Going cold turkey with dream feed

[Alibobster]

My ds has been given a dream feed since he was 8 weeks old and is now 5 and a half months. Although I call it a dream feed he always wakes up when I feed him. I want to drop this feed as he is now on 3 meals a day and takes 35oz of milk and hv said he doesn't need it. I am keen to give it up but that fact that he nearly always finishes the whole 7oz makes me think that he does still need it. Any advice please?

Between 6 and 12 months he should be on 20floz per day, however this is an average and your HV should be looking at your Los height and weight percentiles too. For instance if Lo is on the 99th for height and the 25th for weight, he probably needs a little more.

The current advice is to give the milk an hour before offering solids until they are one. This is because the milk is more calorie dense than the food. The milk gives him most of what he needs to grow and thrive, the food is more about exploring taste and texture until they are one.

Milk should also be given on demand, so if he's not waking for it, I wouldn't bother to wake him.

We gave it up here last Wednesday. It's been a bit hit and miss so far but you wont know unless you try. Good luck! DS is nearly 8mo BTW.

We kept the dreamfeed until about 7-8mo (though at that weigh-in we realised she was probably overfeeding ). DD happily drank that full bottle when she probably didn't need or really want it. What we did was drop the size of the other bottles, to gradually reduce the milk levels. Though DD was probably drinking a good 30oz of milk a day while weaning.

Could you drop each bottle by an oz or so? And then what we did was drop the bedtime bottle to just 4oz or so, then she had another 4-5oz as a dreamfeed, and then we slowly changed that around. That way you get to keep the late feed but try and stop your DS having too much milk overall, especially during weaning.

Thanks for all your replies. Last night was fairly successful. Ds didn't stir until 2am and was awake between 5-6am but no crying and happy to have his dummy. We got up at 6.30 this morning and I didn't give a bottle until 7 and he was fine with that. I thought he may have been desperate to have it right away but he wasn't. Hopefully tonight will be better again

Hey, we dropped the dreamfeed when DS started taking just about 5oz at it, and was lasting easily until 8/9 the next morning. We just went cold turkey and the first night we did it was the first night he slept 12 hours.
Good luck :)

Thanks Mehrida, I ended up giving a bottle at 4.30 this morning but his wee cheeks were scarlet and he's terribly bothered by teething so I think that's what disturbed him. Going to persevere with it anyway.