Tips please to drop 3/4am feed

[tootiredtotidy]

Hi guys looking for advice for my 6 month DD, she currently has 2 feeds at night, the first we do as a dream feed between 10-11 depending on when me and OH go to bed. Her second she wakes up for about 3-4am, she drinks about 160-180 mls of her bottle each of these feeds.

However her breakfast feed which she then has about 7am she only has 10-20mls of and she is fine on that for 3/4 hours, so we are thinking she isn't really hungry enough for a night feed and it's becoming a habit and obviously cos we are so sleep deprived would love her to drop this feed and have a big breakfast instead.

Thoughts or tips?

[Stylingwax]

I'd push dream feed back. I feed my 6 month old as close to midnight as I can as she (if I'm lucky) goes to 5/6am apart from last night when she woke 2 hourly
I HATE the 3am feed and sympathise, when she was newborn I would stay up till 2am plus so I got a stretch post it till 6am.

[IslaMann]

Have you tried just settling her when she wakes and not offering her a feed? At 6 months she shouldn't need a feed at night if feeding well during the day.

[MaisieDotes]

Drop the dream feed, she might not wake up until 2am. Then she should go until 6ish.

[MaisieDotes]

Sorry- I should say, I do realise you want to stop feeding in the early hours. But for my 3 the 10pm feed always went first. Then over time the next feed got later and later, until it eventually merged into the early morning feed.

Hi isla < waves >

[SortAllTheThings]

Reduce by 10ml every few days. Hopefully she'll compensate by taking more at the breakfast feed. Also push the dream feed slightly later while you're doing this.

Or, tbh, I worried like mad about this stuff with DS, but then DD came along we just went with whatever she wanted. Didn't try and steer, just accepted that it would be crap for a few months longer. No difference between them. If anything , DD stopped night feeding sooner.

[IslaMann]

Hi Maisie fancy bumping into you on here!

[TooTiredToTidy]

Thanks for the tips guys. I tried an ultra late night feed last night it did push her next feed till 5am but then she wouldn't sleep!! So I'll stick with what we have now and just wait for her to drop it....

[welshweasel]

I just stopped giving milk at that wake up and settled with dummy, hand on tummy, cuddles if necessary. Took a few nights though. You could try giving water instead of milk?

[HappyInL0nd0n]

Hi. If she's not having much at 7am, I'd be inclined to agree with you that she's just taking the morning feed early. As you know, what we're all aiming for is to get your baby taking as many calories during the daytime hours as they need so they can sleep through (if possible) in the night.

We had the same with our little girl and what we found was that if she had a very small feed at 7am, she was then hungry earlier but eating less for a number of her meals until mid afternoon/even when she'd be ravenous again. We wanted to try and get her back onto a more structured eating pattern, so we gave her cooled boiled water instead of a milk feed in the night for two nights in a row.

The first time, she slugged down the water, settled back to sleep, then had a full feed at 7am.

The second night, she took just a very little bit of the water, then rejected it. Was a bit unsettled, but did go back to sleep.

Third night, slept through.

It's not perfect every night, but introducing the cooled boiled water definitely broke the cycle of her associating night time waking with a feed.

As with everything, every baby is different/this may not work for you/shared only in the interest of being helpful etc... Good luck.