The Dream Feed – Is it a Good Idea?
If you’re looking for techniques to help your baby get more nighttime sleep, chances are you have tried or considered trying a dream feed.
A dream feed is when you proactively feed your baby after they have been asleep for a few hours. For example, many parents will wake their baby just enough to eat between 10 and 11 P.M. in hopes of then getting a longer stretch of sleep.
Are Dream Feeds A Good Idea?
While providing a dream feed to your newborn who needs to eat frequently might be an effective short-term strategy, dream feeds can backfire as your little one approaches 4 months. Between 3 and 4 months, a baby’s biological sleep rhythm is maturing. During this time they start to cycle between light and deep sleep. They now have distinct sleep stages like an adult. This is a permanent (and good) development. This is also the period when you may experience the 4 month sleep regression.
As your baby’s sleep rhythm develops and matures, sleep during the first part of the night should be the deepest and most restorative sleep of the night. Even if you feel as though your baby does not fully wake during their dream feed, you have disrupted their sleep rhythm which has the potential to throw off their sleep for the rest of the night.
Three potential risks of the dream feed:
- Your little one may be too sleepy to eat which results in less than a full feed and they will wake again soon after rather than sleeping a nice long stretch.
- After disrupting the initial stretch of sleep, your little one’s sleep may become more fragmented which means they will wake more frequently during the second half of the night.
- By waking your little one to feed, you may set a new rhythm for their body. When this happens and you try to remove the dream feed, your little one will continue to wake within 15-30 minutes of their typical dream feed time.
These risks can result in it taking longer for your baby to learn to sleep through the night.
If your little one is between 3 and 4 months, it’s ideal if the first stretch of night sleep is the longest. You want that initial stretch to continue to lengthen until there are no night wakings and your baby is sleeping 11-12 hours at night. If you aren’t currently putting your baby down drowsy but awake or relaxed and awake at bedtime, that is a great place to start in order to get a longer first stretch of sleep.
I wish I didn’t start dream feeding my son. He is 14 weeks old. His bedtime is 8pm. He would normally wake up around 3am to feed then be back down until 6 to 7 am. I wantedto eliminate the 3 am feed so i started df at midnight after my last pumping session. The first night it worked and he slept from 12am until 6am. now he stirs at midnight looking for a bottle and still gets up at 3am! I dont know what to do.
Hi Tara! Try not to stress too much. I wouldn’t offer the dream feed anymore and if he truly wakes at midnight looking for that feeding, go ahead and feed him. If he hasn’t gone back to sleeping through that midnight feeding at 16 weeks, you can do a little sleep intervention to help him re-drop that feeding. Hang in there – this will pass!
I am so wish I hadn’t started the dream feeding. It was recommended to my by our pediatrician’s office as a remedy for a lot of night wakings (likely due to the 4mo sleep regression). But now my son wakes up after every 3 hours of sleep expecting to be fed. I feel like I set us both up for failure just as the regression was ending. We had previously been getting 7-8+ hour stretches from him. So upset about this.
Hi Jessica! I know it’s frustrating, but anything can be fixed. If he was sleeping 7-8+ before, drop the dream feed and don’t feed him before it’s been at least 6 hours since bedtime. You may need to do a little sleep training for the other wakings, but you can get him back on track. Also, focus on his schedule and making sure he’s down for the night by 7pm. Hope that helps!
The dreamfeed backfired on me. Baby now wakes up at 10 looking for a bottle. He wakes he is up every 3 hours. Very frustrating. He was sleeping 7 hours straight. Now only 3. What do I do when he gets up every night at 10 now?
I know that’s frustrating! I would help him through that 10pm waking in another way other than feeding. What is most appropriate and affective will depend on his age and personality.