Evening cluster feed vs dream feed

My wee man will be five weeks on Thurs. I am just wanting some advice and other peoples experiences with their night time feeding routines. With my last baby I put him down at seven and then did a dream feed at ten. I liked it as we had some time in the evening just for ourselves. With Harry however he seems to sleep MUCH longer at night when I just let him sit on the couch with me in the evening feeding and feeding on and off. I put him down at about nine or nine thirty and he sleeps until about 3.30 or a few times even 5.30 am which is great.
However I keep thinking I should be aiming to get him to go down at seven. When I try he settled easily but then when I wake him for a dream feed at nine thirty he doesn't feed much and then wakes at 1.00 am and then again every three hours for more feeds. With a toddler to look after in the morning I REALLY don't want to do more than one feed at night as I can't rest during the day.
What I guess I was wondering if whether other peoples babies just cluster fed during the evening while young but then later on you managed to get them to go down earlier so that you had the evening to yourself. I am really happy putting him down later now but I don't want to be still doing that in months to come.
Would really appreciate hearing how other people did things and what they found was the best way for them at night.
Thanks heaps in advance.

Hi katie. dreamfeeds work for some babies but not for others. I stuck with the cluster feeding to start with. I would spend the evenings on the couch with bubs just feeding, winding, snoozing, feeding, winding, snoozing, the occassional nappy change, until she seemed contented enough and we put her into bed anytime between 8:30-9:30, then DH and I would have about an 1hr or so to ourselves before we we headed to bed. DH would be in charge of dinner and stuff when he got home. I would chow down my dinner while Ems was having a snooze between feeds. This seemed to work okay but I was curious about the dreamfeeds and tried giving it a go. But as it turns out Ems was one of those babies that dreamfeeds didn't work for. When I offered her the feed at 10-11 , rather than sleepily feed then back into bed asleep, she would wake up completely, decide to poop her nappy so had to take care of that, by that stage she decided it was playtime, and I would spend ages getting her back to bed. And after all that she would wake up again at 1am anyway! So I gave up on the dreamfeeds and stuck with the cluster feeding. The cluster feeding is only a phase and will soon pass. Although when they have the next growth spurt they will cluster feed again but it only last a little while.    

Yup, JJ used to cluster feed like that as well, and like Daniel just changed abruptly one day. He still needs a big long feed before he goes down for the night, but it's rare that he's not down by about 8. It wasn't anything in particular that I did that stopped the cluster feeding so I think it'll probably just happen for you when he's ready.

We tried the dreamfeed a few times, when he was younger it didn't work because he woke completely and then decided he was up for the day so woke every 3 hours. More recently I've been able to feed him while he's still asleep but it didn't seem to make any difference to how long he slept, so I stopped bothering! (Touch wood he seems to be going back to sleeping through after a month or so of waking at 2am-ish, so I guess the dreamfeed isn't really necessary for us.)

until about 3 months, we couldn't get Natalie to bed before about 10pm, and she was waking once in the night also. Once we started getting her to bed by 7-8pm at 3months-ish, we also tried the dreamfeed, but it made no difference at all to what time she woke in the night. Just this week (and i don't want to jinx it by saying!) she's been going to bed around 7.30pm (after about an hour of cluster-feeding, plus a bath), and is sleeping 12 hours straight without any top-ups. there is hope!

I did a mixture of both with DD, she was very unsettled in the evenings, but I always tried to hold her out for a feed at least 2 hours, then she'd have a feed between 10 and 11pm and sleep til about 5am (in the eary weeks). This time I think i'll just cluster feed in the evening, if baby decides thats what it wants to do, hehe!

It is very hard to know what to do. I have a 5 week old who goes down after a bath at 6.30 then wakes around 1pm and then 4pm but then wakes around 5.30 and is really hard to settle. Not sure if changing to doing a dream feed would help these early morning issues...????