Dreamfeed?!

[NoTeaForMe]

My 6 month old wakes up sometime between 10 and 11 most nights. Sometimes a bit later sometimes a little earlier! I'm thinking about trying a dreamfeed so we don't end up waiting for her to wake. Plus if it's a bottle then my husband could do it and I could sleep!

What time would be best? 10pm. How do you know when to stop? Would a bottle be better or breast? She takes both!

I didn't do a dream feed with my first as her first wake of the night was a little later and I wasn't keen on the idea of feeding her when she wasn't necessarily hungry...but my baby is waking at this time anyway so I'm just tweaking it a bit. I don't know, any advice?

Thanks

No advice on dreamfeeding bf, but I have dreamfed DS with a bottle. Like you, he would wake at a certain time in the night with hunger. We did it for short periods during growth spurts (he settled himself into a night time sleep routine fairly early on so we had only considered dream feeds when he started to wake up again). It was pretty simple, just made up a bottle, gently lifted him up out of the cot, held him in my arms and put the bottle to his mouth. He would start drinking immediately, would drain the bottle and stay asleep for the whole time. I'd hold him for a little bit to make sure he was burped and comfortable, then lower him back into the cot. I did the feed just before I went to bed. During a growth spurt we would probably do dream feeds for no more than a week and he would settle back into his routine. We would do trial and error for when to stop, after doing it for a few nights we'd pick a night where we could have rest the next day (eg on a weekend) and not do the dream feed, if he woke again then we'd continue dreamfeeding for a little while, try stopping again and so on until he slept without waking. This was days for us, due to spurt, so perhaps you could adapt it for longer term if you're thinking that way - eg 1-2 weeks dreamfeed, try a night or two on a weekend without, and so on.

Basically, it was pretty easy and a great solution for the short term sleep disruption. I don't have experience of doing it long term but I've no reason to think it wouldn't be good, it kept us all happy and sleeping! If you go to bed around 10-11pm then I would do it just before, otherwise I'd just go for the earlier time of around 10pm.

I have just started doing a dream feed with dd (5 months) for the next exact same reason. I hate having to get up just after I have gone to sleep so she goes to bed at 7:30 and then I feed her at 10 when I go to bed, for the past few nights it has worked really well and she has pretty much stayed asleep until about 2am when she wakes for another feed.