How do you drop a nighttime feeding?

My babies aren't yet ready to do this, but when they are I want to know how to be able to do it. Do you space out their regular feedings? Or, do you give less and less food at a usual feeding until they don't get up at all (decrease it by an ounce or so)? Do you feed them more during the daytime feedings and just let them sleep at night as long as they can go?

They are currently on a 4 hour schedule, feeding on the 4s: 4, 8, noon, 4, 8, midnight. The last few nights, they have slept until 1:30AM after the 8PM feeding - so it seems they want to stretch out their nighttime sleep. But, at what point would I just drop the midnight feeding alltogether and how to do that?

Thanks!

 

How old are they? What time do they go to bed? Are they eating a full botttle at 1:30?

 

Mine were on a 4-hour routine and dropped the last feed at 4.5 months. Our schedule was something like this, give or take half an hour:

7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm then an 11pm dream feed. DS would go through till 7am, DD to 8-9am.

We dropped the dream feed as both babies didn´t want to eat at that time so we went cold turkey one night to see what happened and they went 11 hours! We haven´t looked back since!

In your shoes, I would do the same and let them guide you a little to see what they do. If they arent too happy about being woken at midnight/they dont wake then leave them to sleep. You can try using a dummy (i.e. pacifier) at 1.30am to ensure that they just dont need to suck. If they are draining their bottles at that time, then they arent quite ready to drop that last bottle.

GL!

 

My kids would just gradually take less/go longer in between feedings.

 

At night, our twosome would eventually sleep through feedings so that was when we knew they dropped them.

 

QUOTE(itsnancycozzi @ Feb 18 2009, 02:36 AM) [snapback]1194212[/snapback]
At night, our twosome would eventually sleep through feedings so that was when we knew they dropped them.


Same here. I let them drop them on their own.

 

Ours just stopped waking us up They were only 6-7wks I think!!!=-O They eat their last bottle at around 10pm and sleep til 7 a.m.