Help! Need to sleep train but is he taking too much milk at night?

[Februaryschild2023]

Wise women- I have a 5, nearly 6 month old.
Fallen into the habit of soothing him with a bottle/nip when he wakes at night, to the point where he's now waking maybe 4 or 5 times a night and won't be soothed without milk.
I'm knackered and he doesn't need all this milk overnight. My question is- how do I get him to take more milk during the day, so he doesn't genuinely get hungry overnight? I don't want to sleep train yet if he is legit waking in hunger, but I don't know how to break the cycle of feeding overnight!
Added to this, we have a 4 yo, who were trying not to wake.
Help!

You need to do a few nights of crappy wake-ups where you maybe do one night feed and the other times you just comfort him back to sleep. He will then be hungry in the day. He's just gotten mixed up.

Or you taper off the feeds by wake time.

Example
7pm bedtime bottle/feed
Wake up before midnight 120ml
Wake up 12-3am 90ml
Wake up 3-4am 60ml
Wake up between 5-6am no feed under otherwise you throw off the morning feed
6-7 morning bottle/feed

Then you start knocking the feeds out, maybe over 8-10days

Feeding isn't just for milk, at 6 months it's likely DC is waking for the comfort and pain relieving properties of bf due to teething and the developmental leap around sitting up it'll settle again soon. If you are doing the night feeds is it possible for you to get more rest during the day?

For mine a slight increase in the size of her day time bottles led to her dropping her night feed but she wasn’t waking as frequently as yours. I also offered milk at least every 3 hr during the day so we could get the number of feeds in that she needed, still pace feeding of course so she only drunk what she wanted.

Offer a bottle every 3 hours during the day (or breastfeed), then if he’s almost 6 months I would also start weaning so you can do a bowl of weetabix, porridge or baby cereal before bed and be in no doubt that he’s full. It’s up to you how you want to handle overnight, I’d probably say I would feed once and not before midnight but that would essentially be sleep training and will probably cause some upset. At some point though you have to break the cycle and he needs to be hungry in the day so that he eats enough to not be hungry the following night. Solids may help though so I’d definitely push ahead with weaning!

Thanks all for the advice, I'll try and cut down slowly overnight. He's a real snacker, particularly on the boob (mixed fed but maybe 70% breast) so it's hard to know how much he's getting in the day. I hope weaning might help.

I'm happy to sleep train but just don't want to do it if he's genuinely waking hungry, so want to try and sort that out first.

Have been doing a dream feed at about 10pm but maybe that's not helping?

My 7mo has been BF a lot in the night too. Spoke to HV this week who have advised to use the pick up put down method to comfort back to sleep rather than feed each time. Which is hard when we have been used to feeding!

So you want to night wean in order to sleep train? I read somewhere that night weaning before 18m wasn't recommended but I cannot for the life of me remember where I came across that unhelpful nugget. Anyway, have a read of this and see if any thing might work for you -

https://kellymom.com/ages/weaning/wean-how/weaning-night/

My first only night weaned around 2y when my milk dried up in pregnancy but baby took a lot of comfort from it. My second is only 3m and takes very little comfort from feeding, and actively pushes off me if I dare try feed to sleep 😂 so I'm optimistic that this one might wean and sleep sooner 🤞

Good luck!