Help! tried dream feed and it didn't work - am I doing something wrong?

[blondegirl]

Hello!

My son will be 10 weeks old on Friday and he's a healthy 14+ pounds now (born at 9lb6oz) so gaining steadily and rapidly through exclusive breastfeeding.

He has had several 4-5 hours stretches of sleep and two 6 hour stretches last week all starting around 8:30-9:15. I thought he was ready to try a dream feed so that I can move that stretch of sleep to a more reasonable time for me.

We fed at 6, started bedtime routine at 7:30, fed by 8 and was asleep soon there after with little effort. I decided to express milk for the 11pm feed as I didn't know how to breast feed with out waking him. He took the whole bottle (3oz) but left just a little, so he wasn't looking for more without waking. He has slight reflux and gas problems so it was obvious he needed to burp. I rolled him on his side and he burped and fell asleep with about 3-4 minutes of patting and shushing. Wow - I thought this was simple - I never removed him from the crib. But he woke up at 2:30 - exactly 3 hours after he fell asleep. I tried just giving him a pacifier and soothing him back to sleep and he did - for about 10 min, then the same - pacifier/soothe, another 10-15 min, then he woke again - so I gave up and fed him and then he was pretty much as usual woke around 5:30 for another feed.

So other than delaying the 2:30 feed for about 45 min, the dream feed did not seem to affect him at all.

Did I do something wrong? Should I try something different? Or do I just need to keep trying?

please help! desperately looking for a nice solid 5 hours of sleep!

When I tried it it didn't work either - but I have since heard that you need to keep doing it for the message to eventually get through. Certainly with my ds anyway, he has always woken frequently through the night - not necessarily out of hunger, but because he likes the frequent comfort of a bf. So doing a dream feed was never really going to reduce the night-waking for us anyway.

If you want to, you can try a dream feed at the breast, just lift your ds, still asleep, and brush his mouth against your nipple. He will probably get the message

Hi there

I've tried the same thing with my little boy, Jack, who's now 17 weeks with exactly the same results ie no real benefit to doing it.

I picked Jack up and breast fed him without him waking - it's amazing, but when I put my nipple to his mouth, he just started feeding and continued for a while before stopping at which point I put him back to bed!

I've done it a few times now, but it really doesn't seem to alter when he next wakes by more than 45mins, just like you found - not sure whether this dreamfeeding idea really works!

But now Jack has started teething and what little routine we had is out the window as he now wakes up much more regularly (about every 2hrs)! I'm now just looking forward to going back to having a good 3hr sleep!

haven't heard of a dream feed before - what's the idea behind it?

Hi there

The idea of a dream feed is to be able to top up your baby while they sleep so that they start to sleep for longer.

Basically, if your baby is sleeping for 3hrs approx. and you feed your baby at say 10pm and then you want to go to bed at midnight, if you dream feed at midnight, the idea is your baby will be topped up with food and will therefore not wake up to feed again for another 3 hours rather than waking up an hour after you've gone to bed.

t

my baby boy is now 2 years of age and still breast feeding and shows no signs of stopping so I have decided to continue until he can communicate better and it will be a joint decision when we cease to breast feed. Are there any other mothers with similar experiences?

I really think that not all babies take to dream feeds. I had friends who did it successfully but it never really worked with DS. The only way to get him to feed was to properly wake him up we could never manage that slightly drowsy feed that I gather is how it's "supposed" to work. And then having properly woken him up it was a nightmare trying to get him down again. That's a different problem from you, though you are at least managing to dream feed him -- so in your case I'd keep trying for a week or two and see if you get anywhere.

mouchemum -- there certainly are, but you'd better start a new thread to find them (us? DS is only 19.5 months though)

I introduced a dream feed for my dd at about 16 weeks. I expressed bm which meant that I could go to sleep and dh could stay up for the feed. DD took a week to get into a routine, with her feeding about 8pm, dream feed about 12, then her next feed around 4am, whichmeant that I could get a reasonable sleep. We stopped when she was 9 months, at 13 months she has only just started sleeping from 7.30pm - 7am, sorry I am sure that you do not want to hear that though.good luck

I think some babies like dream feeds, some don't.

DS did .

DD didn't .

I think that as she is generally a windier baby than DS, she wasn't able to cope with feeding when asleep without a nice big burp at the end, and would then wake up within an hour with a painful tummy.