Dropping milk feeds

[TippetyTapWriter]

Hi, bit of a stupid question but is reducing milk something the baby will do themselves naturally or something I'm meant to encourage? Ds is 9.5mo and still has 5x 7oz bottles (4 during day and 1 at night), plus eating 3 reasonable meals a day - well as far as I can tell as he doesn't like spoons (except for yoghurt!) so it's mostly finger food.

Tbh he's always wanted more milk than guidelines say, but I've always just given him what he wants. He's a big baby, 91st centile or more, wearing 12-18 month clothes (!!) but not fat.

Should I just carry on as I am ??

Thanks!

[Hippahippahey]

I was just coming on to ask the same question. I have twins and it feels like I'm constantly feeding them!

[FusionChefGeoff]

I don't think you need to worry until at least 1 year - 'food is fun until they're one'

Milk is great stuff and so long as you space out milk feeds to make sure that he's hungry at food times, I think that's fine.

[StringTheory]

I personally would drop the night feed at that age, but if you're happy giving it then there's no harm.

[gallicgirl]

My daughter was ff and naturally dropped bottles as food intake increased.
My breastfed son however, isn't really feeding much less so I'm trying to phase out a feed.

[Hippahippahey]

How do you just drop a night feed though? If mine are hungry they won't go back to sleep without a feed.

[TippetyTapWriter]

That's what I was about to ask :) Would be nice for me if he could go without it but he does seem hungry for it, cries for it etc. Not sure how he can eat much more during the day though!

Thanks for responses. Guess I'll just carry on and see what happens. Just thought it odd that he must be eating 3x what he was a month or two ago, but still drinking as much milk as ever!

[Quietlifenotonyournelly]

My DS has just turned 12 months and is having 3 6oz feeds (6.30am, 1.30pm and a pre bedtime bottle at 6.10pm) he also has 3-4oz to make up his porridge or cereal most days.
Going back to around 8 months he was on 5 7-8oz milk feeds a day but noticed that he would leave a couple of oz either side of lunchtime (10.30am and 1.45pm) so reduced the amount by half for each of those.
Then about a week later dropped the 10.30am feed (moved lunchtime from 11.30 to 12pm) and gave him the total amount of the dropped feed in milk in the later bottle.
Hope that makes sense but seeing it wrote down looks more complicated than it was!
Just follow your DS lead is what I'm trying to say in short.