Do you think a "dream feed" would help?

[BethIrish]

We are trying to get my almost 8 month old son to STTN. Or at least curb his night wakings to once a night. For the past 2 weeks he has been waking up screaming multiple times each night and the only thing that will calm him down is if he nurses. We don't really "nurse him to sleep" at this point - he's much too wiggly. We nurse to calm, and then put him down sleepy but awake and pat his back until he falls asleep.

When he is waking up, he is nursing voraciously for about 10 minutes or so...so I suspect it's not just for comfort, but because he his hungry. He is getting to the point during the day that he doesn't want his bottles (goes to daycare) and is down to taking 2 7-8oz bottles during the day. He has 2 solids "meals" and nurses on and off from about 6-8pm. So I don't know if he is really getting enough milk during the day to not nurse at night.

Do you think a "dream feed" around 10:30 would help him sleep a bit longer? How does one DO a dream feed? I have no clue...I feel like if I pick him up I will just wind up waking him up and pissing him off!!!

Any help or input would be appreciated. DH and I are both exhausted at this point and open to any suggestions. I never thought I would even consider CIO, but at this point.....I need to do something.

[littlebear]

Maybe or maybe not? Helpful, right? With my first son, a dream feed around that time did increase his sleep time and cut him down to one waking. I would just carefully pick him up and put the bottle to his mouth. He would start eating and sleep through the whole thing or be pretty much asleep.

With my second son, the dream feed didn't help at all. Most of the time he won't eat when he's sleeping. He refuses the bottle. When he did wake up enough to take the feeding, he would just end up waking up at the other times as well. It was almost like he was programmed to wake up at those times in his sleep cycle regardless of hunger. I quit the dream feed with him and just worked on other techniques to soothe him.

It does sound like your son might not be getting enough in the day though. One thing that I did when we had multiple wakings was to gradually decrease the feeding amount at a particular waking until it was eliminated. This seemed to work. It was almost like he had programmed himself to eat at certain times even if he wasn't necessarily really that hungry.

[Soulmate]

We dream fed DS until 9 or 10 months. It was the only way he would come close to STTN. When he started to consistently refuse (get ticked off) is when we stopped.One thing that I did when we had multiple wakings was to gradually decrease the feeding amount at a particular waking until it was eliminated.I did this too and it worked like a charm. It gives them a chance to make up for the loss at night during the day w/o too drastic of a change. When he got down to 2 ozs (we bottle fed) we let him CIO (or use your own technique - only CIO works for him) to break the habit of waking up. If you don't CIO you can soothe w/o feeding during those times. So we slowly weaned the 2am and 4am feedings and dream fed at 10:30 and that really did help a lot. DS has only taken in 15 ozs/day since 7 months and he is perfectly happy and hydrated so if he does not compensate during the day, it is not ideal, but possibly not harmful either.

To dream feed we just picked him up out of his crib and stuck the bottle in his mouth. Sometimes he woke up a bit and other times he kept sleeping I guess. But if he does not open a bit for the bottle/boob then he does not want the feed.