| Cyberfish88 - I totally hear ya! There is no rhyme or reason because we too have played around with the "dream feed" timing. One thing though - generally, the more we feed him at the 11pm feed, the longer he is able to feed. It also depends on how well he has fed throughout the day. They say a baby only wakes up hungry in the middle of the night if he/she has not taken in all the nutrients he/she requires during the day. I try to feed my baby as much as 6oz at the 11pm feed but he seldom takes more than 3, as he is generally so sleepy when we wake him up at 11... and I hesitate to over-stimulate him to wake him up as it might put him off his sleep-mode.
Question for you, Cyberfish - how much does he drink at 2:30-5:30 feed? Mine only drinks a bit - like 5-8min on one breast and then he falls asleep on my breast and then he doesn't wake again til 7am-ish (and he doesn't act hungry when he wakes up!) So I think in my case, he wakes up between 4:30-6am sheerly out of habit, not so much because he actually needs it. Then again, with b-fed babies it's so hard to tell if they've gotten all the nutrients they need during the day because we can't measure out the amounts. Mine is both b-fed and formula fed (about 70% b-fed), so I can't tell either...
Lucylou - you are very lucky indeed. Dreamfeeding does not work for every baby (exactly for the reasons you mentioned - after all, every baby is different) but it does work for many. You are very lucky that you never needed to consider it because your little one sounds like such a good sleeper naturally. Do you breast or formula feed?  |