I had a really hard time BF while laying down because I am naturally a
small busted person and I don't remotely have pendulous breasts. In
addition, I had the worst ever case of engorgement with 2 kids, and
every tiny little baby noise made me let down during the night AND my
breasts absolutely refuse to leak even when they are about to burst.
(It's due to a genetic mutation I have--Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome--and
all but 1 BFing EDSer said that they had the exact same problem, which
I could never find in any published material). I never had a wet shirt
from let down--only from 1 of my kids projectile vomiting nearly every
feeding while still on the breast! I had to move my kids out to the
hallway and close the door even though I wanted to co-sleep or at
least have them in the same room. I would wake up only when they began
to actually cry and they would settle down just fine. I also could not
fall asleep when woken up to BF. I have to be wide awake to manage to
walk across the room and hold a baby without dropping it. (I have this
awful tendency to drop things once I forget that I am holding them, so
motherly instinct kicked in and I was wide awake.) If you can sleep
through the sucking sound, you will be just fine. Babies make sucking
sounds even when they aren't hungry. So hang in there and it will get
better, as all of the rest of us can attest to. I had to switch to
placing my kids in an electronic swing every night for about the first
year--I would set the timer and they would sleep like a baby. They
both had GERD, so I think that it was the sitting halfway upright that
did the trick. Plus I needed every second of sleep due to my long list
of medical issues.

Once your BFing is solidly established which it should be at 12 weeks,
you can sustain a more than ample supply of food even if baby sleeps
through the whole night. My grandmother-in-law claims that both her
babies slept through the night once they were 1 week old and she BF
just fine...I am a little skeptical that she didn't formula feed
occasionally in order to feed the babies enough to survive.

Now if you are wanting to use BF as a contraceptive, it won't work at
all unless you naturally don't ovulate much. My friends have found
that out the hard way...2nd baby born 9 months almost to the day from
the first baby. She got pregnant on her honeymoon too (she was a
virgin). Once you menstruate one time while only BFing (no supplements
at all), you are probably at least as fertile as you were before the
baby, and there is a good chance that 1 month before that you are
fertile. Having a baby 9 mos after the first one is not at all good
for either baby or yourself. It is extremely difficult to maintain an
exclusive BF if you are pregnant with a 1-mo old, and your new baby
gets the leftovers because, unless you have absolutely perfect
nutrition during both pregnancies, your body is badly depleted,
especially if you have horrible problems with morning, noon, and
evening sickness. And don't count on 2nd pregnancy to be nausea-free
if the first wasn't...because I only had a slight twinge of nausea
when I smelled leftover shrimp frying oil with the 1st, but the 2nd
one was constant nausea and lots of vomiting. I am assuming that an
avid co-sleeper wants to BF as long as possible within reason (they
have to be weaned by the time they're in college or you and the kid
need to see a shrink). Use birth control!!!! (Ok, so real birth
control is Lamaze and a better word is ovulation control.) I was
repeatedly warned about my friends' very hard experiences.

You can fairly easily continue to breastfeed a 2 year old while
pregnant, as long as the 2-year-old isn't exclusively breastfed, just
feeding once or twice a day. A friend's mother got pregnant every two
years practically on the dot, no matter what BC was being used. By #3
or 4, she definitely weaned completely and instantly the day the kid
was 2--she bribed the kids with whatever 1 thing they wanted and they
could wish whatever was biggest in their 2-year-old mind, and it
worked really well--my friend can remember being happy about her 2-
year-birthday-weaning--she got to go to a restaurant (they almost
never went otherwise). After #8 or 9 or 10 or something like that [I
know so many people with 12+ kids that any less than that is not a big
family and thus not remarkable] no baby was born 2 years later. Either
she was in menopause or she had to have a hysterectomy right before 2
years, and the rest of the family was quite disappointed when the baby
turned 2 and 1/2 and mommy wasn't having a baby [I bet she was
secretly happy just to have her body back to herself, even with no
baby] and I haven't heard of any babies after that.

Christina