Introducing dream feed at 5 months... Foolish?

[gailst]

lo just 5 months and df never really worked but she has always gone 7.30-3-7 in the night which seemed ok (sometimes even longer) but now I'm beginning to wonder if the dream feed would help her sleep through since she can clearly go 7-3 which is 8 hours... Introduced it - she took 7oz expressed milk at 11.30 then woke at 4.30am not exactly worth it! Done this 3 times - how ling does df take to establish and get results - am I introducing something I'm just going to struggle to drop soon (lots of threads about stopping df at 6m) should I persevere (I really hate expressing!) going to start weaning onto solids soon - maybe should not bother df until I see effect of that? She's been exclusively bf but would it be worth doing formula just for df (to avoid expressing - she won't df from breast direct!) so many questions - feel quite confused!

Hello
I read this as I was searching for something else. My DD is 9&1/2 wks and df around 11-11:30 (see my thread "How much does your 9 and 1/2 wk sleeps during the day? Is something wrong with my DD?" for more info) we will try as soon as she sleeps through for more than a week to bring that to an earlier time.

I'm no expert but I think it's worth it going with the df but then it's too early for me to speak maybe my DD will change pattern again.
I know of a friend's 5 year old girl who still wakes her up for milk in the night! Habits are hard to break so maybe the likes of GF are not that crazy in their advice to start early in shaping our little ones' sleep patterns.

Anyway on the baby secrets book i mentioned it talks about a base time to push forward. All I think of it as it's like altering your body clock. It may work or it may not. I would persevere with your df: Method : after she's slept 3 out of 5 nights until 4;30 then try to push her feed forward by a quarter of an hour. (We use a dummy- you can use rocking or something else to pacify her) Once she's slept through till 4;45 for 3 out of 5 nights then push it forward again. You get the drift. This worked for us and DD has slept from df till 6:45 so far.

Then once your lo sleeps through till 7 am you can start dropping the df by bringing it earlier every few days (opposite to the other one) I've not tried that one yet though, just telling you what I've read.
Good luck xx

Hi there. I posted a similar message a while ago about dreamfeeds, and a lot of people said that they felt the dreamfeed disturbed the baby's natural sleep pattern (esp as they got to 6/7 months). I felt that this was happening with my DD (now 7 months), as she would often wake again at 2-3am even after a feed (which wasnt always a "dream" feed as such as usually she was awake during it, but it was a quite/calm feed) at 10.30/11pm. So about a month ago I decided to stop the 10.30/11pm feed and let her wake when she was ready. The first couple of nights she slept 7pm - 4am :). Since then we have had some nights where she has woken at 11/12ish and then again at 5am, but generally she has made it through from 7pm to around 2 or 3am (and last night, for the first time ever she made it through from 7.30pm - 6.10am :o). I'm sure dreamfeeds probably do help some babies to sleep through the core night, but it didnt work for us!