Weaning 9mo off dream feed

[bakingdemon]

We started giving DS a dream feed bottle at around 4 months to help him sleep through the night. However, he's now 9 months old and we're still doing it at around 10pm every night. He has anywhere between 100 and 180ml. I am keen that we start weaning him off this as I think it's an unhealthy eating pattern for him to be in and is probably disturbing his sleep patterns too; DH says since it helps him sleep, what's wrong with it (I think he also really enjoys doing it, as a last cuddle before bedtime, even though DS is usually asleep, and it is really lovely).

Please can I ask your advice on whether my instinct that we should be weaning him off this is right? And if so how do we do it? Reduce what we put in his bottle and bring it earlier and earlier? Over how long should we do that?

Thank you in advance

It's totally normal for one or more night feeds to be needed until well after 12 months. That's not an insignificant amount and that suggests he needs it.
If he's then sleeping the rest of the night, I'd say you're going pretty well.

I wouldn’t even think of weaning him off it so young ...
sounds like it’s working well so keep going.

It's definitely not an unhealthy eating pattern. He's 9m old!
Night feeds can easily go on past 18m. My son stopped himself about 15m. My daughter stopped around 2.

HTH

It’s definitely not an unhealthy pattern so no need to worry about that. I’d probably focus on his daytime food/milk intake and if you’re confident he’s getting everything he needs then I’d try wean him off the dreamfeed slowly- I wouldn’t change the time but I would drop 1oz per week and see how that goes. We did it at 7 months and I was scared of early waking but DD is a thumb sucker so I think she would have continued to take the dream bottle indefinitely just through the sleepy sucking reflex rather than because she was hungry! She didn’t miss it all when it was gone.

Thank you all, that's reassuring! He seems so much bigger than he was that I do sometimes forget he's really quite little still