When to drop dreamfeed

[corrina01]

My lo isn't feeding during the night now.  She has her dreamfeed at 10.30pm, but recently she has been taking less and less at her 7.00am feed.  Should I drop the dreamfeed?  She is 16 weeks.

[Tammy: Ethan & Kaden's Mom]

I don't have much advice, except to say that my ds did this as well.  I always kept the 6 oz. df at 10 a.m., and he just didn't eat a ton in the morning.  However, he was sleeping all night.  I figured he just wasn't that hungry in the morning!  He eventually started eating more in the morning, and we didn't change the df at all. 

That said, we are now decreasing the df, and are down to 2 oz. now.  Tracy usually recommends dropping the df anywhere between 7 and 8 months, or when solids are firmly established.

HTH!

[corrina01]

Thanks for that, I'm not the only one 

[LizzieW]

Hi, i really worried about the dreamfeed/when to give up. My son seemed to be really cutting back on his dreamfeed, sometimes barely taking 1 oz, then he started nursery at 5 months old and slept a lot less in the day and often only had a small bedtime feed (at 7.30pm) as he was so tired. He went right back to having as much as 7 oz at dreamfeed and we seemed to go backwards for a while. However, I soon noticed that he was really faffing over his morning bottle, sometimes only having 3-4oz and I wondered if the dream feed was "putting him off" the morning feed. He then started eating a lot more solids at 6pm although he still didn't always have a big bedtime milk feed. Rather than go back to gradually reducing again, at one weekend I just cut out the dream feed as an experiment and guess what - he slept through anyway! He then fed much better in the mornings but through trial and error it works best if he has half-two thirds of the bottle, then a break while I get him dressed and then the rest of his milk with some cereal half an hour later. My tip therefore is trust your mother's intuition. If there are a few signs there that he/she might be ready to drop the DF, try it and see.

[corrina01]

Thanks Lizzie. 

[kdruve]

My lo is 12 weeks old, and I always feed him every 4hrs during the day. Even if he is asleep I will wake him and try to feed him as close as possible to 7am, 11am, 3pm, and 7pm. He always sleeps really well after 7pm through till approx midnight/1am or sometimes even 2am  where he will sleep restlessly for the rest of the night. Sometimes I can hear him sucking his thumb, other times he wants the dummy, and occasionally he will let out a wail. If I wait for a few minutes he will often go back to sleep only to wake again with the same restless pattern until morning.
I used to do a df at 11pm but this only seemed to encourage him to wake every 4hrs day and night.
However, if I let him go through until morning then he is only having 4 feeds/day, and he should be having 5. He always has about 180ml per bottle. Not sure what to do. Should I try waking him up for the df again, or leave him until morning? Could the restless sleep mean he is hungry? (Is not crying though)
Not sure what to do......Help......
Karen
kdruve@bigpond.net.au

[corrina01]

Karen, try swapping him on to a 3.5 hr easy so he gets enough feed during the day. Start the DF again try 10.30pm. My lo always sleeps fitfully from about 5am till 7am, but last night was the first she has slept through from 10.30pm till 7am and she only stirred 3 times.