wwyd about dream feed? Mumsnet jury please advise

[alexw]

My dd is almost 6 weeks old. From day 1 she has gone to bed at 6.30, I have dream fed her at 10.30 and then she wakes at 2.30-3.00 for a feed and back to sleep til 6.30-7. She has never woken for the 10.30pm feed, has always taken some milk, but never much compared with other feeds (she is ff). So, as she doesn't wake would you leave her to sleep and forget the dream feed or keep up with it in the hope that she will drop the middle of the night feed soon? Or mightb this lead to getting up twice instead of just the once? She feeds in the morning when she wakes, but never seems that hungry. TIA

I would try not doing the DF for a few days and see what happens as if she isn't taking much you might as well get the extra sleep

I would drop it, sounds like she has a strong bed time routine and the times between feeds will naturally stretch.

I think dream feeds are a mistake for the long term TBH. It gets them used to food overnight, when I would think a better idea would be to fill them up in the day and then let them decide if the are hungry overnight.

Just based on my study of 2!

That confirms my feeling. I suppose I was hoping that by doing the df she would automatically drop the middle of the night feed. I didn't bother with dd1 but am a bit hormonal at the mo and am losing confidence in my decisions. Thanks everyone - it's nice to be able to bounce ideas off others with experience.

See what happens without it.

We did this - I expressed and DH fed it to her. Always had to wake her up, she never ate much and I fretted about all the wasted ebm.

One evening DH was out; I didn't bother and thought I'd see how she got on without...and she woke at the same time in the night that she'd done with the dreamfeed. So I stopped altogether.

DD was always a good weight and it didn't affect her weight gain. I definitely won't bother next time.

Hi there, I was recently in a very similar situation as you. Would try to wake my DD at 11pm for dream feed but she would not waken up at all! Sometimes she was taking as little as a 1/4 of an oz. Decided to drop dream feed and she now generally sleeps for between 7-9 hours from the time she goes to bed.

I would try dropping the feed to see what happens. If she starts waking up twice then restart it - however, you may find, like us, that she will still sleep till 2.30/3am without the dream feed. I'm a first time mum so I am not an expert but I assume that my DD would have woken up more if she had been hungry so she must not have been needing the dream feed.

I kept it until 7 months, I quite enjoyed it really and I never felt like doing the test to see what happened until she was well established on solids.

Hi all, just to report I have left dd for the past 2 nights and she slept through from 6.30 til 4 the first night without the dream feed and from 6.30 til 2 the second night. So she is obviously ready to lose a feed. Will see how things go for the next couple of weeks and if this carries on then I'll try to swap things around so that her long sleep period is from 10.30 til 7 rather than the first half of the night.