Dropping the dream feed- WWYD?

[Joy27]

My baby is 20 weeks old and breastfed. She usually has 7 feeds in 24 hours. A typical day's feeds would be:

7.30am
10.30am
1.30pm
4.30pm
6.30pm
(Down to sleep at 7pm)
10.30pm - dream feed, often have to wake her for this if she is not woken by us getting ready for bed.
2.30- 4am- One feed any time during this period. I've noticed that she doesn't feed much during this feed.

I'm wondering if dropping the dream feed would help her sleep for longer at night. Could I have got her into a pattern of needing a feed every few hours at night?

Or if I drop the 10.30pm do you think she'll just be up twice in the night?

Getting up at night doesn't bother me that much, but obviously if a little tweak to the schedule can help her sleep for longer, I'm all for it!

Oh and I'm sort of wondering whether I should go by the rule "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"! I am scared that if I drop the 10.30pm feed everything will go haywire!

Did this myself last week - was desparate for an early night so just went to bed early and didn't bother with dream feed and she didn't wake up until 5! So from feeding every 4 hours with a dream feed she suddenly went for 10 hours.

Since then I've just put her to bed at 7 and left her to wake up naturally- sometimes she wakes at 10 for a feed and sometimes she goes until 6am. But it detinitely feels like progress! I would try it for a few nights and see what happens but I'm no expert!

Good luck!

Excellent, thanks midgetgems. That's what I was hoping to read. I suppose even if it doesn't work out and I have a couple of dodgy nights, I can reintroduce it.

How did it go?