Dreamfeed

[Aiden and Marlo's Mama]

Alright - ths approach doesn't seem to be working out for us.  My baby girl is a heavy sleeper like her Mom and she wouldn't latch if I pried her mouth open with spoons if she's sleeping. 

So - how am I supposed to do this?  She does her nighttime sleep from approx 8:30pm till 1am and then sleeps till about 3 and is up till about 5 then wakes again at 7.

I'm going back to work December 1st and will try my hardest to go to bed when she does but hard to do with Aiden - I'd rather do a dreamfeed around 11 so I can at least hang out with dh for an hour or so when he comes home from work to cut out the 1am feed.

Suggestions?

[Lilah'sMommy]

I also could never do the dream feed.  Dd was exclusively breastfed (she wouldn't take a bottle at all), and I had trouble keeping her awake for feeds or feeding her at all if I had to wake her for a feed; there was just no way to get her to latch on.  So I didn't do the dream feed.  But with you needing to go back to work, there's just no other way to get some sleep so you can be functional!  Can you pump a bottle of milk to give to her?  I've read in other posts that you are giving bottles, so she might do better with a bottle, as it's an easier feeding action.  I know you want to nurse as much as possible; maybe pump after each nursing to get as much milk as you can for that bottle?  Do you do cluster feeds before bed?  That might help her sleep a bit longer, too.

I feel like I didn't help at all.    Hope someone else has some more advice.

[annamum]

How about if you wait for her light sleep phase? Wouldn't she be more cooperative then. I know that some babies never seem to want to df but others after a couple of times learn this. My dd didn't want it at first but I tried a couple of times and she did better after a week. I would always go to pick her up from her crib but first I watched if she was moving in her sleep, that was a good moment to df. If she was like a log, I didn't even try.