Dream Feed at 7 weeks

[justineveronica]

Hi there, My 7 week old was sleeping 4-6 hours per night.  We recently started EASY which has helped significantly throughout the day but he's now waking up at 2AM and 5AM every night.  I have tried giving him a dream feed for the last two nights and he's still waking up at those two times.  He normally takes about 4 - 4.5 oz throughout the day and he's only taking about half that for the dream feed.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Our goal is to eliminate the 2AM feeding. 

[Lolly]

Hello and welcome!

At just a tiny 7 weeks he's doing really well. Many babies seem to sleep better in the first couple of weeks as they are in the sleepy newborn stage, waking at 2am and 5am even after a DF is completely normal and will continue to be normal for a while yet. They go through so many growth spurts in the first year they really do need the night feeds. Most babies need a nightfeed and/ or a dreamfeed for at least the first 6 months. Don't be in a hurry to drop the feed, some babies will drop it by themselves and that's great, but it's easier to feed and get back to sleep ASAP than try to settle a hungry baby.

You could stop the DF and see what happens and just feed when he wakes, neither of mine took to the DF so we did that. They woke about midnight and then about 3/4 am and gradually the midnight feed got later which pushed the next feed closer to wake up. Eventually they had one feed around 3am (ish) and we weaned DD's nightfeed around 8 months when she was established on solids.

What time are you doing the DF? Tweaking that may help, or it could be that you need to carry on with it for another week or so to have an idea of it's impact, 2 nights is too soon to tell really.

Laura