Parents suffer from lack of sleep because newborns don't have a sleep rhythm yet. They will wake up and feed on demand even in the wee hours of the night. Later on, what can help is "dream feeding" that some moms say have helped their babies sleep through the night.
Dream feeding doesn't work on newborns. The first three months require you to feed your infant on demand. You really just have to, well, endure. The goal of dream feeding is to introduce to your little one the idea of sleeping through the night. At first, you may find yourself waking up three times during the night to dream-feed your baby — yes, your baby is sleeping through the night but not you. However, dream feeding instances should lessen as your baby starts to learn to sleep through the night without having to feed.
On her Instagram Stories, celebrity mom Divine Lee Go shared that her 3-month-old son Baz Go already sleeps through the night with the help of dream feeding. To give moms an idea how it works, the new mom did what we may describe as a walkthrough.Baz's bedtime, according to the new mom, is at 7 p.m. "When he starts moving makulit while sleeping, it's a cue that he's hungry," Divine explained. "Or we time it every three hours," she added, anticipating her son's feeding pattern.
Divine walks us through how Baz sleeps through the night.PHOTO BY screenshot from @divinemlee/Instagram StoriesADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW"When we offer the bottle after three hours, and he takes it, he finishes his usual ounces. I also change his nappies while asleep. After nappy change would be burping," Divine said.
Baz would dream feed as he lies elevated on a pillow to prevent him from choking on his milk. "If he doesn't burp, we put him elevated and sideways," she added.What other parents are reading
Baz dream fed three times over the course of the night.PHOTO BY screenshots from @divinemlee/Instagram Stories"He's just asleep the whole time. [The] whole process [takes] about 30 minutes," the new mom proudly shared. Baz's next dream feed would be after three to four hours, and he did so at around 10 p.m. At 1 a.m., Divine dream-fed Baz again, but this time, he fell asleep and wasn't able to finish his milk.
Baz was dream feeding again at 3 a.m., and the celebrity mom shared that her son will wake up for his bath around 6 to 7 a.m. "See, he slept through the night," Divine said. Indeed, Baz woke up that morning with a lot of poop, his mom quipped, probably because he was fed and full throughout the night.
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It's a good morning for this little one!PHOTO BY screenshot from @divinemlee/Instagram StoriesPediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, also the author of The Happiest Baby on The Block, defined dream feeding as "when you wake your baby to feed one more time before you turn in for the night." Waking your baby, in this case, only means rousing him gently to feed.
Dr. Karp explained that the idea is to wake the baby before she wakes you, so you're giving her the nourishment she needs, but not rewarding her for waking and crying. It's about anticipating her hunger or her need for a nappy change, but without fully waking up the baby.
Once you notice a pattern on your baby's sleep times, at around three months or later, then you can start trying if dream feeding would work on your baby.
