dream feed - am i doing the right thing...

[barneybear]

we are in a kind-of night time routine with our 9week old baby.

he has a bath then feeds, and is asleep by 7.30pm.

we then wake him for a 'dream feed' (either me or my husband as he's bottle fed formula) at 11ish pm.

he still only goes another 4-5 hours until he wakes up say around 3.30/4am.

my husband keeps askin whether it's worth doing the dream feed but i think it is as i've read that this works.

or is my son thinking he still needs to feed regulalry because he has that feed at 11pm. we've been talking about leaving him to see how far he goes, but i still think he will wake up in the early hours which could be worse...

will he begin to start to sleep the whole night, if we stick to the dream feed?

i hope this makes sense!any advice greatly received.

i had the advice of not to wake up a sleeping baby...personally, my baby was a bad sleeper til she was on formula, i had sleep when she went on formula so didnt want to wake her up! she has been a sleeper ever since! my girl woke up every night at 3 for a feed for about a week then gave up.just try it....sure it will work in your favour in the end. i was glad when she went to sleep... the last thing on my mind was waking her up! try it and if it doesnt work slap your chap! hahahah!

Hi Barney
The whole point of a dream feed is that you don't wake them up. It should be a top up really and if ds is sleeping on for another 4-5 hours thats brill. We dream fed ds1 from about 6 weeks and have been doing the same with ds2 (now 5 weeks) for the last couple of weeks. Last night he slept from 11 til 7am. I would stick with it and maybe give the dreamfeed a wee bit earlier, say 10 or 10.30 if you find you're staying up just for that and then see how long he sleeps for. personally the dream feed worked brilliantly for us and we found it much easier to wean ds1 off the 4-5am feed than my sil who had to wean hers of a 2am and a 4am feed
good luck
phee

I did a dream feed until ds was 7 months. Worked a treat. Can't see anything wrong with it.