What is a dream feed?

[Pistachiotruffle]

Just that really! I've seen it mentioned lots, but am still unsure of what it is. When do you do it? What's the purpose? At what point would you introduce one?

It's a (bottle) feed that you do late at night eg 10 or 11 pm, where you don't really wake your baby. The idea is that they don't really wake up, and then will sleep through for longer as they are full. No idea if it works as I've never done it (bfed my ds), but lots of people think it's worthwhile.

It doesn't have to be a bottle feed, I have plenty of friends who did dream feeds and bf. the idea is that you feed them while they're asleep, before you go to bed (I've heard of it being between 9,30 and 11, depending on the person) The idea is that you get a longer chink of sleep because you fill them up before you go to bed.

It didn't work for me because DD didn't wake for her next feed any later, so it made no difference ance and we stopped trying. But some people swear by it so it's worth a try.

Didn't work for me as I couldn't get dd2 to walk up enough to have a proper breast feed. Didn't bother to try with the youngest 2 but tbh mine were all big babies and slept for long hours at night although I did wake them regularly during the day to pack as many calories as possible into my daytime hours!

It's what partly co-sleeping BF babies do every night.

With practice you can dream too!

Thanks! Something to bear in mind for a bit further down the line then

i did this with my oldest she was bottle fed tho, i gave her a bottle about 11 and burped her while asleep too, it worked for us

Worked wonderfully for us, did it with a bottle about ten thirty and she didn't really wake up. The aim is to move the 2am wake up, for example, to a few hours later. It took a week or so for her to stop waking at 2 though,.you tend to need to give them a little while to get used to it rather than expecting an overnight fix. Probably did it from 10w to 7 months