What is dream feeding?
Sometimes your baby might wake up screaming in the middle of the night because they feel hungry.
Dream feeding is the process of feeding your baby just before you go to sleep to ensure that they feel full and can sleep through the night. You don’t have to fully wake them up but just enough so that they can start feeding.
Research reveals that feeding your baby between 10 pm to midnight can reduce the number of times they wake up in the night and hopefully they wake up directly in the morning.
Sometimes even after dream feeding, your baby might still wake up at 3:30am so you can prepare for this by waking up 30 minutes earlier and feeding them so they remain nourished and full.
This ensures that the baby doesn’t feel hungry at night and wakes up screaming. If you reward the baby for waking up and crying by breast feeding them then it will only encourage your baby to feed more at night and will destroy your sleep schedule eventually.
Many parents who have tried dream feeding have proved that it actually works and their infants sleep longer through the night which helps them develop this as a routine.
How can you dream feed your baby?
1- Take your baby gently out of their bassinet between 10pm to 12am
2- Make sure they don’t wake up and place your breasts gently on their lower lip.
3- Gently encourage to feed
4- Burp your baby after they are done feeding before putting them back down on the bed.
5- You can swaddle them or swoosh or swing them around gently until they fall back asleep.
6- You can also play white noise in the background to help them feel more at ease.
Why dream feeding is important for your baby?
1- Your baby gets some extra nourishment and calories to help them sleep better.
2- She will remain satisfied throughout the night and will wake up feeling hungry in the morning which will help to boost her daytime eating.
3- Feeding babies between 10pm-12am will ensure you know that your baby won’t wake up feeling hungry in the middle of the night.
When can you stop dream feeding?
There is no general rule as to when you can stop dream feeding your child.
It depends on your baby. If they can fall asleep through the night without waking up then you can stop dream feeding them.
Generally, you can stop dream feeding your child after 2 to 4 weeks.
What are the cons of dream feeding your baby?
Sometimes waking a sleeping baby up to feed them can reinforce your baby’s tendency to wake up frequently and in turn prove harder for them to develop a sleeping pattern.
This can also prove to be inappropriate for babies who are ready underweight or undernourished so definitely consult your paediatrician before trying this out.
Conclusion
We hope this article helped you to understand more about dream feeding your child and the advantages of doing so.
To help your baby fall asleep through the night, you can combine dream feeding with other sleep friendly activities as well, like reading a book to them every night so they recognise when it’s time to go to bed.
Studies show babies love hearing their parents voice even if they may not understand your words so you can buy colourful books for them which they can look through as you point out different animals or birds for them.
If you want to buy these colourful, story books for your baby then do visit https://lilamigosnest.com/ and check out our collection of story books.
