looking ahead - when do we stop the 10pm bottle feed

[katherine2008]

hi - dd is only 13 weeks old and we wake her at 10pm (ish) for her feed before we head to bed. She then sleeps through to any time between 6am and 7am, usually with a couple of wakings when I pop her dummy in to settle her down. I wondered when is 'normal' (!) to stop the 10pm feed - more often than not we do wake her for the feed. Thank you!

can be when they no longer take much when you wake them or after starting solids ~6 months.

I have never done the dream feed but have fed at 7 and hoped for the best. Dd has always had a night feed (usually between 2 and 5 )until recently when she has begun to drop it (but not always).

She is 7 months and we weaned at 5.5. She has only recently started to eat decent amounts which I think has helped.

Sooooo, my advice is continue until you are established on 3 proper meals a day

I'm not a devotee but even Gina Ford says do it until near 7 months

DD is 7mths next week and I am thinking of beginning to gradually cut down on it next week.

My DS is just over 6 months old and I used to dream feed him at about 10pm until about 6 weeks ago when he stopped wanting as much from his bottle first thing in the morning. I just fed him earlier at about 8.30 - 9pm and it solved the problem. I'm hoping to bring it forward a bit more soon so that it's more of a bedtime bottle than a dream feed.
Tell you what.....just when you think you have cracked a routine it all changes!!!

I think every baby is different and you just have to try it occasionally. I bf and so the dream feed never worked for me ( I think dream feeding only really works with bottles) so I stopped that feed at 5 weeks. Both my DDs slept through 11 / 12 hrs very early (around 9 weeks), but I was very lucky. From the experience of friends I think most stopped it at around 4 months. Wait until your little one is regularly and reliably sleeping through from the dream feed until past 6.30am (which your's seems to be), and then they try not giving the feed one night and see what happens. Often you'll find that the baby sleeps through to 6ish anyway, and that's that. But if not, then the next night just go back to the old routine of giving the 10pm feed for a couple of weeks then try again.

Some people suggest reducing this feed over a week / 10 days (e.g. first night give 6 scoops of formula in 7 oz water, next night 5 scoops in 7 oz water, etc so formula becomes more and more dilute over time until it's not really worth it any more)

I only just stopped the 10:30pm (breast) feed for my 10 mo DS. He continued to wake during the night for a feed until about 8 months, which is about when he seemed to develop a real appetitie for solid food. (He went from only eating a relatively small range of jars to refusing jars and eating pretty much anything I gave him in the space of days). We did occasional trials of skipping the dream feed but about half the time he'd just wake about 1am. I went back to wotk when he was 9 months and two weeks ago decided to give it another go, once he was a bit settled at nursery and this time it was successful.

My DD is almost 6 months and if we do a night-time feed she sleeps til 7 - 8am but if not then she wakes any point between 1am and 3am.

thank you so much for your wonderful advice - we'll keep going for a while yet!! xx

My 8mo DS has happily gone 7-7 without a feed for about 3 weeks (so from about 7.5mo), but he does wake around 3-4am, although for a cuddle rather than showing any inclination for a feed. But we do wake him for a feed some nights if for one reason or another he doesn't seem to have had a good intake of solids (he is BLW and has been ill so food intake has varied a lot recently) and on those nights he will sleep 11-7. So we think that we will keep it going a bit longer if only so we can get a decent chunk of sleep . I expect we'll start to drop it after Christmas.

I don't think you can expect them to drop that feed until they are well established on solids, and even then it will be down to the individual baby.