Dream feeding - how does it work????

[kelmcd]

I have heard lots of people referring to dream feeding - I have an idea of what it is but could someone explain in more detail for me
My DS is 6 weeks old and think it will help us in the late evening when we struggle to get back to sleep. He ends getting over tired and not being able to settle for couple of hours.
Would a dream feed at this point help do you think?????

In my experience a dream feed (DF) is when you feed the baby when he is asleep. Bottle or Boob, doesnt matter. But they automatically start sucking and dont wake up. Its really sweet to see and mostly used as the middle of the night feed. When its dark still etc.

Anybody else have info

Hi, I used to dream feed my ds (now 16 months),we started at the age of about 10 weeks to try and get some sort of routine started. He would go to bed at 7 ish and then regardless of whether he was awake or not at 10:30 i would get him out of bed and give him his last feed of the day. He was usually still asleep or half asleep. This then helped him to last longer through the night. Once he was sleeping till 5 or 6 in morning i then started to cut the dream feed back, a little at a time. Hope this helps Kelmc.

I did dreamfeeding with ds -it was lovely but not sure how it helped with sleeping really
He has never slept and is now 2.6. (knackered emoticon)
Gently pick baba up (I used to do it at about 11.00pm)
Feed
Wind a little and very gently (just sit baba up a bit more and then rub back gently)
Place back in cot none the wiser!!
Good luck - I have to say I did always marvel at how they do this

I was giving DS, who is 10 weeks, a dream feed but dropped it last week and he has slept for much longer since I dropped the dream feed! I think he was in a really deep sleep by 10.30 and however gently or quietly i tried to feed him, he would always wake up slightly and then not go back into his deep sleep so would wake again about 3-4am. Since dropping it he goes to bed at 9 and wakes up between 5 and 7am now.
X

We started this with ds when he was about 3 weeks old till about 6 months old. We found it easier to use a bottle than to try and breastfeed though as it was easier to get the teat into an asleep baby than a nipple! I used to go to bed about 930pm and dh would give ds a bottle of EBM at about 10.30/11.00 ish just before he came to bed. Keep the room as dark as you can, pick up ds and give bottle, when finished sit him up to wind gently (this is v.important - to start with we didn't bother and he used to wake up with terrible wind about an hour later!), put back in bed and ds none the wiser. Doing it this way also meant that I got a bit of extra sleep before feeding at 4/5am in the early weeks.