argh, feel like death, dropped dream feed for DTs (9mths) and all hell has broken out. please give me your wisdom!

[beachesandbuckets]

Dropped dream feed at 10pm a couple of weeks ago, and babies (who have been sleeping through for a while) are now waking in night and 5am for good. Am absolutely shattered as have two older (and demanding) dcs and going back to work shortly. They have 3 good meals a day, breast feed at 6am, milk at 3pm and another breast feed before bed. Where am I going wrong? It seems
That they shouldn't be having a dream feed anymore given their ages and food intake but should I reinstate? Other information, they are teething, their day time naps have gone haywire over the Easter hols, and used to react well to shush Pat but now it seems to make no difference. They have always shared a room but we have a travel cot in the spare room if we need to seperate. At wits end, as dcs are also waking up at crack of dawn when babies cry and they are tired for school, Dh has a long drive to work and I am exhausted.

Sounds like they have very little milk for babies their age? Just 3 feeds?

They are having milk with cereal, 2 yohurts per day and aptimil at 3pm, can't remember, how many feeds should a 9mth have (I produce loads of milk, and they have 30 min feeds at 6am, and 6pm...

Milk should be their main source of nutrition until 12 months. With exclusive formula feeding it's a minimum of 500-600ml a day, harder to judge with breastfeeding but they tend to take less milk per feed than a bottle fed baby. I know mine was still having 4-5 breastfeeds a day at that age.

Ok, so I won't be able to do 3PM feed as will be at work, so reinstate the dreamfeed at 10pm? Your input is really helpful, thank you

The World Health Organisation recommends that babies have at least four milk feeds a day until they are 10 months of age. Sounds like you might need to reinstate the dream feed!

Yep I would definitely reinstate the dreamfeed if they were sleeping so well after it!

Follow your children and not the book. If they were more settled with the dream feed then go back to that, it won't harm them :)

Also worth bearing in mind that teething can be awful at that age. My DS got all 4 top front teeth through at the same time at 9mo. His sleep went haywire including 5am starts around that time.

Incidentally he was only having 2 bottles of formula a day at that stage, morning and night. He refused bottles at all other times of day, and only had 12oz in total per day (he didn't appear to have read the WHO guidelines...and in fact he dropped all milk feeds altogether at 10mo....he gets lots of calcium in his diet and vitamin drops....he is 75th centile and thriving....don't set too much store by the guidelines OP).

But follow your instinct with your LOs....would reinstating the dream feed help the sleep? If yes, then do it. Try it one night and see...if they wake anyway then it is probably teething/developmental related and you may just have to ride it out.

DS is now 17mo and largely sleeps through form 1930-0630 eery day.

Just to update, did the dream feed a bit earlier last night (so I could get to bed earlier), and they slept through. Yay. They also had better naps in daytime so that helped I think. Unfortunately, my two older dcs were up all night with vomiting bug so was awake all night whilst babies slept, groan! Thanks for your advice. Health visitor advised to bring dream feed earlier and a little bit shorter every night so they learn to go longer rather than suddenly drop it completely which obviously makes sense.