This week has seen two big milestones and it’s only Wednesday! The twins are now 7 months old and we’ve finally dropped the dream feed!
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7 Months Old
The Twinkles were 7 months old on Sunday — my little men are growing so quickly — I wish I could slow everything down, set time to run on half-speed, so I can make the most of every nano-second of this first year.
I have been taking a photo for every month ‘birthday’, so at the end of the 12 months I’ll have a complete set of a dozen little pictures which capture them in their first year. Already, looking back on the first picture, they are unrecognisable. Their funny little ‘old man’ faces, when they were born, are nothing like the chubby, perfect little cherubs that I see today.
They are really vocal and funny too. They have beautiful smiles that light up a room. And they smell absolutely delicious (apart when they have a full nappy, of course). I am totally in love with both of them — they are amazing.
I think it’s quite a humbling experience to be a parent.
For many, the road to parenthood is an easy one and I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget what a privilege it is to be given front row seats — the best in the house — to watch these little humans grow and change, in front of our very eyes.
Seeing them establish their personalities and humour is just a joy to watch. I guess the nature V nurture argument would say that babies pick up a lot of their traits from their parents but, having watched these two develop, I can see that they have had their own, fairly strong, little personalities from day one. They may well pick up habits and other traits from their daddy and me but they are well and truly their own people — and have been from the first hour they arrived.
Dropping The Dream Feed
The second milestone — and this is a fairly major one! — on dropping the dream feed. Since Sunday night we haven’t been waking them for their 10.30pm feed!!! I was chatting to a friend on Sunday, over lunch, about dropping the dream feed and she said that she had dropped her baby’s ‘dream-feed’ a few weeks previously. He’s a month or so younger than the Twinkles, so I asked her how she knew that he was ready? She said that it had been more and more difficult to wake him for the feed, plus he didn’t drink very much of it either. That totally rang a bell with me.
Since 9 weeks, when they dropped their middle of the night feed, our ‘dream-feed’ routine has been the same. Having dismissed Gina Ford’s advice — ‘don’t wake them, feed them with the light off, avoid all eye contact and don’t speak to them etc etc’ — we’d wake them around 10.30pm, switch the light on, change nappies and chat to them, then sit in our bed, each with a baby on a pillow, and chat to each other — or play on our phones — whilst they had the last bottle of the day.
This routine has worked perfectly and they have dutifully drunk their milk each night, until very recently.
Around 3-4 weeks ago the babies started resisting this late feed… every time we went to wake them, it was met with much protest and upset and on some occasions, we put them back down to sleep without having drunk very much of the bottle at all.
So on Sunday night we didn’t wake them.
Bless them, they must have been trying to tell us for the last few weeks that they didn’t want to be woken up, mid sleep!!
Both babies have slept from 7pm until 7-7.15am for the last 3 nights. No ‘dream-feed’ at 10.30pm, no nappy change, no early morning wake up calls — nada. Just two happily sleeping babies and two even happier parents who are now free to go to bed at 8 o’clock every night if we so desire.
Which we probably will. Got a lot of catching up to do ;)
Dropping the dream feed with these two has been much easier than I anticipated! I think they were ready weeks ago!
Caro Davies is a former art-director turned writer and content-creator, and editor behind UK lifestyle blog The Listed Home. She writes about home-related topics, from interiors and DIY to food and craft. The Listed Home has been featured in various publications, including Ideal Home, Grazia, and Homes & Antiques magazines.
