A dream feed – have you heard about it?
Do you know what a dream feed is?
For many families, a dream feed is what helps their baby ‘sleep through the night’.
But how does it work? And can a dream feed really help your baby sleep through the night?
HOW DOES A DREAM FEED WORK?
A dream feed is when you feed your baby without them actually waking for a feed.
You will pick your baby up when they are asleep – or lie beside them if they are co-sleeping with you – and feed them.
When you do this, your baby will gently wake up or go into a drowsy state, you will then give them a feed and ideally, your baby will immediately go back to sleep.
How do I do a dream feed without waking my sleeping baby?
Whether it be breastfeeding or bottle feeding, these are the steps you should follow if dream feeding:
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- Step 1: Gently take your baby out of their sleep space. Ensure the room is either dark or dimly lit and quiet (except if you are using white noise).
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- Step 2: Touch your baby’s cheek with your breast or bottle. Placing either breast or bottle on their cheek or lower lip will wake up their rooting reflex and get your baby to start feeding.
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- Step 3: Offer a brief feed, so maybe for a little less than you would normally feed in the daytime or before bed.
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- Step 4: Wind your baby if you can, though this isn’t always easy when baby is fast asleep which is one of the cons in our opinion.
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- Step 5: Place your baby back into their sleep space. If they are awake, let them to try and self-soothe back to sleep.
DO DREAM FEEDS HELP?
They can work for sure.
For many parents, they will feed their baby just before they go to bed and then baby sleeps for another long stretch, enabling parents to maybe only get up once in the night to feed.
Or baby sleeps through until morning.
For a parent, being able to give your baby a feed just before you go to bed, and either not having to get up during the night, or only get up once, is amazing.
And lots of parents implement dream feeds when their baby is 3 months when babies are naturally able to go longer stretches without milk, as their tummy grows.
Sounds too good to be true, right? So are there downsides to a dream feed? Or are there times a dream feed won’t work?
Absolutely, there are definitely cons to consider, which we will go through in more detail below.
