"Dreamfeed"

[mom2ben]

Hi,

I am currently feeding my 10 week old at 7:30pm and then putting him down to sleep. He is generally really good and is normally asleep by about 8pm. We have then been dreamfeeding him at 10:30pm (sometimes he wakes up other times he stays asleep) and putting him back to sleep. He then wakes up at about 3-4am for a feed and then battles to get back to sleep (I spend the rest of the night putting his dummy back in which means I am absolutely shattered by morning!).

I am thinking of dropping the dreamfeed and seeing how long he goes before waking for a feed as it seems ridiculous that I am waking him to feed.

Has anyone tried the same?

The point about a dream feed is that they don't wake up though. They feed whilst asleep

I think the dummy should go - take it away (Quickly like a plaster!!) and see how you get on

Good luck - you sound shattered

The problem is that I think I have read every book under the sun (which I really regret!) and some say you should wake the babies so that they get their longest stretch of sleep from 10:30pm and others say you should try and feed whilst they are asleep. So now I'm not sure which to do!

I never got on with the dream feed really. I did feed at around 10.30 initially with both my DDs, but dropped it around 6 weeks. I found both times that the effect was that instead of waking around 3 / 4am they instead woke about an hour earlier, but either way they would then sleep through to the morning (i.e. 6.30 ish) so it was better for me as I only had one wake between 7pm and morning. Why don't you try a night without doing it and see what happens. If it's a disaster then put it back in the following night. Even if it takes a while to sort out the resettling problem after the 3/4am feed at least you could go to bed at 8pm and get a decent stretch of sleep?

I am a firm believer that you can't dictate when the long stretch of sleep will be. Some babies seem naturally to have their long stretch of sleep from 11pm to morning and others seem to have the long stretch during the first part of the evening. My girls were definitely in the first part of the evening camp! On the plus side, by leaving them to it (and feeding them huge amounts during the day) the long stretch of sleep extended quite quickly so that by 2 months old both girls slept through 11 / 12 hrs a night.

We tried waking dd (18 wks) at first but she was always so grumpy. Now we feed her in her sleep. She sometimes stirs a bit/wakes a bit, but goes straight back to sleep after.

What did the trick with her sleep was ditching her dummy at 16 wks. It took 3 days to ditch. Within 4 days, she started sleeping through the night (7pm-between 6am and 7am with a dreamfeed at 11pm).

Every time I mention her sleeping through, I think I am jinxing it!

I definitely think I need to ditch the dummy but we find it absolutely impossible to get him to sleep without it. We've tried it a few times and he just cries and cries (lasting about an hour and a half) until we eventually give in and give him the dummy (he falls asleep straight away!). Any tips for ditching it?