The Dreamfeed Challenge

I've been hearing from a lot of my Mummy friends that they give their baby a Dreamfeed to help them to get a little bit more sleep. The theory behind it is you 'top up' baby at about 11pm to help them to sleep a little longer, as it's their little tummy being empty that wakes them. The main thing with this is that you don't wake the baby. NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY!

Now I'm exclusively breastfeeding Evie and booby dreamfeeds are a little harder than when using bottles. However, I had 3oz of expressed milk that I had to use up and I was, without wanting to sound dramatic, dying of exhaustion from the previous few nights of barely any sleep.

Now this was new to me. Evie was asleep and I kid you not, I was shaking at the thought of waking her and her not going back to sleep!
:-O

I popped my hand gently under her head and the other under her little bottom and lifted her out of her cot. Problem was, my right hand felt a little damp. Her nappy was huuuuuuuge and a change was very necessary.

So now I had to do a dream feed AND a dream change? The pressure!

Husband fetched the nappy and the wipes. We were doing this on the bed. No way I was going to risk leaving the bedroom! The temperature change along would wake her! All hands on deck.

We worked together like a well oiled machine, I undid the nappy, he wiped with the wetwipe, I slid the new nappy under whist he held her legs. Between the 2 of us she had the fastest nappy change ever. And she stayed asleep :)

So I gathered her sleepy little body up into the crook of my arm and bought the bottle to her mouth. She flinched slightly at first but stayed asleep. I let her take the milk for about a minute at a time and then stopped and let her settle back down because the more she drank, the more she seemed to stir.

It took about 10 minutes to finish the 3 ounces. I'm really conscious of how I feed her the expressed milk, I read an article on respectful bottle feeding which struck a chord with me. For a breastfed baby, a bottle is an entirely different sensation and flow. The baby has to really work for the milk on the boob and a bottle is much easier and can often end up overwhelming the baby. The bottles we use are the Dr Brown and are anti colic so I don't have the stress of winding her afterwards.

So, having made sure that I wasn't literally pouring the milk into her face, she fed and I kept her in my arms for about 10 minutes. Enough to ensure that she went back into her deep sleep, not enough that the settled only in my arms.

Next came the hardest part, I had to get her back into her cot. WITHOUT WAKING HER!

This is the part of the night time routine I struggle with after a normal feed. Evie sleeps next to me in her cot with the side totally down, however, the mattress isn't totally flush with mine, nor is the side of the cot quite low enough. So I can't do the slide across motion I'd like to do. Instead I have to lift her and then lower her down, which almost always stimulates a baby's moro, or startle reflex (when they flay their arms out like a starfish...cute but not when you're trying to be a stealth ninja mumma!).

Eventually she was lowered down, my left hand trapped under her head. I removed it finger by finger, holding my breath the whole time!

My right hand slid out from under her bottom and I gently placed her blanket back on top.

I kid you not, I was sweating. This was the Mummy Skill version of a task on the Crystal Maze!

You'll be pleased to know it was a totally futile task. She ungraciously woke an hour later as hungry as if she'd never been fed. And again 2 hours after that. Repeat for the rest of the day until mummy goes quite literally mad.

Until next time

Katy x