FertilityZone

Hello, I am after some advice please.

Firstly, it was suggested to me yesterday, when I took my LO to be weighed, that I drop her lunch time bottle. I was a bit surprised by this as most of my friends who have babies too, didn't do this until their babies were at 8-9 months - my LO is now 7 months. Anyway, I thought I would start today so I fed her, 4oz bottle at 7.30am (she normally has 6oz but if you read below all will become clear), porridge with plum at 8.30am, 3/4 mashed banana at 10.15 (before swimming lesson), red lentils and carrot for lunch at the later time of 1.15pm, after swimming lesson, and apple and pear puree. Then I put my LO down for her afternoon nap. Normally she goes out like a light after swimming but today she cried and cried and cried and I thought the only reason must be, because she is hungry. So I gave her 3oz and she went off beautifully and slept for her normal 2 hours. I thought she would be starving when she woke up, but she was ok and was able to last out for her dinner at 5.30pm. Just wondering if she may be a bit too young to drop a complete feed, or if i should just feed her the 3oz if she needs it?

Secondly, we've been giving her a dream feed for quite a while now and we are trying to wean her off it. She is a good sleeper (goes off at 7pm till 7am, with a DF at about 11pm) so no complaints there. We did used to give her 6oz for her DF, but for the past few weeks have reduced it to 4oz. But last night we decided to go for it and completely miss the DF as I read that by 6 months babies should be able to sleep for 12 hours without the need for feeding when asleep. So we decided to go for it....it didn't quite go to plan! Yesterday afternoon, for unknown reasons, she would not have her usual afternoon nap, so come dinner time she was shattered and fell asleep during eating! We let her have a 20 min nap and then woke her up which went down like a lead balloon. Anyway we decided that we would feed her her bedtime bottle and then let her go to sleep, but she was then completely awake and didn't go down till 7.40pm! Anyway, we still decided to go ahead with no DF, and she woke up at 4am. I let her have a bit of a grumble to see if she could go back to sleep or if she was hungry, it turned out she was hungry, so I gave her 3oz and then she went off to sleep again and woke up at her usual 7am...where she had her 4oz bottle as above. So my second question is do you think i should concentrate on dropping one feed, e.g. either the DF or the lunch time bottle, or should she be able to drop both at this age? Do you think it may have made a difference the fact that she didn't eat all of her dinner and had her bottle earlier than normal?

We have decided to go ahead and not give her the DF again tonight, as she has had a big dinner (with dessert) and her usual 6oz bottle, so we shall see what happens! But any comments will be appreciated.

Sorry if i have rambled on!

I forgot to say that she drinks water with her meals, albeit not that much, but I offer her the sippy cup and she takes a few glugs.

Thank you both for your replies. Well today we had a bit more success! Last night we dropped the DF and she woke up this morning at 7.20am - whoop whoop. Lets hope she makes a thing of this. And secondly, I dropped the lunch bottle and she didn't moan this time. In fact when I gave her, her 3.30pm bottle she left 2oz of it! She has now just polished off her dinner and so she will have her 6oz bed time bottle and then FINGERS CROSSED she won't wake up until 7.20am again! ha ha, lets see.