Help 9 month old to stop night feeds and sleep more than 4 hours

[buzzbeebee]

I breastfed my 9month old lg until 8 months. She has been bottle fed ever since and no issues at all. However she is still waking every 4 hours at night for milk. She would drink on average over night 14oz. She takes 3 meals a day. Spoon fed with then some finger food. Recently past 2 weeks introduced porridge at bedtime to try and keep her fuller for longer. It has worked with some success as she would have only slept 2-3 hours previous before waking.

I find it tough to get milk into her during the day but as I said is eating LOADS.

Please hit me with your advice on how to crack sleeping and dropping the nighttime bottles. It's putting a massive strain on my marriage as we are both so wrecked!

Does it make a difference if you do a dream feed at about 11pm or something? Everyone has different views but 9 months is still quite young and often they still do need the nighttime milk x

When you stopoed breastfeeding in the night, did you set up any alternate comfort for resetling baby to sleep? Or did you straight swap the comfort of the breast for the comfort of a bottle?

@crazycatlady5 I really don't think she nutritionally needs the milk - I do think it's more comfort

@FATEdestiny just a straight swap - I can't get her interested in other comfort toys, blankets etc. I have my smelly pillow cover in her cot for my smell. She does use a dummy and loves her dummy

If she has a strong attachment to get dummy, I'd be more inclined to go cold turkey on night feeds. I'd never say that if baby doesn't have established alternate comfort, because you can't just go denying a baby any comforting reassurance. But with the dummy baby does have that.

I would stop giving milk and offer only water from a soppy cup. Baby is definately going to be unhappy about that, but I'd ride it through.

I still had cot next to my bed at 9 months. I'd have offered water and aside from that lots and lots of in-cot settling and comfort. My hand on chest, patting, shushing, dummy reinserts. Over and over until baby realised that while she can have all the comfort she needs from you, that will be in-cot and won't involve milk.