My last Babywise post I shared how I would use the dreamfeed to get Little Bug to go a longer stretch between feeds through the night.

Dave gave her the dreamfeed at around 11pm and usually between 3 and 5 am Little Bug would wake for another feed.

There was a time when Little Bug certainly needed this 4am feed. She would suck down a full feed and go right back to sleep until wake up time (7:30am).

But then there came a time when I knew she didn’t really need this feed and instead was waking out of habit.

There were several clues that let me know Little Bug was ready to drop the 4am feed. She would wake between the 3 to 5 am hours but she wasn’t taking a full feed. Or she would take a full feed at 4am, but she wasn’t hungry enough for her first morning feed at 7:30am.

Another big clue was when Little Bug started waking at the same time every night. As I stated before, she was waking between 3 and 5 am. Whenever she started waking at the same time (and honestly, I can’t remember what time that was ) I knew she was waking out of habit, instead of hunger, and if I didn’t do something quick to stop this “4am feed”, we would quickly get into a bad habit.

So what did I do?

I could have dropped the feed cold turkey and let her cry it out when she woke. However, with this, I didn’t feel cold turkey was the way to go. So I started decreasing the amount of formula I gave her by an ounce each night. We got down to just one ounce the last night.

I have to take a moment here and record that last middle of the night feed.

I remember thinking, “Wow. This is our last middle of the night feed!” And then I was sad. As much as giving up that wee hour early morning feed was a milestone I really looked forward to Little Bug reaching, I knew I would one day look back and miss those quiet moments of sitting in a rocking chair holding my sleepy little baby while she sucked down a bottle.

But there is a time for everything. And as sad as it was, it was time to sleep through the night completely. (Yes, there is a drip of sarcasm here. It is certainly not a sad thing to sleep through the night.)

I was a little scared of how the next night at 4am would go. I was gearing up for some middle of the night crying. The next night Little Bug woke up for the 4am feed. I didn’t go in. She whimpered for a little while. I don’t think she ever really got to crying. She eventually went back to sleep and that was the end of the 4am feed.

I’ll admit I got it good in breaking her of that 4am feed. Some babies may need several nights to cry it out, Babywise will tell you. After those nights of getting past that 4am hour with no feed, baby’s brain will get into a pattern of sleeping through that feed and baby will no longer wake.

We continued the dreamfeed for awhile after Little Bug dropped the 4am feed. It wasn’t until Little Bug was around 6 months old that she started sleeping 11-12 hours straight through the night with no feeds at all.

This is a wonderful milestone to look forward to. Once Little Bug dropped the dreamfeed and the 4am feeding, I can remember thinking it was like more hours were added to my day suddenly! I’d put Little Bug to bed around 8 to 8:30 pm each night and not here from her until waketime the next morning!

After I put Little Bug to bed, I had two to three hours before I needed to go to bed! I remember feeling a sense of freedom that I had not felt since she was born. It was such a good feeling – I knew my baby was getting the rest she needed at night, Dave and I had time as a couple and I even had some time to myself at night!

Just another beautiful thing about Babywise … Babywise really does give a family the tools necessary to manage the needs of every family member in a way that everyone’s needs are met in a healthy manner.

- Elaine