I never thought that at 13 months I would still be sleep deprived and waking up twice a night to nurse Tessa. After reading many articles and books on baby sleep and breastfeeding I decided to give the idea of a “dream feed” a try.
Part of Tessa’s nightly routine is to nurse right before I put her in the crib. Then she falls asleep and I normally go to bed around 2 hours after that. The problem with that is I was having to get up in two hours to nurse her again because she was only going 4 hours between feedings. This was very exhausting. Tonight I decided to do a dream feed, which is when you pick them up and nurse them but don’t completely wake them up. The idea of a dream feed totally freaked me out because you should never bother a sleeping baby! But I’m desperate for more sleep so I figured I should give it a try.
Tessa nursed and went to bed at 8:30. I was going to bed around 10:30 so I went in picked her up and nursed her. To my surprise she didn’t fully wake up and actually nursed well. Off to bed I went and I was shocked when I heard her on the monitor and checked my phone and it was 3:30! She had gone 5 hours without waking up to nurse which meant I got 5 hours of sleep!!! I already felt like a new person. I nursed her and put her back in the crib. She slept until 6:30 when she started tossing and turning. She ended up putting herself back to sleep until 7:45 when she woke up for the day and then nursed again.
Hopefully continuing to do a dream feed will mean more consecutive hours of sleep for me!