Can i drop the dream feed at 5months?

[romilly]

i am still breastfeeding exclusively, not weaning started yet. do feeds at approx. 6am, 10am, 2pm and a big feed at 6pm for bedtime. dd doesnt seem to like being woken up for the 11ish feed and she still often wakes up at 3 or 4am anyway, so is there much point in doing this feed?

lol - spot the sleep-deprived mum

not started weaning yet is what i meant...

Have you tried feeding more often during the day? You might find then that she will not wake during the night. I didn't find that dream feeds worked for me. I would probably just leave her to wake on her own. I would expect that she would wake at some point and feed better. She is unlikely to go through from 6pm till following morning.

hi mears and thanks for the quick response. i agree that i wouldnt expect her to go through - its more that, like you, i dont like waking her up when she is happily sleeping and it really seems to be of no advantage. it seems pointless. brilliant idea about more daytime feeds, hadnt occured to me , any particular time you would suggest?

The thing with dream feeding is that sometimes it was great and othertimes my son seemed to want feeding even earlier than usual anyway. And it was pain staying up late when I just wanted to go to bed at 8pm!

Does she ask for feeds herself? Sometimes it is possible to miss the cues. If not why not try offering every 3 hours? That way she will have more milk during the day and possibly less at night

exactly alex - it is annoying for both of us, nothing dreamy about that feed, i would call it the unnecessary-waking feed!

mears: yes, she is pretty good with giving me cues - she makes this great gurning face and stares at my boobs and makes loud mmm mmmming noises!!!!
but i will try every 3 hours again, seems so obvious now, lol...

mears !!!!!
Wanted to ask your midwifey advise on getting girls !!! Dare i?

fire away

well !!! In my dp's surgery a very wise old midwife told him to forget all the books and try to conceive AFTER ovulation - made out it was a well known midwifey trick to beget girl babies?
What thinketh the great mears ( grovel)

Sorry for hijack!

I found that (before weaning) my LOs needed at least 5 feeds a day, including the dream feed, in order to sleep through. As dd got to your dd's age she started waking at night more often, but if I supplemented her dreamfeed with a small bottle of ebm or formula then she slept through. So I think that she was hungry, and, if you can squeeze another feed in during the day, your dd may wake less often at 3-4am.

We didn't drop the dreamfeed until they were well established on solids (about 7-8m, IIRC) and sleeping through. Perhaps we kept it going longer than necessary, but I far preferred doing a dreamfeed than a 4am one!

Sorry, I must be a thicko midwife. I think if it was as easy as that more mums and dads would get the sex of baby they wanted . I had a girl after 3 boys and I swear it was because I had changed my diet to a healthy weight watcher one. If you do a google search you will see lots of strategies.

Mears dodne them all !!! Aside from diet - stuck rigidly to timing strategies and got 3 divine boys in a row!

But thankyou very much anyway

no problem notanotter.

i felt very honoured to have mears on my case! thanks mears

this link says it is the other way around
Worth a try

Let us know if it makes any difference romilly

(and you NotAnOtter)

i was going to say i had heard it was the other way round! btw, i know when i conceived my dd - and it was well before ovulation for the record!

crossed mears, will do!

I don't even remember cocieving my DD [wink}

Probably will take 2-3 days before you would notice any difference romilly.

lol

ok will give it a few days, starting 2nite..