DS who is 23.5 weeks has been having increasing night wakings for the last month to BF. He is EBF and is normally demand fed. He has been waking every 2.5-3 hours for a feed and has a feed of 15mins or so and promptly goes back to sleep (I know I am lucky to have him go back to sleep).
He has on average 6-7 BF between 7am-7pm and when he is given an odd bottle of expressed milk he can down between 150ml-300ml in one sitting. I block feed in the evening so that I can pump an adequate supply (150ml) each morning to cover for times I need to be away from him and for the very occasional sleep in and Dh can feed him. I also feel that my supply in the evening is much lower than in the morning (I know this is quite common). During the day he normally one needs one breast as a feed (I can often still get milk out of the side he has been sucking on quite easily).
My question is- should I be giving him a bottle of expressed milk every evening (as a dream feed) or will this alter my supply?
Is this just something that happens and I just have to tell myself that this too will pass?
We have in the past had a few odd weeks of him sleeping 11 hours straight so I feel confident that he can self settle, but his first tooth also came up a week ago so I don't know if this is having an affect (although the multiple wakings for a feed had been for at least two weeks prior to this)
He has started solids this week as he was showing all the signs listed on the NHS website. His weight is good., started at 9th, went up to 25th and last week was up in the 50th percentile.
Any thoughts would be appreciated because every now and then I do wonder if I am creating bad habits etc etc. ll my friends and family also stopped BF at 26 weeks and I would be keen to continue until I return to work at 12 months.