Night time feedings

[Kaleo]

DS self-weaned at 10 months and has been on the bottle ever since.  I breastfed my DD until she was 2 1/2 years and just always fed her on demand, so with no experience on bottles, I've been winging it with DS.  I was used to feeding him on demand through out the night, so pretty quickly got into the habit of giving him a bottle when he would wake at night because it was the quickest and easiest way to get him back to sleep.  Now, however, he is 13 months old and wakes about every 2-3 hours a night and screams and refuses to go back to sleep unless I give him a bottle.  I'm not opposed to feeding him a bottle at night, but the needing it to fall back asleep and the large amount he drinks at night are the problem.  If I don't change him at least once during the night and then immediately upon waking then he will soak himself, me and the bed.  I'm so tired and sleep deprived and really tired of having to do so much laundry because of the leaks from drinking too much!  How do I get him to cut back on the bottles at night and fall asleep without them?  Do I need to completely stop giving him bottles at night to be effective or can I some how get to only one bottle a night? 

[lookatreestar]

(never bottle fed... but) what if you try putting less in the bottles but give them at the same frequency?

[Wild Lupine]

Along with reducing the quantity, you could gradually start diluting the bottles with water. This will force him to up his calorie intake in the daytime and lessen his need for nighttime bottles.

[HappyMonkey]

I would be concerned about teeth formula feeding at night too.

My sister recently stopped feeding her 7 mo son formula at night.. it took about 10 minutes to sooth him without the bottle the first few nights but then he started sleeping through! I know that's not a guarenteed end result though.

[maptome]

No advice about the feeding, but maybe you could put a wool soaker on him to save some laundry?

[MamitaM]

We were sleeping on top of a small change pad covered with a receiving blanket for a while to save some laundry.