Dream Feed

[Harryhart]

My 12 week old has started to go down between 7 & 8pm which is great. Previously she dozed in the evening but didn't go down until 10.30pm. She sleeps until about 8am and was waking once for a feed. Now she goes down earlier she is waking twice for a feed.

Is she likely to eventually drop these or I'm wondering whether to reintroduce a 10.30-11pm feed as a 'dream feed' as she was getting this every night until a week or so ago anyway.

She's exclusively breastfed on demand and won't take a bottle, most of what I've read assumes a dream feed is with a bottle.

Do I just stick it out and assume the two wakes will reduce to one again?

Thanks x

She probably will take a bottle if she's fast asleep. Even my stubborn, total bottle-refusing DS1 would take a bottle when he was out for the count.

God, I wish my twelve week old would only want feeding twice a night. He's as shitty a sleeper as his big brother was and wants boob every two hours

I did a dream feed by breastfeeding. It really worked for us. I took her into bed with me, fed her lying down and then popped her back in the crib when I was sure she was fast asleep again. We probably started it at around 12 weeks actually. She still woke once around 3:30/4:40 am for a few weeks but not for long iirc.

Hi OP, I could have written this post myself. Dd3 will be 12 weeks tomorrow and has just started to go down in the last week between 7 and 8pm. We are in the same situation that she now wakes twice for a feed whereas when she went down at 1030pm she only woke once.

We tried one night to give a dream feed but she barely took anything, then woke at 1 am anyway, not hungry and wouldn't settle.so for now I am. To doing a dream feed and just letting her wake naturally.

My DD1 always had a dream feed but it never worked for DD2, so with her we just waited for her to wake and quite quickly this extended to a long stretch. Unless the next few nights are disastrous with dd3 then we will persevere with no dream feed for her - in the long run it is better as they generally have their deepest sleep in the first part of the night anyway so you are not disrupting them and their natural sleep patterns.