Dream Feed Question From New Mom

[eiremk]

Hi,
My son Conor is 2 weeks and 4 days old.  I am breastfeeding.  I know I may be "dreaming" to think he would sleep through the night at such a young age, but I'm subscribing to Tracy's philosophy to "start as you mean to go on."  Therefore, I started a Dream Feed tonight for the first time.  My baby sucked pretty well for approx. 7 minutes and then stopped.  He was clearly in a deep sleep and settled as soon as I put him back to sleep.  My question is how long should the dream feed last?  I looked back over "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer" and couldn't find an answer.  My intuition tells me a feed of 10 minutes is probably fine, but I really have no idea!

Oh and while I'm at it - I have another question about feedings.  How long should the 2 evening cluster feedings last? 
Thanks,
Marie.

[JacobMarksMummy]

Unfortunatly there is no 'normal' time for a feed to last. Some babies are very fast eaters and only stay at the breast for five minutes or less whilst others can stay nursing for over half an hour. My advice would be to compare his DF and cluster feeds to his other feeds in the day. The chances are as he wont be ravenous at these times such as he might be first morning feed or in the night so I would think it is okay for him to nurse for slighty less than at other times. The DF is really just to top him up to his fullest so as to get the longest stretch of sleep out of him at night. HTH

[eiremk]

Thanks so much for the reply.  I'll definitely compare feeding lengths.  Congrats on your pregnancy!