Dreamfeed questions

[Aunty Vi]

Hello all,
I have a couple of dreamfeed questions.  We found it very hard to establish a dreamfeed until I started giving expressed milk in a bottle, as Aidan wouldn't take the breast in his sleep.  Now I give the bottle, he usually takes a little bit even if he is asleep.  However recently he has started to wake up during nearly every dreamfeed, either when I pick him up, when I try to get a bib on him (milk goes EVERYWHERE if I bottle-feed him without one, and I can't put him back to bed all wet!), during the feed itself or when I lay him back down.  This does mean he takes more milk than if he doesn't wake, and he usually settles quite easily afterwards, but I would like to know whether the waking is likely to cause problems, e.g. lead to more/earlier waking up later in the night or anything?  I know the whole idea is that he's meant to be asleep so not sure how much it matters if he actually wakes!
Also, how much milk does he need to take for it to be "worth" doing a dreamfeed?  If he wakes, he drinks up to 3 1/2 oz (max) which is not bad though quite a bit less than he has during the day, but if he doesn't wake he often only takes 1 or 1 1/2oz, which makes me wonder if it is worth bothering as I doubt that would keep him going much longer in the night?
Partly why I am curious about this is that his best night so far was one night when he was so deeply asleep that he wouldn't take ANY milk when I picked him up, even from the bottle!  I eventually gave up and put him back down, expecting a bad night, but then he slept right through to 6.15am which was his best ever!  So I sometimes wonder whether I should try not giving a dreamfeed in case it has the same effect, but I'm a bit nervous about testing it out, especially as there were some other factors that night that might have caused this, e.g. he had had some Calpol as he had just had his vaccinations (though Calpol doesn't always have this effect on him).
Would be grateful for your thoughts on these Qs!
PS - Aidan is 13 weeks now, currently on 3-hour EASY with dreamfeed but no cluster-feeds, and usually has just one night feed now, usually around 5.30ish, which I am trying to gradually eliminate by moving it later and giving less milk.

[*Nicola*]

Hiya

The DF works differently for different babies. For some it helps them go longer through the night but for others it can make no difference, or even disrupt sleep cycles.

What time are you dong the DF? It should be given as close to 10pm as possible.  Any later than 1015pm and we have found it leads to more NW's.

The sleeping straight through could have been due to having no DF, or like you say, any one of a number of factors! The only way to see would be to give it a try for a couple of nights and see how he goes. 

We started DF with DD2 at 12 weeks, after growth spurt gave us an extra night waking.  We stopped it around 16 weeks I think, because she was still up at 230am after DF at 10pm.  She slept til 230am with or without the DF.  Now, since 4 month growth spurt NW's are earlier so we have just started it again  and seen an improvement in things right away.  It's trial and error I think 

As for waking up, Tracy does say that although you should be as gentle as possible and try to avoid waking LO up, not to worry if they do wake up as they are usually sleepy enough to go settle right back down.  Regarding the amounts of milk necessary to make a difference, I have no idea.  I've only ever done a BF DF so wouldn't know.

My other thought is that at 13 weeks, it is still totally normal for him to have one night feed. He'll give it up soon enough 

 

[Aunty Vi]

Thank you Nicola!  It's nice to know I don't have to worry if he wakes.  I have been giving him the feed usually somewhere between 10.30 and 11, though occasionally it gets pushed as far as 11.15 - I try to avoid that but I am a night-owl and always seem to have too many things to do in the evening so sometimes end up running late.  It doesn't seem to make that much difference what time I do it though, it might mean his night feed moves a bit earlier or later but he still usually only wakes once.
I think I won't try changing anything just at the moment, we are already going through weaning him off his dummy at the moment which is pretty hard so I think I'd better keep everything else the same as he's used to until that is over and things have settled down!