Discovery Home & Health

hi everyone..
i have a question about dream feeds...
we have tred waking bethany up at 11 to give her a dream feed with the hope she will go longer in the night (she goes down at 7.30) a few times...however she still insists on waking up at 2.ish sometimes earlier for a feed..wondered whether anyof you girls found dream feeds useful..when we leave her to sleep through it seems to make no differnce...
if you get what i mean???!!

do we need to persevere for her to get used to it? we have only tried it a few times and they seem to be the nights that are most disrupted...i wondered of waking her to feed her was unsettling her ??

any advice or experience would be great xxx

Hey Sarah

I used dream feeds with Emily until she was about 2 and a half months old... or something like that!
They worked a treat for us - the main thing is not to wake them - otherwise it defeats the object

if she is waking a few hours later all the time it sounds like a habit to me - Emily used to do that for a little while, if you do a dream feed then she wakes anyway, try just giving her a cuddle then putting her back down.

So basically it boils down to don't wake her at all, she may stir but will stay sleepy probably if you do it that way, if she does wake again after don't automatically feed her - try just cuddle and then put back - you may get another hour or two before she wakes, or you may find you are mega lucky and she sleeps through

Hi Sarah, Ellie was pretty much the same as Bethany and used to wake about 2am even if I fed her around 11pm. In the end I decided not to bother with dream feeds and within a few weeks as she got a bit older and bigger she started going longer with feeds in the night and then slept through.
Im sure it does work for a lot of people but for me unfortunately it didn't!

The thing with me was by 10pm I was falling asleep so it was killing me trying to stay awake that bit longer to feed her anyway so I just decided to sleep and then feed her when she wanted it!

x

Just to say, I never found they helped with Liberty-I found she woke more and sometimes earlier if I tried a dream feed. I think Summer used dream feeds with Daisy???? I'm sure she will chime in and let you know!

Hey Sarah,

They never worked for me! I just couldn't get her to latch on, she was too asleep to get it! I tried a lot of different ways over a couple of nights then the one night it did work she woke again at 3 as she would have done normally!

As she got bigger she just went for longer and slowly dropped down the amount of feeds she had at night. First she dropped the one about 2 or 3 and would go through from about 9 until 5 then she dropped the 5 feed too. I was really lucky because at about 10 weeks she was going through until 7 (my HV was pleased because it helps to dispell the myth that breastfed babies don't go through the night!).

I know a lot of people swear by them but it didn't work for us, although all babies are different. She did used to cluster feed in the evenings which i think was her way of topping up the tanks. It wasn't uncommon for her to be on and off several times between about 6 and 9pm but if it got me a good few hours sleep i didn't care!

xxxxxxx

thansk a lot girls - that is really useful.

think will carry on as we are - going down at 7.30/8 and then just allowing her to go through as long as she can - usually about 2 and then till morning for a feed...but she does tend to wake up and niggle at other times too. if t was just the feed i would be laughing!

thanks for the help xxx