Dream feeds.....give me some good stories!

[usernoidea]

Hi. Thoughts on dream feeds please?
Just started my 4 month old on them....at about 10.30 (he goes down at 7)
Some nights he still wakes up a few hours later others he can go longer....should I persevere? Not really a clue what I'm doing.....just trying it as something to cling onto that might work before I tear more of my falling hair out

X

I bf mine when I went to bed. I thought it can only help them go longer and there's nothing more annoying then being asleep for an hr before they wake up.

They can go through a sleep regression at 4 months and/or growth spurt so it can't hurt to feed.
It never made any difference to my ds, he still woke every hour for 6 weeks.
my Dd is 5 months and is better and some nights naturally wakes around 10 to be fed. It doesn't make much difference to how she sleeps really. She might go to 1.30 instead of 12.30.

Are you ff or bf? I don't know about ff as mine are bf but it's normal for bf babies to wake for milk at night for a while yet!

I mix fed, bf all night with 1 formula feed at 10.30ish. It didn't work every night but it stretched out the first patch of sleep so his first wake up was 1-3 ish. Worth a try

dream feeding worked really well with DD. She's formula fed.
I started as soon as we got home from hospital would do bath and bottle around 7:30 ish and then would dream feed about midnight when I went to bed. From day 3 she wouldn't wake up until 6:30 -7am. Although during growth spurts I would add an extra feed around 3am otherwise she would wake up.
I've just stopped dream feeding as she's now having 3 meals a day and doesn't seem to need it.
She's a good sleeper though and this never helped with DS.

I often read about them on here and never really get them.

I have 3 kids, all fully bf. With all of them I fed and put down early evening (7 ish) and then fed when I went to bed, so 11 ish. But I didn't dream feed for the simple reason that non of mine would feed when asleep. I always had to wake them up to feed.
With all 3, they would wake up if it was 3 hours since last feed, but if they weren't hungry, they wouldn't wake up for love nor money.

With babies 1 and 3, feeding at 11 made them sleep through longer, as they did their deep/ longest sleep from 11 onwards, and they usually, by 4 months, slept til 6/7 am.
but baby number 2, did her deep sleep from 7 pm, and if I woke her at 11 it made no difference. She slept for 6/7 hours (so until about 2 am) and then woke every hour til morning. It was a killer, and I tried everything I could to bump that deep sleep later, and nothing worked. In fatc I think when she did feed at 11, it made her wake early, as we had broken her sleep.

So, I am a bit meh about dream feeding. If they are hungry they will wake up.

Dream feeding worked really well for my baby with reflux because it was the only bottle every day she kept down which meant she would sleep longer as she was satisfied. We kept it going until nearly a year as she was such an awful feeder and eater.