Has anyone had success with gradually reducing amount of milk for night feeds?

[babababa280810]

My DD (7.5months) still wakes for feeds (2 a night at the moment) - my question is has anyone tried to reduce the amount of milk they have at the feeds until its down to nothing = sleeping without waking? was it successful?

I've just got her on the bottle so can actually see how much she has.

If it didn't work - any ideas?

yeap i did this with my ds, i was doing one expressed bottle and one breastfeed. I reduced the expressed bottle by 10 mls a night and the time on my breast by one minute.
He went from two feeds to one feed pretty quickly, but at around 30 mls/three minutes i stopped feeding altogether. By that stage he was doing one feed at about 4am, we had about half an hour of crying (i sat by his cot and soothed him).
i was pretty tough and refused to feed him in the night and we did have a few rough nights. but the feeding at night stopped. Also my dh did the settling in the night after i stopped the feeds.

Yep, I did. DS was still having one 200ml bottle a night at 10 months - he'd normally have two wake ups and I'd feed him at the first wake up. I reduced by 30 mls per night over 5 nights, 60 mls was the last bottle he had. The wake up didn't stop immediately but I just settled him with patting, he generally now wakes up 'only' once a night (settle with patting, sometimes for aaaaages) though sometimes he'll still wake up 2 or 3 times. He's now always hungry for his morning bottle, which he wasn't before and I feel comfortable he's not waking at night from hunger.

Around 7 months I dropped from 2 feeds to one, I just stopped giving the second feed (no gradual reduction) after he'd done one wake up a night a couple of times himself. Again, he didn't drop the wake up, just the feed!

So yes to dropped the feeds, not entirely to successful if successful means not waking at night!

Yes, this is how we did it.

I also offered more at the last bed time feed (e.g. fed her at 5.30pm and then again at 6.30pm despite not being hungry, she'd still eat ) so she'd take more then and be less likely to be hungry for the night feed.

I also moved the feed forward. So if I knew she would wake at 11.30pm crying for food, I would feed her at 11pm BEFORE she told me she was hungry. Gradually brought this forward to 10.45, 10.30, 10.15, 10 etc... until it was only 90 mins from her previous feed and then dropped it completely.

I think the important thing is to 'top-up' before they wake up hungry, so that they don't get in the habit of waking up for food, but rely on you to tell them it's time to have something to eat or not during the night.