Dream feeds

Yeah I dont change Isla all night (7pm til 7am) either, even tho Im up to her half the night! Yay for Fuzzi's!
When we go to the Mothercraft Unit next week we have to use disposables (grrrr),..will one last the night or will I have to change her? I havent used them at all since she was 5 weeks old!

Wow ive never heard of dream feeds either! Always go to bed very late so will be trying dreams feeds before i go to bed, mite help Mya sleep abit longer as she is still waking 2-4 times a nite Am really missing the nites where she only woke once.

I have also introduced dream feeds in the last couple of weeks and it has been helping Olivier sleep through the night but occassionally he does wake at an odd time in the night but I put that down to perhaps a growth spurt or not drinking enough earlier in the evening.

I did it right from the beginning with Ollie. Would put him down to bed for the night at seven and then wake at ten for a dream feed before going to bed. When he was little he would wake again at 3 ish but this gradually stretched out more and more until he was sleeping until seven.
I have just dropped the dream feed this week and have found he is sleeping through even without it. - I probably have carried on doing it for too long. He is a pretty big baby and probably didn't need any extra topping up!!!

Thanks. I think I will start trying it out with Noah.

How long should he be asleep before the dream feed? He wakes pretty much every three hours for a feed so I wasn't sure last night what time to get him up for it.

Leish, I just leave them until I'm ready to go to bed so sometimes the dream feed is 10pmish and other times not until closer to midnight.

I won't be cutting it out anytime soon it seems - last night they drank 180ml each at their dream feed which is way more than they even take during the day!

You just get them out of bed and feed them with as little disturbance as possible, so they dont fully wake.

Dreamfeed can be introduced at any time. Ideally, if they work for you, you do them until your little one is sleeping through well and then you can try dropping it. Some people drop it cold turkey and the baby sleeps through, others inch it backwards until the last feed is at the desired time e.g. 7pm. Alternatively, you can give less each night (less in the bottle or less minutes at the brest) until you are down to nothing. When you reduce / stop it you may need to increase milk / food during the day. If they take a huge feed at night, they will get used to it and so you may need to lead the way in decreasing the night bottle and increasing the daytime ones...they may not do it themselves.

Some sources say that the dreamfeed can disrupt sleep cycles after 7mths but that is not necessarily the case. The dreamfeed can be introduced at any stage, particularly if your little one was sleeping through and then stops.

It works well for most babies but not all. If you try it and your little one is too asleep to drink, try again 15mins later as then they may be in a slightly lighter sleep.

The best time is around 10pm but some babies will take one anytime without waking. For us, it needed to be before 10.30 as at that time she would enter into light sleep and wake (and hence be hard to resettle).

:) It worked for us :)