Dropping a night feed after dream feed in 11 week old?

[breakfastinbread]

FTM and a bit clueless!

Ds is 11wks and BF. He managed a couple of weeks ago to go 5/6hrs overnight, but this coincided with a 8-9pm bedtime. Hence, often only 1-2 night wakings.

Now he's a bit older, he's settled himself into a 630pm bedtime naturally. He tends to then wake 1130ish, 230ish and 530ish, and I find 3x disturbances to my sleep really tough.

For a couple of nights I've tried a dream feed at 1030pm in hope of him going a bit longer overnight as I know he's capable as he did it consistently when he was 8-9weeks. All the DF has done though is bring his other feeds forwards, so now 130ish and 430ish. Overall in getting less sleep as I stay up to 1030pm whereas before I'd go to bed at 9pm and get a couple of hrs before the first waking.

Should I persist with the DF? If u do, would IBU to see if I could get him to drop the 130am feed (he'll take a dummy, tends to respond quite well to shush-pat)? Am quite prepared to be told that this is too harsh at his age, but wondered if anyone else had success with similar? Or has he just hit the 12week growth spurt early? He once went from 830-530 overnight so I know he's definitely got it in him!!

He's too little to be left to cry, but if he is ok with a dummy/cuddle/shush-pat then all of that is fine instead of milk. If he really needs food, he'll let you know!

I would do the shush-pat at the 5:30am waking and try and get him to hold out a bit longer. I'd move the dream feed forward to 10pm and then hope for a 2am and 6am. If you can get those in place then on you're on the right track to cut out the middle of the night one, and slowly move the 10pm earlier and the 6am later until you get a full 10/12 hour stretch.

Before you introduced the dream feed was he doing 6:30pm-11:30pm/5 hours in a row?

Of course it could just be a growth spurt and it will sort itself in a few weeks.