Advice wanted about dropping night feed

[fishface2]

My daughter is 15 weeks old. She was originally breast fed but has been mixed fed in the last few weeks and exclusively formula fed in the last week. I took her to be weighed today and in the past 4 weeks she has jumped from the 50th to the 91st percentile thingy. Health visitor seemed concerned and advised me to drop her night feed. Currently she sleeps from 7pm to 7am with a 6oz feed at about 3 or 4 am. I have tried to dream feed her at 11pm before but it seems to make no difference to her pattern. By the time she goes to bed she has had 30oz of formula (manufacrurers reccomendation for her age)in the day. Should I drop the night feed and how can I do it? I feel bad about over feeding her but she absolutely downs every bottle! Any suggestions? Thanks x x

[fishface2]

I don't think I ahve been clear - her night feed brings her total daily formula intake to 36oz when it should only be 30oz.

[neenz]

If she is hungry, feed her. But if you don't think she is hungry, will she go back to sleep without a feed? Does she take a dummy?

To stop the night feeds you just have to stop offering her the milk, but at 15 weeks old it is too young to do anything like controlled crying. You could sit with her and rub her back or stroke her head or something like that - see if she goes back to sleep that way.

If you can get her back to sleep without giving her milk and she stays asleep it might not have been hunger that was waking her. But if she truly is hungry then give her the milk anyway no matter what the charts say.

Have you tried offering her cooled boiled water instead?

[wheresmypaddle]

Seems a shame to disrupt an otherwise good sleep pattern. Maybe you could consider making all her feeds a little smaller- particularly the 3am one.

[neenz]

Hmm, not sure about that, wheresmypaddle.

A 15wo should be capable of sleeping through the night (11pm-7am at least), so giving her less milk in her daytime feeds so that there is some 'left' in the quota for 3am seems a backward step.

Not all will sleep through at that age, and if she is geniunely hungry then you have to just keep giving her the milk. But it may be that she is just waking out of habit and using the bottle to get herself back to sleep.

If you can cut out the feed-to-sleep at 3am then she will probably stop waking as there will be nothing worth waking for.

[Seona1973]

the rule of thumb is 2.5-2.7oz per lb of weight so for e.g. a 10lb baby may take 25-27oz in 24 hours (although babies may take more or less than that). 36oz doesnt seem over much to me - maybe your lo is just supposed to be on the 91st percentile. 7pm to 7am with one feed seems great to me - it took ds till he was 8 months to get to that stage. I would keep to what you are doing as it is normal to have a feed at night at this age.

[Seona1973]

p.s. if you did want to work towards dropping the feed then I would offer progressively less in the bottle over a period of a few weeks e.g. offer 6oz then cut it to 5oz for while, then 4oz, etc, etc