Dropping the fifth bottle?

Hi ladies!

I'm hoping you lovely ladies might be able to shed some light or offer some advice on my current bottle feeding schedule for my six month old twin boys.

Two weeks ago I introduced solids once a day. All is going well, although I don't know whether it is coincidence or not, but the boys have started wanting to go more like 4 hours between feeds. This was gradually starting to happen anyways, with often 3 and half hours between feeds.

My problem is that these four hour gaps are pushing together the boys last two feeds of the day. This results in a schedule that looks like this:
Bottles: 0630, 1030, 1430, 1700 and just before bed at 1830. I think the only 2.5 - 3 hour gap between the 1430 and 1700 bottle is not enough, and often they only eat maybe 100-130 mls of a 200 ml bottle. This bottle is often a battle, as they just aren't interested. It usually ends up very stressful for my husband and i, as we spend 20 mins trying to gently encourage them to eat more. They usually do ok at the 1830 bottle, usually eating between 150-200 mls.

So I guess my question is whether I should combine those last two bottles at say, 1800? I'm just worried that four bottles won't be enough, as I obviously don't want the boys to not be getting enough nutritionally, or get dehydrated! Or should I just continue to give the two bottles, and just accept what they do eat?

I'm also scared that the boys will will wake up hungry during the night, as we have been sleeping through for a few months now.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Hi there!
I found that with my now 7 and a half month old twins that it was best to drop the 1700 feed (they just weren't interested once we started solids) and increase the bottle amount at 1830 to get them through the night. They would take a 200ml no probs sometimes even having another 50-100ml to top up.
Good luck with your decision :)