Well i have just been reading an article about dream feeds and it seems that they are not what i thought at all
I thought that a dream feed was when the baby woke but still semi asleep needing a feed and you feed them back to sleep and they continued sleeping and feeding...
But from what i just read, a dream feed is something that is instigated by the mum, picking the baby up in its sleep and offering a feed shortly before its due to wake for a feed...
i guess in the hope that the baby will not wake at all???
Does anyone do this?
Does it work?
Can i start now? MJ is waking more frequently over night and needs a feed sometimes, other times just cuddles.
I did the dream feeds with Izzy...
I can't remember what time i started tho about 3-4months... I woke her up about 10.30 where she would fed/burb/ go back down to sleep and would sleep till 5.30 / 6... it worked really well from me. If she didn't get her dream fed she would be up at 2
I did dreamfeeds with my DD and cut them out about a month ago, now she wakes all night. Could be the reason, or developmental but I'm thinking of giving her a small top up to push her through. She has milk around 6pm but used to have a 9pm dreamfeed. She was asleep but would take the bottle fine and drink most of it, really worked well here.
I have done it for other people's kids while babysitting, and I have done it both ways you suggested (both bottle fed - of course! - don't know if that makes a difference)
For one, a little girl that I looked after a lot (was her 50-60 hour a week nanny + one night a week babysitting) I went up to her room at about 10, knowing that she might normally wake at 10:30 or thereabouts. I did that from 8 months on. She would wake about one in 5 or 6 times, but then go back pretty quickly afterwards.
The other is a little dude up here in Brissy, he had been ill and his mum & dad were worried he hadn't had enough fluid. I heard him stirring, so went in with the bottle. He stayed semi-asleep and then went straight back down afterwards.
Both worked. And it doesn't matter what you call it, if it works for you :-)
we woke DS up at 10 to give him a feed to try to stop him having that 3.30/4am feed. It worked really well until he was about six months and would just scream every time we would go to give him a bottle - cos we had woken him up. So we just let him go after that and he wakes up during the night but it settled with a dummy (still).
I'm not sure if we will do that with DD - at the moment she has a bottle around 7.30/8.00 and goes to sleep until around 6.30am. If she wakes during the night she is settled with the dummy. We decided not to try to get her to take a bottle because one night she woke up at 3.30, drank 40ml and kept falling asleep, so it was a struggle to even get her to drink that!!! She is, unfortunately, not a baby that can suck and sleep at the same time. So we tried the dummy instead and it worked.
I do dream feeds with DD and did with DS. DD is usually asleep sometime after her 6pmish bottle and i wake her (by changing her nappy) and feed her just before i go to bed. She ends up falling back asleep on the bottle and has slept through from 4 weeks using this method. Worked the same for DS.
Dream feeds
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