WWYD? a feeding/schedule question

MontyMrs

My boys are on a formula fed schedule of 6 1/2 oz bottles every 4 hours, starting at 8am - 8pm =bedtime.  They're getting up once a night around 4-4:30 for a bottle.  I've been giving them a 61/2 oz bottle then as well.  My problem is that they're not hungry in the am, I've pushed back the 8am bottle to 8:30 or 9 and they still don't finish them.

What should I do?  Lower the amount of the night bottle or the am bottle?   

xxyankeegrl823xx

My LOs did the same thing around that age. I started making their last bottle of the dat about an oz more and making their middle of the night bottles less. Every couple of days I made their night bottles a little less and after about 2 weeks they stopped waking at all and were taking more in the morning.

doz&koz

They may be trying to tell you that they don't need that night bottle anymore.  I found The Baby Sleep Solution to be the most helpful and she has a couple of recommendations about how to drop the nighttime feedings.  First of all, try to push back the feeding whenever the opportunity presents itself - for example, if they slept until 4:30 this morning, don't feed them again until after 4:30.  If they sleep until 5 a.m. tomorrow, then 5 a.m. is your new feeding time, etc.  Additionally, begin offering them less food at each feeding.  I believe she recommends offering 1/2 oz. less every 3 days until they've dropped the feeding completely.  I believe I dropped down to 1 1/2 ounces at a feeding around the same time knowing that they'd eat again at 8.  Using this advice, it only took 3 or 4 days for mine to completely sleep through the night.  Either the first or second night, DD slept all the way through.  It took DS a couple days more.  Basically, I think they'd been trying to tell us for a week or two that they no longer needed these feedings (they were around 8 weeks when we did this). 

jamie217

I agree with pp poster, we had the same problem around that age and I started decreasing the amounts of their night bottle very slowly and they started picking it up during the day.