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Children's health

Help! Dream Feeding gone badly wrong!

3 replies

hannahgardner · 23/08/2016 20:49

Hi everyone,

Hope you can help. My baby is 4 months old and was sleeping every night from 7pm to 3am then feeding, going back to sleep for 3 hours, feeding again and then finally waking up at 9am. so not too bad.

I spoke to a friend about 2 weeks ago who suggested dream feeding her at 11pm so she would sleep through till 7am.To me this sounded like a great idea. We tried it and it didn't work, she still woke at the usual time of 3am.

We then dropped it as it didn't work for us. Now she has started waking at 12pm/1am presumably because she was expecting a feed and then every 3 hours after this. She also now doesn't go back to sleep from around 6am either!

So now we are dream feeding her even though it doesn't make her sleep longer because if we don't she wakes at 12/1 and it's exhausting.

Has anyone else foolishy done this?! and is there any advice for how we either get her to sleep through or drop the dream feed and get her back on schedule to sleep from 7pm till 3am?

I wish I had never done dream feeding!

OP posts:
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isthistoonosy · 23/08/2016 20:53

She may just be in the 4 month sleep regression.
Df didn't work for us either I just stopped and fed when they woke and it gradually spread out again, but they were younger.

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SlightlyperturbedOwl · 23/08/2016 20:53

It's hard because sleep deprivation is horrible and you feel like you were in a routine, but with my 2 I found often their feeding times shifted and increased or decreased as they go through growth spurts etc. I would just do what suits your little one-unfortunately a few hours of sleep in one go feels like a bonus for most parents in the first few months Flowers

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StrikingMatches · 23/08/2016 20:59

Yep this happened to us. DD would go down about 7.30am and wake around midnight, 2am and then 5am waking up for the day at 7.30am.

I started a dream feed at 10.30-11pm but to be honest it didn't change her wake ups if anything increased the frequency. So I just stopped and rode it out (a couple of weeks). She eventually only started waking at 1.30am and 5am and now she often sleeps through (7 months). I found age a more reliable indicator for sleeping i.e I don't expect decent gaps until after 6 months.

Good luck!

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