Confused- trying to drop night time bottles

[OJ30]

Hi,

My lo is almost 8 months old and has always needed two feeds at night.  He generally goes to bed by 6pm as he is a very early riser.  His first feed is normally about 10-11pm where he takes a full 8oz.  The second feed is between 2 and 4am where he will take as much as is offered to him!

We have had a bit of trouble recently as he was drinking a vast quantity of milk in a day (up to 46 ounces) and worried about his weight gain.  Spoke to hv who gave us  a new routine to try and follow whereby he gets more solids than milk.  In effect we were advised to extend late morning feed to combine with lunch at noon and to drop the 3pm bottle.  We were also told that we had taught him 'learnt hunger' in the night so we are attempting to lose the second night time bottle.  I have read other advice on here and have started diluting his second feed but it doesn't appear to be having any impact.  We have been doing this for 7 days now and are down to 2 oz of formula to 6 ounces of water.  My fear is that as a very spirited lo we will never win this battle!  His milk intake has now reduced to around 30 ounces in a 24 hour period (in 5 feeds).

I presume our task is then to drop the earlier bottle that was once his df (we stopped this at around 5 months as he wouldn't take any milk at all until he woke).  Do we do this in the same way? 

I understand that I need to replace the ounces he will miss in feeds during the day but I am then worried that he will be taking huge amounts of milk again.  I feel like I am between a rock and a hard place and that I no longer know what I ma doing.  I hope someone out there can help!  His weight gain is fine- he remains just below the 50th percentile and his height is practically off the scale (99.6th percentile).  He is a very active little boy who is always on the go.  He is nearly there with his crawling and loves to bounce up and down.  What am I to do next?  Do I need to reintroduce more milk during the day?

We have even tried bedtime milk with added cereals to see if this would help, but it hasn't made a dot of difference!  Is his learnt hunger so bad that he just wakes and thinks he is hungry.  How is it that he still takes a full bottle at 11pm even after all that solid food, milk and bedtime milk?

I have posted our food routine below (naps are another issue entirely)
Milk 6am (5-8 ounces)
Cereal/ yoghurt/ fruit 8am
Lunch (pasta/meat/fish/veg) 11.30am
Milk 12pm (4-6 ounces)
Tea (veg/fruit) 4.30pm
Milk 6pm
Milk 10-11pm
Milk 2-4am

Thanks in advance
Jo

[Seona1973]

Are you diluting the 2-4am feed? He is still taking 8oz of fluid so that will be making his tummy full even if it is not all milk. What I would do is start reducing the amount offered by an ounce every few days e.g. 2oz milk to 5oz water, 2oz milk to 4oz water, etc and get his tummy used to having less fluids in total. Once he is down to just 2-3oz in total you could try dropping it totally.  I wouldnt mess with the late feed until you have got rid of the middle of the night feed and then I would drop the ounces rather than watering it down as again he would still be having the same amount of fluid even if it wasnt all milk.

[OJ30]

Many thanks for that.  I'll give that a go starting tonight.  He was only having a total of 6 ounces fluid, but I'll see if we can get this down further.  Wish me luck!

Jo

[Seona1973]

Good luck!!

I started cutting down ds's night-time milk from 6 months an ounce at a time every few days (or weeks) and it took till he was 8 months for him to sleep through without it - he was at about 3 or 4oz by then. We could have done it quicker I suppose but with a dd of 3 years old it was easier just to feed and put him back to bed.