What are the benefits of doing a dream feed?

[kcj748]

Is it just for fitting in with the parents? I.e. so that they eat right before the parents go to bed and then hopefully eventually sleep from then through the night? Or does it help with night wakings in some way?

I am happy to go to bad early then wake when he wakes etc etc. But he does wake 3 or 4 times a night and I was wondering if a dream feed might help that?

He is 11 weeks (and before anyone says anything I am not expecting any miracles or trying to push him into sleeping through the night etc etc I am just wondering about the pros of doing a dream feed).

Thanks in advance!

I did dreamfeeding with DS from about 5.5mo, when he went into his cot. The idea was to feed him back to sleep, put him back in his cot and leave him there. It worked pretty well the majority of the time, but sometimes it didn't.

Before 5.5m, he was co-sleeping with me anyway so would feed as and when he needed to.

Sorry, just realised that didn't really address the benefits! For me the benefits were he got more sleep, I got more sleep and we were both happier.

It works well when your baby is at the stage where they are waking roughly once a night for milk. If you fed them as normal at their normal bedtime and then give them a dream feed right before you go to bed you will often find will them go through to about 5 our 6 am.

I found it worked wonderfully for my DD from a dreamfeed at 11pm to about 6 am. at about 8~9 Weeks. Was a lifesaver for me as I didn't cope well with broken nights.

9 weeks that is amazing! I am wondering whether to try a bottle at the dream feed? So as to be sure he has had plenty to eat. Might that be a good idea?

He is absolutely wonderful of course but he is quite a difficult and sensitive baby so I would be able to cope a lot better in the day if we could get it down to two night wakings. I am starting to get a little on the low side and really feel like I need to pull myself back up.

I don't think formula will help him to sleep for longer - lots of DS's peers who were BF were sleeping through long before he was (FF from 5 weeks old).

We fed to a loose schedule during the day (every 3 hours at your DS's age) and then on demand at night. So we'd give a bottle at 7pm then another around 12/1am and another 5am, then start the day at 7am. We tried to introduce a dreamfeed to replace the 12/1am feed but it didn't work for us - DS wouldn't feed at that time - he never got the whole 'sucking in his sleep' thing!

But it might be worth giving it a go!

Beans can I ask did you wake him up at 7 or did he wake naturally? He often has a 5am meal but then sleeps til 8.30. I think this is probably a bit detrimental for the following night but I don't want to wake him. Did you wake your DS and find it worked well?

I was thinking of a bottle of expressed breast milk so I know he has had a full feed.

I am doing the same as you. A loose schedule kind of led by him and whenever he wants at night. I haven't made any attempts to stretch it out etc etc. He sometimes seems to want to eat 4 times a night. He has in the past slept up to 8 hours so I am unsure as to whether he is waking from hunger or waking for another reason and thinking he might fancy eating since he's awake. Or maybe he is not getting enough at each meal?

Yes, I woke him up. We were all getting up for the day then anyway (small one bedroom flat, so he tended to wake up when the bedroom light came on and DH started rummaging around looking for clothes etc).

It worked ok I think. The 12/1am feed gradually pushed later and later, so the 5am feed turned into the 7am feed. When it got to the point that DS was feeding at 5/5.30 and then not wanting to feed again until 10am, we 'encouraged' him to drop the 5am feed and made sure his morning feed was given at 7am on the dot. It only took him one morning to adjust to this so he was definitely ready (5.5 months approx).

We were always quite lucky in a way - if DS woke up and wasn't hungry, there was no way on earth he would have a bottle just for the sake of it (he'd get really cross if you tried to feed him!) But he wasn't any good at self settling, so he'd wake up and then need a bit of a rock/shushy to go back to sleep.

How much does your DS have at each feed?

We did it but I am not convinced it altered things that much! Just made me quite paranoid about stopping it and I think over time it actually conditioned DS to expect a feed...so if we missed it he'd wake up at about midnight hungry.

Sorry, not much help

I don't know how much he eats as bfing. But times when I have given him expressed he has probably 4 or 5ozs but that was quite a few weeks ago. I am pretty certain I'm producing enough as there is still milk shooting out when he comes off. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it in the day. Sometimes he will eat for quite a short time and I'll be amazed that he still isn't hungry even 4 hours later and sometimes he'll eat for ages but be hungry again in 2 hours. Last night, before bed he ate for ages, had a few good burps then ate for ages again and more burps but woke up a few hours later seeming really hungry.

Babies mess with your head on how much milk they actually take when BFing, don't they? Mine (now 4.5 months) is the same and always has been, a breastfeeding counsellor I saw said that they eat more efficiently at some feeds and more lazily at others, as well as your supply fluctuating, so length of feed doesn't always reflect how much they're getting.

To answer your original question, the dream feed has been a godsend for us. DS had sorted himself out a bedtime of 7.30pm (ish) at around 9 weeks and was sleeping through til 2am, when he'd wake up for a feed. I now give him a dream feed at around 11, just before I go to bed, and most of the time he doesn't even open his eyes. The first time we tried it he slept from the dream feed through til around 6.30am, and still does so about 90% of the time. The wakings we get are dream and teething related, but not demanding food.

My DS (5mo) has a feed at 7 then we give him a dream feed at about 11 ish which seems to see him through until about 6. If we dont dream feed him he tends to wake up for a feed at about 1 so breaks my sleep up more. Yes I dream feed for entirely selfish reasons! I have recently changed to FF but when I was BF I noticed that he slept longer if he'd had a bottle of expressed milk than if I breasted him.

Both mine had a dream feed. So bath and bottle at 6.30pm, then I woke them for feed around 10.30 / 11 and they both then slept until 6.30 / 7 am. I have to say, I hated having to stay up to do it but the effects were great in that all of us got a great sleep. DS always drained his bottle so I kept going until about 14 weeks but DD was always a struggle as she just wanted to sleep! In the end, I thought I would stop it as an experiment (she was 10 weeks) and she slept from 7pm to 7am. I just gave her a little extra during the day. I am a big fan of the dreeeeeeeeeam feed!

At about 15 weeks DS went into his own cot, and was sleeping from 7 to 3 and waking up for a feed then. A few weeks later I started to wake him at about 11 when I was going to bed, feeding him a bottle of expressed milk (he usually took a good 5 or 6 ounces without really waking up and I was keen to get him used to a bottle about this time) and he was sleeping 11 to 7 almost straight away with that. from about 5 months I could drop that 11 feed and he would sleep through.

So for us it was fantastic.