Weaning off night feed???...

[hynygirl]

My daughter is 11 weeks old.  I have been trying to do the cluster feedings in the evenings - I'm inconsistent because I find it difficult with regular evening stuff going on. However, I have been doing the dream feeds around 10:30pm.  She usually wakes around 1:30am-2am and then will sometimes sleep through until 5:30 or even 6:30am and the other morning she slept until 7:15am.  So to me this seems backwards.  In the past she has had a longer stretch in the night followed by a shorter one. I know she's not waking out of habit because I have switched the time of the dream feed a few nights and she wakes 3 hours after it regardless of the time.  Do you think I could start trying to stop the 1:20/2am feed? Or is she still to young? And what is the best way to go about it? If I try giving her the soother at that time when she wakes - is it appropriate to try to get her back to sleep with shush/pat? Feeling a bit lost

[Layla]

You could try weaning the 1.30/2am feed by offering her less at this feed. If you've tried settling with a dummy but she's clearly not happy or she wakes very soon after and takes a feed, then she's genuinely hungry. At that age, I applied the same feeding schedule as I would have during the day, so if mine was on 3hr EASY and was awake 3 or more hrs from the time she went to bed, I would have fed and back to bed. We never did a DF though and you could maybe try not giving it to her to see if she will sleep longer from the time she goes to sleep (the DF can sometimes makes things worse rather than better)