DS3 is 8 months old. He has pretty much always fed every 3 hours round the clock until a couple of months ago when he became established on 3 meals a day and started going longer between his daytime feeds. I have always fed on demand (including the week when he was having his 4 month growth spurt and fed every 2 hours round the clock, yawn...). He is a bottle refuser and has recently started to accept a bit of water from a sippy cup with meals but doesn't have much of it.
He typically has 6 bf's a day at roughly the following intervals: 5am, mid-morning, mid-afternoon, bedtime at 6.30/7pm and then 11pm and 2am. On occasion (maybe once a week) he will drop either the 11pm or the 2am feed but very rarely the 5am. Usually he goes straight back to sleep after each feed (unless we are in Teething Hell but he now has all 4 front teeth so finger crossed for a bit of respite on that front). He always feeds off both sides and is now a v quick feeder so we are usually done in about 5 mins. He screams blue murder if he doesn't get the second boob (in fact he screams as soon as he pops off boob 1 as if I can't get him to boob2 quick enough) He generally has two naps during the day for about an hour each time, sometimes more sometimes less. Goes to bed without any fuss both at naptime and bedtime, we put him down and he sticks his finger in his mouth and conks out.
However, I am not all convinced that he needs these night feeds and to be perfectly honest, the consistently broken sleep for such a long period is ruining me. I am exhausted all the time (the older DS's are 5 and 3), run down, keep getting ill, skin looks awful etc etc and I think I need to consider some sort of sleep training/night weaning. I'm too knackered to do much with him during the day which just isn't fair on him either. I've been reading the sleep training info on here and am more than aware of the lively debate sleep training gives rise to and that's not what I'm seeking here. What I am trying to find out is whether he actually needs these feeds at night or whether he is just waking up at those times out of habit.
I have read the night weaning info on Kellymom and tbh, I have no hope of increasing his daytime feeds because he is so distractible. It is hard enough to bf him during the day as it is (virtually impossible if we are out and there is Exciting Stuff To Look At). Dream feeding has never worked for him (won't latch on) and as he's waking up at 11pm as it is there is no gap for a dream feed anyway.
I have tried to include as much info as possible so if anyone has any advice about whether he should feed that often (and therefore I should just suck it up) or if not, how I can go about dropping at least one of those night feeds (ideally the 2am one so I can get a decent chunk of sleep to start feeling human again), I would be very grateful.