The 'sleep through' - advice needing on night feeds!

[fingersx]

Hi All

I have a 7 week old daughter and obviously I can't wait for the time that she decides to sleep through the night and I'm really hoping its soon but I wanted to pick someones brains on what I should be doing to encourage this.

At the moment she feeds during the day at approx 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm. Unfotunately my milk is drying up so she is on 1 expressed breast milk feed per day and the rest is formula (all currently 120mls).

After the 6pm feed she is put to bed and is asleep by generally 7pm. I have been doing the 'dreamfeed' at 10pm before I go to bed in the hope that this will encourage her to last through till 6am. I read about the dreamfeed ina book and you gently lift them out of their cot and pretty much feed them while they are still sleeping. She takes about 50mls and then her little mouth is clamped shut!! She then goes straight back to bed but is waking around 1-2am. I feed her again then and she takes the whole 120mls. She then wakes again around 5am but I am able to settle her again till 6am.

Does anyone have any advice?? It seems as though she is wanting to drop the 10pm feed before the 2am feed but I really wanted it to be the other way around.

Should I stop the dreamfeed or do you think that will mean she will wake around midnight and then maybe 4am? That would be worse than what I have now as I am fortunate to only have to get up once.

My clinic nurse says she will drop the feed on her own when the time is right so I'm wondering if the dreamfeed is maybe confusing her????

She'll be 8 weeks next week so I'll be increasing her formula to 180mls and it says on the bottle to change to 5 feeds a day so I suppose its saying I need to drop the dreamfeed as the dreamfeed makes it 6 feeds a day.

Sorry if my post is a bit confusing, I'm a little confused myself!!

Any replies would be appreciated!
Thanks

[SorenLorensen]

sorry i cant really help as i demand fed both my bubs and didn't do dream feeds.
but i just wanted to say....

She'll be 8 weeks next week so I'll be increasing her formula to 180mls and it says on the bottle to change to 5 feeds a day so I suppose its saying I need to drop the dreamfeed as the dreamfeed makes it 6 feeds a day.
what is on the back of the tin is a guide only, don't drop a feed just becuase the tin says so, let your bub decide.
also she may not want 180ml or she may even want it now. when YOU (not the tin) think she is ready to have a little more milk, then up it :thumbsup:

[NibbleCurlynBub]

My 15 mth old only just slept through the night last night. It is a rare occurrence.

Honestly, even if you rearrange feeds your bub might not sleep through.

When you get to the bottom of it you bub is exactly that- a BABY.
They unfortunately don't do what we want them to do very often.

[amandaw]

For my DD, my CHN's best advice was to drop the dream feed - eventually you do want your DD to sleep through from 7pm (or whatever) so it really doesn't matter which feed she drops first ...just means that you get to go to bed earlier! I guess it's worth trying, especially if you are upping her bottles as well - she'll soon let you know if she wants the extra amount

[juzzyduck]

I am going on my baby's need at the moment and she is is 7wks today. I have been feeding when she demands it and in the last 5 days she has increased the amount she wants and sleeping for longer especially during the night. My night routine is some where between 5 -6pm a bath and then I take her to her room with the nightlight on and door shut (blocking out the noise of my two boys) and feed her and put her to bed and in the last 5days she has been slowly increasing her sleep time. 7pm till 2:40am was the longest and the a 3hr sleep and then 2.5hrs and then usually 2-3hrs during the day. She is also more aware of the world and staying awake more which I think help. I do not think I will attemp dream feeds until she has a better pattern established and she is a bit older maybe between 5 and 8months.
You must do what is right for you and the baby and if you can manipulate her sleep and feeding pattern, good on you.
Good luck

[Lahri]

Hi,

I am afraid I don't really have much advice on this either, my little one is only 5 weeks old today and I demand feed. Not sure I am doing the right thing by that though and think maybe I should try to stretch her feeds out.

She only goes 2-3 hours during the night and I don't do a dream feed, I didn't even know what that consisted of. Sometimes we go 3-4 hours during the day, sometimes 5 at night, it really doesn't seem to follow a pattern at the moment.

