Dream feed means waking your baby to eat two to three hours after you put them to bed, just before you go to sleep. The goal is to extend the amount of time before your baby wakes up to eat again, so you get at least a five-hour stretch of sleep. You can start dream-feeding at around 2 to 3 months old – dream-feeds don’t work for every baby, but this method may be worth a try.
IN THIS ARTICLE
- What is dream feeding?
- How to dream feed
- Benefits and drawbacks of dream feeding
- When to stop dream feeding
The first few months with your baby inevitably involve lots of around-the-clock wakeups. Young babies eat frequently, every few hours all night and day, which is tough on sleep-deprived parents.
Though there isn’t solid evidence that dream-feeding works, some parents swear by the method. Here’s what dream-feeding is and how it might help you get more sleep.
What is dream feeding?
Dream feeding is putting your baby to sleep at their regular bedtime, then waking them up briefly to eat right before you go to bed. The idea is to give your baby one final opportunity to fill up before you hit the sack, in the hopes that a late-evening meal will help them sleep for several hours. In theory, dream feeding increases the odds you’ll get a solid five to six hours of sleep yourself before your baby wakes again to eat.
Both breastfed and bottle-fed infants can dream feed. It’s different from a bedtime bottle or bedtime nursing, which is when you feed your baby just before their usual bedtime. For a dream feed, your baby eats just before your bedtime – which is usually several hours after your baby already went down to sleep for the night.
Ideally, your baby will remain awake but drowsy while they eat, so they’ll fall back asleep easily once you put them down.
How to dream feed
Interested in trying the dream feed on your baby? Here’s how to get started:
- Follow a bedtime routine. One key to healthy sleep is to establish and consistently follow a soothing bedtime routine. That might include giving your baby a bath, dressing them in PJs, reading a story, cuddling, playing soft music, or singing a lullaby.
- Put your baby to bed. Set a bedtime – likely between 7 to 8 p.m. – and stick to it every night. Try to put your baby to bed when they’re drowsy but still awake, so they can learn the important skill of falling asleep on their own.
- Wake your baby right before you go to bed. This can be somewhere in the range of 9 p.m. to midnight, or about two to three hours after your baby went down to sleep.
- Offer your baby the bottle or breast. If you’re offering the bottle, be sure that your baby isn’t fully asleep and is in a semi-upright position, to prevent choking.
- Watch for cues that your baby has had enough to eat. This is especially important if you’re bottle-feeding. When your baby is full, they’ll likely take longer pauses between sips and eventually turn their head away from the bottle.
- Put your baby back to bed. Place your baby back in their crib or bassinet with as little fuss as possible.
For dream-feeding success, keep it calm and low-key with these tips:
- Use dim lights.
- Talk in a soft voice.
- Use gentle movements.
- Offer the bottle or your breast, but don’t force-feed your baby. The goal isn’t to get your baby to eat a regular-sized meal, just a midnight snack.
If your baby is at least 4 months old, you may choose to combine dream feeding with other sleep-training or night-weaning methods, like the Ferber method, to help your baby extend the amount of time between nighttime feedings.
Benefits and drawbacks of dream feeding
There isn’t a lot of research proving that dream feeding actually works as intended. One small study suggested that dream feeds may help both parents and babies sleep longer and sleep through the night. However, it wasn’t clear whether it was the dream feed itself or the other sleep-training tactics the parents used that had that effect. (Mainly, parents did anything but feed the babies if they woke up during the night after a dream feed.).
The late-night timing of a dream feed may not ultimately make that much of a difference in the big picture, either: Other research has found that increased feeding at any point during the day may decrease the number of times a baby feeds during the night.
Dream feeds may work for some babies but not others. If your baby fully wakes up while feeding, you might have a hard time getting them back to sleep. Waking your baby during deep sleep for a dream feed could disrupt their sleep cycle. And if you go to bed at around the same time as your baby, you’re likely already giving your baby a “dream feed” – you probably just don’t call it that.
While it’s relatively rare for infants to eat more than they need, the main risk of dream feeding is that you might overfeed your baby. This is more of a concern with bottle-fed infants than with breastfed babies. Either way, it’s important to never force your baby to eat and to watch for signals that they’re full, such as closing their mouth, turning away from your breast or the bottle, starting and stopping often, or slowing down and falling asleep.
Going five or six hours without eating may not be appropriate for all babies, either. If your baby has been struggling to gain weight or needs a specific feeding schedule to meet their metabolic needs, talk to your pediatrician before trying to dream feed to make sure it’s okay for your baby.
When to stop dream feeding
If you want to try dream feeding, try to start when your baby is around 2 to 3 months old but before they’re 6 months old. That’s because 2 to 3 months is about the age that babies start to sleep longer stretches of five to six hours at night without needing to eat. Any earlier and your newborn will still wake up to eat every two to three hours anyway.
Ideally, you’ll want to stop dream feeds when your baby is between 6 to 9 months old. At this point, many babies are able to sleep through the night and don’t need a middle-of-the-night feeding or dream feed. If your baby is still struggling to sleep long stretches during the night at this age, you may want to try sleep-training methods, like the Ferber method mentioned above, gentle sleep training, or the cry-it-out method. You can also talk to your baby’s doctor any time you have a concern about their sleep habits – or anything else.
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