The latest research tells us breastfeeding women sleep as much as or more than formula-feeding parents

• Excessive night waking is typically caused by disruptions to your baby's circadian or body clock settings, not the breastfeeding (once you're sure your baby is getting enough milk)

• Working through The Possums Sleep Program mostly helps settle excessive night waking within a week or two.

Babies typically do cry for their breastfeeding mother’s body in the night. This is biologically normal behaviour, and is a reason why many breastfeeding women only set up shifts with their partner or another loving adult in the night as last resort. But you might decide things are so bad right now that you need to compromise for a short time. When you're in a sleep emergency, it's best to focus on workability, not perfection, while things get sorted out. Only you can work out what’s right in your unique situation.

• Your baby's other parent or carer could take the shift between say eight o'clock at night to one o'clock in the morning (set the hours of the shift to suit yourself), after which you might want to be back on duty. When you're not on night duty, I suggest sleeping in a quiet place with earplugs in so that you don’t hear if your baby cries.

• Or you might decide to ask your support person to take your baby from one o'clock in the morning or thereabouts, if the excessive night waking occurs from the hours after midnight.

• Your sleep emergency might be so awful that you need to clock off for an entire night or more.

Regardless, this means asking your other loving adult to use bottles of expressed breast milk. Sometimes, if a breastfeeding woman is in a serious sleep crisis and not able to express enough breast milk, or just too worn out, she might decide to allow her baby to take bottles of formula for a few nights, either for split shifts or for an entire night off.

Splitting the night into shifts doesn't necessarily help long-term

Many families find that splitting the night into shifts isn’t a helpful ongoing strategy, though it sometimes has a role in an emergency. This is because nights with breastfed babies usually go best when

• The frequency of night waking has returned to normal (that is, your baby’s body clock has been reset), and

• Both the mother and baby fall back to sleep quickly after a feed.

Breastfeeding women often find it's more disruptive for a non-breastfeeding parent or carer to get up to make a bottle (even though the intention is to help) than it is to breastfeed the baby back to sleep. This is because baby dials right up in the time it takes to prepare the bottle, or cries for her mother's body, which means that everyone is wide awake, and it takes much longer to go back to sleep.

How can you help when your baby's breastfeeding mother doesn't want you to take over in the night?

There are many important ways in which you can support a severely sleep-deprived breastfeeding woman without taking over in the night, unless she specifically asks you to. It can be frustrating when your intention is to help, yet she doesn't want you to do any of baby's feeds with a bottle. However, there will be reasons why your partner has made this decision.

It's a matter, then, of working together as a team to explore what else your partner needs from you, or what else you can do that she would find helpful. Together, you'll experiment and make decisions that are right for your unique family. These decisions are likely to change over time. No-one else knows what is right for your family, other than you.