EASY Schedule with NO dreamfeed - what to do?

[Aiden'sMom]

Aiden is 5 months old and dropped his DF of his own accord and sleeps much better now as a result.  However, it does mean it is difficult to get the feeds in before bedtime.  I would love to get him to every 4 hours however not sure how to do the schedule with no DF???

QUESTION:
Does anyone also have a LO who does NOT DF and how do you arrange their day as a result?

SCHEDULE

E 6am (220ml)
A  6.30am
S 7.30am (Nap for 1 - 1.5 hours)

E 9.30 (180ml)
A 10.00am
S  11.00 (Nap for 1.5 hours)

E  1 pm (180ml)
A  1.30pm
S  2.30pm  (Nap of 1-1.5 hours)

E  4.30pm
A 5.00pm
S  5.30pm  (Catnap of 40 minutes) If he doesn't have this, he seems to be very tired/grumpy.

E  6.30 pm
A  6.00pm (BATH)
S  7.00pm

Sleeps through till 5.30-6am the next day without a DF.

***He still needs quite a bit of sleep during the day however the past couple of nights he has woken 3-4 times crying??? I think it may be overexhaustion as we were out on the road on the weekend and his naps were up and down and not as long as they should be.  Last night I left him when he cried for 5 minutes and he went back to sleep - so we will see.

Any advice on schedule would be appreciated.

Have a good day!!

Claire

[yaya]

Hiya! Have u thought of cluster feeding at night?

[jmosery]

my son never had a dreamfeed. some night he'll wake up between 3-5 and I give him a bottle and back to sleep

some days he doesn't wake up at night and never seems hungry during the day

if I found him consistantly sleeping through the night but still hungry during the day, i would increase his oz.

oh, and i should say that we moved him to a 4 hour easy about 2 weeks ago and still no change in hunger. he's just eating less.

he now eats five 6oz. bottles

he's 4 months today and no solids yet

hope that helps
jaime

[jmosery]

Claire- if he doesn't seem hungrier during the day i would leave your current schedule. if over time you see he's hungry, then you can add an oz. to either each feed or add a couple oz. to just the 6:30 feed

[Aiden'sMom]

Hi Yaya

With regards cluster feeding, his 4.30 and 6.30 feeds are quite close together already - would you consider that a cluster feed andit is OK to leave these feeds as close as they are?  Once he has the 6.30pm feed, he is not hungry for the rest of the night.  When he wakes at night (sometimes he won't), he is just restless and not hungry.

Secondly, when can babies go from 5 bottles to 4 bottles per day? Any advice?  Aiden has reflux so it is also a matter of when he can tolerate increased fluid volumes.

Thanks guys!


Claire

[jmosery]

Claire- some nights my little one doesn't wake for a feed. those days he only has 4 feedings

i think if your baby can handle it, yours seems to then i say its fine. i think that 5th feed gets dropped when they sleep through the night. i don't think it gets taken away from a day feeding

if he seems hungrier during the day you can then increase his oz. per bottle or start solids or increase solids.

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

I didn't do a dream feed with either of mine but we did cluster feeding. With DS he would take a large feed at 730am and not want a feed again for 4 1/2 hours whether I liked it or not so what we ended up with was 730, 1130/12, 3pm, 5pm, 730pm. As I was breast feeding it seemed to suit as I didn't have as much milk early evening as I was pretty tired. At 5 months we were down to 2 naps. 1 around 9ish for 2 hours and the 2nd nap at 1pm ish for 2 hours. Not sure this helps. Approaching 6 months we had to cut back to 4 feeds as the cluster stopped working and he prefered 4 large feeds and sometimes even 3 (which was a bit freeky). I think it is trial and error. Less was definately more for us so it's worth trying to keep a log of what you try and see how that affects sleep and feeding etc.


Good luck HTH.

J

[yaya]

Hi claire, sorry its taken me a while to get back to u! So if ur feeding 4.30 and 6.30 thne that is cluster feeding yes. AS to when u can go to 4 bottles, im not sure will callin the bottle mods to get u an answer!
Sounds as tho u r doing really well, the only way i can see u can change ur routine is maybe having am nap slightly later say 8, then that moves the whole day along a bit? ot sure about this tho, cant really see a prob with ur routine, r u still havign issues? At 5mo he could maybe be on a 4 hr EASY

[gemmah]

Hello,
If you put LO on 4 hour EASY, 4 hours between feeds that stretch the day out. My LO 8.5m but 4 hour EASY intro at 4m.
Here my LO routine, hope it helps:

7 wake and milk
7.30 activity
9 nap
11 feed
11.30 act
1 nap
3 feed
5.30 catnap
7 feed
7.30 bed

(have not added when i give solids)

[LŠuren]

Hi there

We never did a DF either, when Calum was on 4hr EASY we feed him at;
0730,1130,1530, 1900/1930 last feed was done before and after his bath, to get more in. 
 
we never did the 3.5hr but my guess is you could do this.....

0600, 0930, 1300, 1630, 1830 - split last feed before and after bath about 30-45mins apart.

or on 4hr..

0600, 1000, 1400, 1800&1830 - split as before

[Aiden'sMom]

Thanks all for your input - I am going to monitor him closely over the next few days and see if we can go to 4hours yet - he does do it sometimes if he has had a big enough feed before hand.

Cheers for now

Claire