9 months and dropping bottles?

[dmills]

I for the life of me can not remember how we dropped our son's bottles.  My daughter is just over nine months and her schedule looks like this:

6:30 AM   Wake and 6ozs.

8:15 AM   3T. of cereal and half a Gerber fruit

9-10:30     Nap

11:00      6ozs.

12:15  Half a gerber meat and half a veggie

1-3 nap

4:00  6 ozs.

5:15  3T of cereal and fruit

7:00 6ozs. and to bed soon after.  Does this look okay?  Is it too much or too often and when and how should we start eliminating bottles?  I know with my son we worked on the 11:00 one first.  Help!

[Freya'sMum]

Personally I don't think that there is any rush to start dropping milkfeeds - babymilk is considered to be the primary source of nutrition for babies for the first 12 months (a minimum of 20oz per day, so 4x 6oz feeds is probably about right for some time yet!).

Your routine looks great, a good balance of milk and solid foods - if it's working for your family, just stick with it, what you'll find is that the solid food quantities at mealtimes (breakfast, lunch and tea) will continue to increase while the milk quantity remains much the same, and that eventually you will replace the 11am and 4pm bottles with a dairy based snack (eg fruit and yogurt or cheese).

HTH?

Ax

[*Mona*]

I completely agree. your routine looks really good and I too don't see why you should drop any bottles if your LO is happy with what she gets.

and if she starts refusing some of her milk, drop one of the bottles, not all of them at once.
m

[lilsweetie]

my son has reduced the amount of milk he's drinking per feed. now he only wants 4-5oz/feed, 4 times a day. i think i will drop one bottle soon annd see if i can get him to take more milk per feed instead.

[*Mona*]

good idea lilsweetie

[vadensmommy]

Ok, this was so the post I was coming here to write myself!!  DD is at a sitter's in the mornings, and rarely takes her am bottle well.  Am thinking of trying to cut it out, but so for I'm just offering fewer ounces.  She gets 3x6oz bottles, and 1x 7oz bottle at bedtime.  Seems to be doing well -no night feedings, having some wakings, but am pretty sure that is much more related to nap and sitter issues.  If you do drop the 11am feeding - do you move the 3pm feeding earlier?  I am really concerned that dd wouldn't take her pm nap properly if she doesn't have that bottle first.  We already have started splitting the 3pm bottle and give her some before the nap because she was waking out of hunger - thoughts??

[*Mona*]

when we got rid of mid-morning bottle, we introduced more solids- so Maja was having wake up bottle, breakfast [yogurt, sandwich, etc.], NAP, lunch [usually meat based veggie soup], bottle, NAP, fruit, bedtime bottle.

[lovedtodeath]

I think it would be easier to help you if you posted a full routine, in the meantime, this link may help. sample menus along with this one routines with solids