Marit Olanders wrote:
> In a Swedish book on child rearing I read "Five hours of sleep for a
> lactating mother equals eight hours of sleep for someone who doesn't
> breastfeed". No reference. Hence my personal experience this is not
> correct.
Totally anecdotal here, but that amount of sleep literally made me
sick.   I possibly have two of the worst sleeping children I have heard
of.  My son was 2 when my daughter was born, and between the two of
them, even with help from husband, I had so much interrupted sleep for
so long that I got mono at 38 years old and could not get rid of it, I
had symptoms for at least a year.  It will flare up when I get too run
down.  I am a nurse since 1992 and I have been exposed to tons of nasty
bugs and never used to get sick.  Now I get sick all the time, I have
had strep throat 3 times since my daughter was born in 2007 and when I
get colds, they are not just easy colds that go away after a week, they
hang on for a couple of weeks.

My almost 5 years of sleep deprivation have taken a toll on my health,
my immune system is depressed, I never used to get sick like this, plus
I am having a heck of a time losing weight, read that the cortisol that
results from being sleep deprived will make it really hard to lose
weight, and now I have chronic pain in my feet from the extra weight and
it has also exacerbated my fibromyalgia.

I have never given a drop of formula to either child and I am a stay at
home mom.  My daughter is still breastfeeding.  I have been
breastfeeding for almost 5 years straight.

Five hours of sleep a night would make me mentally and physically
unstable.  I think this "fact" flies in the face of research on sleep
deprivation, which, they are finding causes all kinds of diseases.
Again it's anecdotal but I cannot see how breastfeeding could possibly
make you need less sleep.

Liz Cammin, RN and LLL Leader, Midland, MI

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