Night feedings

[coby1756]

OMGoodness, I have so many questions.  Why couldn't I have thought of these forums earlier??  lol  Sorry if these questions should be somewhere else but I'm just not sure.

When you feed at night do you unswaddle baby or do you just feed and put baby back to bed.  I'm afraid if I don't unswaddle her I'll be nursing her to sleep and she will come to expect this all the time.  On the other hand I love the thought of just plopping her back in bed asleep and going back to bed myself.  However, I don't want to be fixing problems later on. 

TIA

[Kimberly®]

At night its ok to feed to sleep. If you don't need to unswaddle then don't, we even stopped changeing DD at night unless we had to. Just make sure that during your day you get your LO down awake.

[TJ & Stephy's Mommy]

When I use to have nighttime feedings, I'd leave DS swaddled and popped him back to bed afterwards.  Now that I don't swaddle DS or have nighttime feedings, I still pop DS back to bed after his dreamfeed.

[coby1756]

Speaking of dreamfeeds, how do you get this to work.  I'd like to do it, but it's so hard to get her to latch, I basically have to wake her up.  I gave up with ds and want to this time too.  I just hate it.  Same with cluster feeds.  I feel it's so much work and kills me to have to wake her up after so much work of putting her down.  It drives my stress level through the roof.  Any advice??

[TJ & Stephy's Mommy]

The dreamfeeds are tough to do.  It took about a week for my LO to catch on with the dreamfeeds.  I didn't breastfeed my LO, I pumped BM for all the bottlefeeds so I didn't have any latching problems.  I'd used the bottle nipple to tickle his lips and cheeks to get him to open his mouth and suck.  It took alot of practice and of course, every once in awhile, my DS would wake up during the dreamfeed and take forever to get back to bed.  But after a lot of practice, he'd fall back asleep quite quickly.  Or sometimes, DS would wake up before he dreamfeed waiting for me to give him his dreamfeed.  I agree your stress level does go up but once you and your LO masters it it will get better.

I didn't do the cluster feed but I think you do the cluster feed when you LO is awake not asleep.

HTH
Mel

[Kimberly®]

The only suggestiong I have is to use a bottle of EBM for the dreamfeed. Or if you really hate them that much don't do them. I understand that its hard and some people don't like them or can't do it. FOr us it worked for others no go.

[litomi]

DF works for SOME babies, you have to try for a week until LO's body recognizes as a feed. Sometimes, DF doesn't work for some babies.
If your LO is just waking once during the night for night feed, I would say just leave DF for a while. If your LO is waking more than once, try DF for a while and see if it works.