Help with starting solids and dropping milk feeds please

[jellyfish]

I'm planning on starting solids in the new year when Noah will be just short of 6 months. He is breastfed and feeds on average every two hours. How would you fit solids into this schedule? At the moment it looks something like:

7am
9:30am
11:30am
1:30pm
3:30pm
5:30pm
7:30pm
10pm (although he has been asleep since 7:45pm)

What time would you start giving solids at (not 7am!!!!!)? Would you give before or after BF? As he takes so many feeds (he also has 3-4 feeds at night) should I be replacing a BF with a solid meal? And if not, when could I drop a BF in favour of solids?

Thanks in advance

 

[purple13]

i started BLW with connor a week before he turned 6 months. up until that point, he was feeding every 1.5/2 hours on demand.

i'd recommend starting food at whatever time of day you're both most chilled out. for us it was lunchtime. then after a week, i started giving him breakfast too. then we introduced dinner a week after that.

let him play with solids after a boob feed, not when he's hungry. for a while i found that connor would eat a meal, then have boob straight away afterwards.

how many boob feeds noah stays on really depends on how well he takes to solids. some babies love solid food, others can take it or leave it. milk is their main source of nutrition so it really doesn't matter if they don't eat much, and drink loads instead. connor eats like a pig and has cut down on booby quite drastically (he's still fed on demand but only around 5/6 times a day now) whereas midna's seed is a complete booby monster they're all different, so there's no way of telling how or when you'll be able to drop boob feeds - it'll happen eventually though

 

[abcd1234]

We just offer Tally food when we eat, it's kinda so she gets used to the idea of eating when we do.

I started off offering her only food on an evening (when she was at her hungriest) and making sure she wasn't hungry for milk. She slowly upped her food intake.

Soemtime she wont eat lunch now as she isnt interested and i'm not going to try and make her eat.

Her food has definately not replaced her milk feeds, if anything she drinks more now

 

[GBLiz]

At just under 6 months i started off giving anjali a rusk or bit of broccoli or something she could hold and explore, at one feed time but when she wasnt too hungry, then i'd give her milk afterwards too. She didnt have a feeding routine at the time i just fed her as and when, Then i started testing the waters with spoonfeeding and she took to it well so then i started giving her a solid meal once a day. From there she fell into a much more regular routine with bf-ing, and after a few weeks i substituted another bf meal for food. Now at 8 months she has boob breakfast, food late breakfast, boob lunch, food late lunch, boob tea, food tea,boob before bed and boob in night. The plan is to cut down the day time boob meals when she is 1 and see how it goes with the late night/early morning feeds.

 

[Sherlock]

We've been weaning for over a month now and Galen hasn't yet dropped a boob feed I"m not expecting him to for a while longer either. His meals are not yet replacing his milk feeds. They happen in between and are not so much about eating as exploring, tasting, playing with his food. Although saying that Galen has gotten the hang of this food thing really well and chomps his way through everything we put in front of him almost

I alwsys give him a boob feed and then his meal a bit after, so he never eats when hungry or else all hell breaks loose as he can't eat it quick enough nor does it fill him up.

Milk feeds are his main source of nutrition till he is about one year old. I'll gradually increase his meals and snacks as he seems to want it. For example this morning he really wasn't interested in his porridge so he only ate about a quarter. Same with lunch, didn't want his cheesy pasta nor his yogurt. Yesterday however he could not get enough of his meals and demolished them all.

I don't always feed him 2 or 3 meals a day either, even now. I tend to go with the flow, always try to have breakfast as its the one meal OH is also here for on weekdays and then sometimes its lunch, sometimes tea, sometimes both.

I'd be looking to introduce solids as an extra to the milk feeds for at least the first couple of months. And not expecting your LO to eat all, or any of it to start with. If you are doing BLW it really is about letting the baby make the progress, not about you trying to persaude them to eat from a spoon or anything. I find the BLW approach really relaxing and Galen eats what we eat more or less.