As the others have said, I would do what feels right and your little one will pretty much determine how it goes. I know some people disagree that you should follow what they want but I know most people say they will sleep through when they are ready.

Hope you get her into the routine you want soon, I just can't wait to only wake up once. We don't really seem to have a routine just yet, she feeds at different times during the day and night so I can't even seem to find a pattern.

Good luck!!

[Lissa7]

It's probably a little too soon for the whole dream feed thing to work I would say from experience. I would drop it and leave it for now and see what she does. Dream feeding never worked for DD1 (formula from day 6) & DD2 (formula from 9 weeks) they would still wake at 4am whether they had a dream feed or not so I decided to not worry about it and DD1 slept through from 6 weeks and DD2 was 9 mths so that's proof it can make no difference!!!!!!!! Lily is still breast fed but what we do is bath her about 9pm and then give her a nice big quite feed and she will then sleep through until 5am which is working really well at the moment. Maybe try a late bath and then a bottle quitely in her room and then pop her off to sleep for the night and see what happens, it has worked for all 3 of our girls.

Good luck, happy to help more if you need someone to chat to PM me

:flowerz:

[fingersx]

Thanks so much everyone for your prompt and helpful replies!

A couple of you suggest ditching the dreamfeed which is what I was thinking of doing to be honest so I'll do that tonight and see what happens.

I'll let you all know tomorrow what kind of night we had.

Thanks again!

[Lissa7]

Thanks so much everyone for your prompt and helpful replies!

A couple of you suggest ditching the dreamfeed which is what I was thinking of doing to be honest so I'll do that tonight and see what happens.

I'll let you all know tomorrow what kind of night we had.

Thanks again!

Good luck hope all goes well, look forward to hearing how you go
:flowerz:

[MissSookyLaLa]

expecting a 7 week old to sleep through is a big ask...

and even if she does...remember that she is going to have MANY growth spurts over the next few months where she will want to feed every few hours, even overnight

unfortunately you just have to be patient...my DS slept through from 7pm to 6am the other night for the first time- he is 7 months old...

it is hard, sometimes very hard..but babies have very different sleeping patterns to us and so while you might get lucky and get a good sleeper, you also might not...

good luck and be patient, remember that it WILL happen eventually but this could be a long way off yet...

[fingersx]

Hi All

Thanks again for the advice about dropping the dreamfeed, looks like it was the way to go.

I bathed and fed Ivy at 6pm last night and she was in bed asleep by 6.30pm. She woke at 11.30pm so I fed her and she took the full 120mls and straight back to bed. She then didn't wake until 5.50am.

How happy am I!!!!!:yelclap:

Hope it wasn;t a one off but even if it is I at least know that she can do it!

Thanks again!

[Lissa7]

Fantastic sounds about right to me :yelclap: The bath just before bed has always been the way to go for us. Stick to that routine and she will get used to it if you do the same everyday.

All the best sounds like you are doing a great job :flowerz:

[tlsmum2b]

i had not heard of the 'dreamfeed' either. I have a 6 1/2 week old and she seems to be feeding randomly during the day (B/F on demand) and then at night at around 9pm and maybe a top up at around 11pm then 2-3am and then around 6am. It really depends when her last feed was.
In the last week i have been having real troubles with settling her, so last night she cracked her tantrums b/w 9pm and finally settled her at 11.40pm, but then she slept until 5.30am, which was fantastic for me. She went back to sleep again and then i had to wake her to go to our doctors appt at 9.15am this morning. We have had a busy day today so hopefully that will make her tired so she will be easier to settle tonight. I might try the bath, feed, bed routines some of you have mentioned too.

[fingersx]

Hi Ladies

Thought I'd post again to let you know that dropping the dreamfeed was the best thing I've ever done.

For the last 4 nights I have bathed her and then fed at 6pm, she has woken around 2am so I feed her again and she goes straight back to bed and wakes again at 6am.

So, it looks like it wasn't a one off and hopefully it won't be too long before the 2am is dropped completely.

Thanks again for all your words of wisdom.

From a very happy mummy whose getting lots of sleep!!