Does my DD still need her 11pm dream feed?

[Dotty38]

Hi
DD will be 9 months on 25th of December. She's putting on lots of weight is on the 91st percentile, having jumped from the 75th in the last month. She's baby led weaned and so her intake of solids is small and the progress is very slow. Although I now know that in the last 6 weeks or so she has started to swollow more as her nappies have really changed. She's weaned herself off the 11am feed as she's now satisfied with water and a snack, yogurt or fruit etc. But I really want to try and stop the 11pm dream feed. Shall I just cut it out all together? She doesn't always wake for it, 9 times out of 10 I end up waking her by lifting her out of the cot to feed and she usually has a good feed. My gut feeling says she doesn't need it bt she likes it so will always want it until I stop. She's my first and I have no clue what I'm doing with the feeding/weaning. My health visitor is rubbish as she doesn't understand baby led weaning and is always horried at how much milk DD is still having so I've stopped asking her!

Any opinions or experiences would be great.

I would guess that as she is not waking for the feed then she is not needing it but just liking it when offered! Particularly if she has gained so much in the last month.

Baby led weaning is difficult as you cannot tell how much is coming from milk or food but if your daughter needs that extra feed at night she will soon let you know.

How many milk feeds is she having a day?

I stopped the dream feed at about 9 - 10 months for exactly the reasons you describe and DD didn't seem to miss it much.

My HV was also rather horrified that I was still doing it, but my mother had recommended keeping it going till 10 months and I was glad I did - it did seem to cure the waking-ravenous-at-4am-and-then-not-wanting-to-go-back-to-sleep problem.

Try it for a few days and see what happens.

I'm with tooposh2push - try it and see, you can always take it up again if you start getting woken in the night.

For what it's worth, I dropped the dreamfeed (at 10pm) at about 12 months. It just became so obvious that I was disturbing ds's sleep!!! Probably could have given it up earlier to be honest but I really hated getting woken in the night (or just the possibility of it), especially once I had gone back to work.

Hi, thanks for your replies, much appreciated.

She's currently having 4 milk feeds a day, 7am, 3pm, 7pm and then 11pm (ish!), on a few occassions she does ask (well cry!) for a milk feed at 11am but not very often.

I will try tonight and see how we go. I suppose I feel things are in such a good routine that by doing this it might all change (i.e. night waking again). But I'll see how we go as your right nyumnyummum I can always go back to it if she starts waking.

That number of milk feeds seems very normal to me for her age. I think I dropped the last feed around that age though so it probably is time, and if she starts waking at 4am for a feed instead you can always put it back in for a few more weeks.

Hi
I didn't give her a dream feed last night but she did wake at 2am and at 4.30am but she was upset and just seemed to want her dummy and then straight to sleep. Today she's been very out of sorts and I have a feeling it's her teeth starting again! So will see how we go tonight.

Thanks explodingbananas it's good to know someone else thinks that many feeds is fairly normal. All the nct lot I see had their babies down to three milk feeds a day very soon after weaning began and then what with the health visitors attitude to the amount of milk DD has I was worried that I'm not doing what I 'should' be (if you know what I mean!).