How and when do babies drop the night feed?

[tfh]

First time mum here...
My baby is 4 months old and sleeps around 8pm-7am with dream feeds at 10pm when I go to bed and 3am. I am just wondering when and how we might drop the night feeds? Will it be around the 6 month mark? Will the baby need more milk during the day so he's not hungry over night? I don't know how to move from our current routine to bath bottle and bed around 7pm like some older babies.
Thanks so much for any advice

Mine didn't stop until 18 months, 3/4am feed only. Wasn't too bad. Every baby is different though and lots of my friend's babies dropped it earlier.

Mine stopped at 12 months. Your baby will tell you when they don’t want it and sleep through.

12 months both times, and only because we battled it out. I don't know many breastfed babies at all who stopped before 9m and most were much later. Among friends, a few bottle fed babies slept for longer earlier.

Never. Mine woke in the night to be fed until about 2 and even then would wake for too hot/ too cold / a drink / a cuddle. I was exhausted. I always went if they called me or cried and so now I have two secure sleeping kids who hardly ever have bad dreams, only ever call me if they really need (maybe once or twice a year, if ill) and never get up out of bed in the evening, night or early morning. Stick with it and show them a living bond and strong attachment. Don’t get too obsessed with making them sleep through, it’s not natural.

16 months here

I would stop the dream feed if they are down sleeping in their own space from 8. Also are they def looking a feed during the night? My 6 month old would take a bottle any time he is offered but he was actually just looking a little comfort in the night, so he dropped them about 6-8 weeks ago. Only 2 weeks ago we stopped the 11pm feed as we put him down in his own room rather than sleeping on us till our bedtime 😳.

Mine dropped them between 5-6 months. For us it did correspond with an increase in day time milk intake ( the overall amount was roughly the same, she just took slightly larger bottles during the day).

My eldest woke for a feed until 18 months, my youngest pretty much stopped at 4 months. She has the odd feed if she’s been off her food in the day for any reason- teething etc, but when she wakes is happy for her dummy and drifts back off.

It's a surprise!!!

Seriously. Some babies that age have been sleeping through for months. Lots of 1 years olds still wake up for milk.

There is really no way to control or predict what kind of sleeper you will have.

Both mine stopped at around 12 months. I didn't do anything, they just started sleeping through, 7pm to 7am. It was wonderful!

Ours stopped feeding at night around 8 months. For us, it coincided with us fully committing to solids and giving him three meals a day alongside his day feeds.

DD2 stopped at 2 years when I decided to night wean. She bedshared with DH for 6 weeks to break the habit. She continued to bf during the day until 5 and half years.

Mine went back to 2 hourly feeds at 8 months....

Love this, kudos. 🙌

Dropped the night feed with DS a few weeks ago age 7 months. He’s been bottle fed since birth. It was a bit of a gradual process, but what what we did was try everything to soothe him without taking him out of the cot (with the help of a dummy and white noise). Previously, we’d got to the point where he would generally sleep soundly between 7pm and about 1am when he’d wake for his feed, then have one or more wake ups later in the night where he just wanted comfort. We tried the self-soothing with these later wake ups first, and would only take him out of the cot if he was really upset, or wet through and needed a change. When this started to work and he was only coming out the cot for the one feed, we pushed the night feed later by using the self-soothing earlier in the night, so he was getting his night feed later like 3am. Eventually we sensed that he was able to soothe at any time of the night, and now we never need to feed at all during the night - if he wakes then putting his dummy in and giving him a few shushes does the trick. The trade off is that he wakes up properly for the day at 5.30/6am. (He’s 8M now). Good luck!

I think my last stopped Night feeds around 18 months.

Instead we had night screams.
Those were followed by night strops.
Night “writhe around madly and fling myself backward out of your arms like a crazed dolphin”s
Night bites and kicks.
Night “I hate you and you cannot touch me but you also cannot leave the room or the ear splitting shrieks will become brain bending sobs”
Night terrors like something from The Shining
which led to
Night escapades including letting themselves downstairs at 3am and attempting to exit the house “to scream in the garden”
Sleep walking
and/or
Early rising which meant the entire household including older siblings would be blasted from their beds at 4.30am, like it or not.

Which eventually after 7-8 years turned into sleeping “through” or more accurately, being old enough to deal with Night wakings without disturbing others or at the very least not at 100 decibels.

My eldest stopped having night feeds at 8 months. We night weaned him as I was going back to work. We reduced the amount we gave him during his night feed (he would only wake up once a night) by half an ounce every few days. Once we got down to 2.5oz he just stopped waking altogether and he started having more during the day alongside solids.

My 12 week old on the other hand has slept through for the last few nights.@ Every baby is different, sometimes it's just luck of the draw.

My DD slept through with no milk for the first time around 9 months but then between 9 and 18 months she would wake a few times a week normally for 1 small feed per night.

This went on until 18 months when I diluted the milk down until it was water and then she stopped. Still woke sometimes for a drink of water but slept through a lot of nights.

I kept giving the milk until this point as she was quite a small baby. Also apart from that she slept really well and in her own room. We were literally up for 5 mins so it wasn't impacting anyone's sleep x

Both of mine dropped night feeding from about 11 weeks. My youngest is now 15 weeks and she has her last feed around 9pm (if she's had an earlier feed for some reason I might give her a dream feed around 10, 10.30pm) and she sleeps through until around 5.30ish, wakes briefly then sleeps again until 7/7.30am when she'll have her first morning feed.

My eldest was about the same.

She's on the 90th centile for weight.

10 months and still has one but she sleeps 6/7pm / 6ish am with a feed around 2ish so I don't mind as she sleeps so well x

Thank you so much everyone, so interesting to see the different sleep patterns! I will wait and see how we get on over the next few months :)

DD is 10.5 months and she's been sleeping through 7-6ish for about two months now. I would do a 4am feed and a dream feed at 10pm, but dropped those six weeks and a month ago respectively. No complaints from DD. She's been in her own room since 4 months because we were definitely disturbing her sleep.

I waited until she was comfortably eating three meals a day just so I could be confident she'd maintain/continue gaining weight normally (she's on the 9th centile but fine apparently - I'm small too). Dropping the dream feed hasn't caused a notable increase in daytime consumption because of this, I think. It's sort of balanced itself out.

Oh and DD currently has formula and boob. Planning to wean her off boob entirely by 1 as we're going to try for another and I can't fathom breastfeeding while pregnant or tandem feeding a newborn and toddler. Just the thought makes me exhausted!

First 18 months ish when we night weaned.

2nd never had any night feeds cos they never woke up 😂

I night weaned DS at 12 months. He generally stopped waking in the night (unless unwell etc) after a couple of weeks. I probably would have tried it at 10
months but he had a load of back to back illnesses so I waited a bit longer.