did/does your LO sleep better without dreamfeed?

[Seasidedolly]

DS is 4 months old, goes to bed after feed between 7- 7:30 and currently has dream feed when we go to bed about 10 ish. When we first started putting him to bed early he slept really well and did a full week of sleeping through to about 5ish. I thought we'd cracked it.

Now however he is back to waking anywhere between 2-4am, then again around 6.

The amount of formula he has at each waking really depends, I've just given him a dreamfeed but he's only taken 10ml, so I think he will be awake again fairly soon for a top up.

I'm wondering if the dreamfeed is causing a disruption to his sleep cycle, but I'm not brave enough to try a night without a dreamfeed, as his first sleep stint is usually the longest, so don't want to feed at 7, have him wake at 11 when he realises he hasn't had the dreamfeed then every 2 hours or so after that!!

Should I preserve with the dreamfeed or have a go at dropping it? I've read so many things that say an early bedtime improves sleep but since the first week there has been no difference. He used to go to bed after last feed at 10.

Also, just to add, I know for a 4mo he is currently in quite a good sleep routine, and that any day now the dreaded 4 month sleep regression will kick in and it'll all go to pot anyway! I'm not complaining I just don't want to be disrupting him if it does more harm than good.

Any experiences of when to drop the dreamfeed, or advice much appreciated

TIA

Do you wake him properly for the dream feed? I find it works really well but you need them to have a decent amount of milk so lights on, nappy change then feed. Also how much sleep is he getting in the daytime as that sometimes can effect night time sleep too. Good luck!

my little boy never completely woke up when he had his. on the rare occasions we couldn't get him to feed, i.e. he was just too asleep he always woke at 3am for a feed without fail. so we did start to persevere with him after a few of those and he was fine. we didn't put the lights on just had a little night light and left the landing light on for nappy changes but if he didn't do a number 2 we left his nappy. We dropped the dream feed at about 7 or 8 months on advice of our health visitor who thought that was too late to be carrying on with a dream feed. i'm not sure but i think it's around 6 months its recommended you stop. but he has always been a big eater so i was worried to do that. he did start to wake up again at 3am for milk again so the hv advised supper (cereal, porridge, scrambled egg) just before bed at about 6.30ish and he stopped waking up after that. But he's two on sunday and we still do supper albeit its a lot easier now, sometimes he wants it sometimes he doesn't. usually he asks for a bit of toast. but when we first started doing supper i did really miss the dream feeds so much easier than supper especially as you've gone to the trouble of a bath and clean pjs only for him to get porridge all over them within 10mins of having them on! i don't really know anyone else who had to do the supper thing so i don't think my little one's eating habitats are the norm he just always ate a lot, we had to wean him at four months on advice of the hv as we just couldn't fill him in the day but always slept well at night as long as he had his dream feed and napped well too. hope that helps a bit :)

Sounds a little bit like a sleep regression. DS had one of these at every milestone. We used dream feeding when we discovered such a thing and it was the best thing ever! Did it about 11 and he would go through to about 5.

The regressions are killer! Hope your sorted soon.

Thanks all for the replies, weirdly after only having 10ml last night he then slept till 6:45pm! Strange boy!

Although I did make sure he went to bed 1.5 hours after his last nap, I read somewhere that helps sleep so not sure if that could've had anything to do with it?

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to his night sleep pattern but not complaining after a night of almost full sleep!

My DS only started sleeping through after we dropped the dream feed. He was EBF at that time. I used to do exactly the same as you - bed for him at 7/7:30. Dream feed at 10. He normally wouldn't really wake up for the dream feed. I left the lights off and he didn't even open his eyes.
He would then wake up around 2 or 3 am (so 4 or 5 hours after dream feed). Then up every 3 hours ish.
When I dropped the dream feed (at about 4 months) we had a couple of weeks of him waking up at 12 or 1 (so 5 or 6 hours after last feed - longer than before) then every 3 hours ish which was hard because that meant less sleep for me!
Then he suddenly started sleeping 7 hours, the next night 8 hours then we had a couple of weeks of 9 hours! Now (at almost 6 months) he is sleeping at least 11 hours (7-6) every night! I'm sure dropping the dream feed helped. I was nervous to try it too but so glad I did. Good luck!

That's really interesting Mini, I might give it ago. Going to wait till next week as we have a busy weekend and I don't want potential sleep depravation until I know I can just chill on the sofa after a bad night!

We had been dream feeding at around 10.30pm, and DD (16 weeks) was then sleeping until around 5am. For the past few nights we have tried not doing the dream feed to see what would happened, and she has slept all night - until 7 this morning!! So now I am wondering if doing the dream feed had been interfering with her natural sleep rhythms and causing the 5am wake-ups.

Might be worth trying not waking him one night and seeing what happens - if it doesn't improve things you can go back to it.

Forgot to add - I increased her feeds throughout the day, so that she had the same amount of formula as before. Just the 5oz she had been having at dream feed was added onto the day feeds.