Dreamfeed dilemma! Advice needed please! :)

[PollyDolly88]

Hey!

Looking for some advice and stories of experience any fellow mummies or daddies have on dreamfeeding.

We have a 8 week old son who luckily is very good when it comes to night time sleeping! Due to him being still so little we haven't enforced any strict routine on him and sort of just gone with it - he feeds every 2 hours or so (almost 5oz at a time) and then goes to bed at 6.30pm when he will self settle and start his "deep sleep" with him rarely crying during the night for food but instead stirring and drifting in and out of deep sleep until 6am the next morning with US waking HIM up at around 5 hour intervals for food.

After speaking to other parents who thought we were mental waking a sleeping baby for food when he wasn't crying for it, we left him to "let us know when he's hungry" and after a very restless night of stirring (no crying or much noise) he woke up fully at 6am the next morning.

Whilst all this sounds wonderful, when I went to feed him at 6am he was not bothered for his bottle as much as I thought and his nappy was way too dry to say it had been on 12hrs+ and he was out of sorts all day = obviously big mistake :(

So the next night I ended up feeding him at mignight where he drunk a whole 5oz asleep and then again at 4am and woke up happy and with a wet nappy.

I mentioned this to the HV today who told us to either leave him again (not going to do that!) or "dream feed" him at 10pm when I go to bed with the hope he goes through until the early hours.

In theory I love this idea but I'm worried that me doing this will mess up his natural sleep cycle as he's usually quiet and calm at 10pm and instead should be grateful for him sleeping a full 6 hours at a time and just wait until he's older when he will naturally lose the feed???

I don't want any bad habits but I suppose I am feeding him anyway at 12pm as he looks so unsettled and doesn't stop stirring until he'd fed :-s

Really interested to hear stories of dreamfeeding (good and bad!) as I don't want to mess it up but a long stretch of deep sleep for both of us sounds like bliss too!

xxx

Our DD is now 12 weeks. When she was around the same age we had to wake her up for feeds. I found that although she'd go through the night, she wasnt getting enough 'deep sleep' as she kept stirring lots. She'd then be off during the day.

We found it best to put her to bed later. She now has a catnap around 5ish. Feed at 6, then another catnap aroumd 7. Bath at 8 and feed at 9. She then settles to sleep usually by half past. She now wakes up once in the night at 2.30-3am. Then wakes up for the day at 6.30am. Before she would wake up grizzly whereas now she wakes up smiling , so definitely better for us! X

Thank you! Sounds like you have a great bedtime routine with just one wake up! :) Up until recently we tried the 8/9 bedtime but it was hellish, got so bad I couldn't bring myself to bathe him every night as he screamed so much. He just won't seem to nap and then wake up again after the 7ish mark and he's obviously gone into his "deep sleep" mode by then :( From what you say though feeding around 9/10pm might be the answer though if you're little one goes through till 3am. xx

It might be worth a try. Like you'd said before you fed him at midnight and he seemed settled. I checked with my HV and she said although they're trained, every baby is different and only parents know their baby best. If he seems unsettled and happier after a feed then i'd say you're doing it right for your baby. Don't forget arpund 8 weeks they can go through a growth spurt too which makea them more hungry ans umsettled! If you get a chance, download the app 'wonder weeks'. It really helped me in all my sleepless confusion!
I've given up worrying what i 'should' be doing, my baby is the best guide to go by :)

The stirring was him letting you know when he's hungry. Lots of babies, especially young ones, don't cry out for a feed. They just leave the deep sleep phase and start fussing - that means "feed me so I can go back into a deep sleep"

I'd suggest you go back to your plan of waiting for baby to tell you when hungry. But listen to the signs. If fussing give 5 or 10 mins over to trying to settle back to sleep and if not settled, take that fuss as baby telling you a feed is needed.

Incidentally, a swaddle may reduce the fussing baby does.

Dream feeding worked wonders for my DD but as far as I know it does not work for every baby. My maternity nurse told me she always gives it a try but apparently quite a few babies end up properly sleeping through the night (10-12 hours) from relatively early on (lucky parents!). In this case, dream feeding loses its purpose.

My baby was not a great sleeper and it was very obvious she had no intention of sleeping through the night any time soon. I decided DF is a way to go. Here is what I did:

• I started putting DD to bed at 7pm from early on and I used her first proper wake up/stirring as an opportunity for the dream feed. It was always after 11pm and at 8 weeks it was probably closer to midnight. I do not think 8 week olds are ready for a proper DF at 10pm.

• I always made sure DD drinks as much as she can / wants between 11 and 1am. She usually had anywhere between 5 and 7oz.

• From week 6, I started trying to re-settle DD without feeding if she woke up/stirred between 1am and 6am. My DH and I became real experts in shushing and patting. It was hard work and we used to ask ourselves whether we were wasting time - feeding sounded like a much easier option. However, we carried on.

• DD is FF so I kept a log of how much she was having during the day. She was a pretty good feeder and a big girl so I knew she should have been able to last between the DF and the morning feed without milk.

• Eventually DD figured out that night wake ups are way too boring (she was probably tired of all our shushing) so she started sleeping better and better. We also began moving the DF forward (to 11.30 and then 11.00pm). By week 12, DD was consistently sleeping from 7 to 11.00pm and then from 11.30pm to 6.30/7.00am. We would wake her up for the DF at 11pm.

• We moved DF to 10.30pm at around 15 weeks. DD sleep schedule is now 7 to 10.30 and 11 to 6.30/7.00am. The DF is not really a "dream" feed - DD always wakes up but goes back to sleep within 10-15 minutes after the feed.

Right now DD has just turned 6 months so we will probably start dropping the DF over next couple of months. It has worked really well but if I'd had to do it again, I would have used a dummy in addition to shushing and patting. I was initially anti-dummy but I can now see my mistakes:).

We pretty much did the same as winter but with the addition of a dummy. We kept the dream feed until he was well established on solids at 7 months.

Thank you so much for the replies - never posted on here before so was very reassuring to hear other mums go through similar situations! :)