Baby-led Weaning Support Thread Part 3

[lyndsy_p]

Hey all, lurking more than anything.

But just jumped on to comment about Alice's milk intake. Graesha was only eating half of her bedtime bottle of EBM or a short period of BF, so I cut out her 4pm bottle 3 weeks ago (9.5months). She was also eating barely any solids, and about 1oz of water per day. I started to give her a little snack of rice crackers at 330/4pm and it has worked wonders. She eats 6-8oz before bedtime, and because she spends more time at the breast, my supply has increased at that time of night as well. She drinks around 21oz (at the highest point it was closer to 30oz), and that's okay with me. I say completely cut out that 4pm bottle and see what happens Alice. Replace it with cheese or yogurt so she still gets her dairy and you should be fine. Being sick means something isn't right, wouldn't you say?

HTH
Lyndsy

[VickyB20]

Pauline - we kind of gradually switched the order round to fit round nap changes, etc.  Our routine in terms of feeds now looks something like this:-

4 or 5 or 6am Bottle and then straight back to sleep (thank goodness!!)
7:30-8am Solid breakfast (cereal, toast, maybe some fruit)
10am Snack & a drink (oat biscuit, banana, cheese - amount depends on how breakfast went!  I have found adding a tiny amount of juice to the water and warming it has encouraged them to drink more.)  This replaced a bottle just a couple of weeks ago.
12:30 Lunch
2:30 Bottle
5 - 5:30 Dinner
6:30 Bottle before bed

So they're quite well spaced I think rather than one being immediately before or after the other IYKWIM.

HTH!

Vicky
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[Lippy Chick]

Lyndsy and Vicky, thank you for thoughts and suggestions.  I agree that being sick is not normal and so something needs to change.  I don't want to cut out a feed completely, especially as it was an 8oz originally.  Think we might need to go to solids first, but we're hoping to keep her naps the same for a while, as it's working, it's her feeding that isn't.  I don't think it's anything to do with the form of weaning, if anything it's helped her.  She eats absolute loads at dinner now, after we reduced the 4pm feed, however, she is hungry at that time.  Today she was grizzling for England afterwards.  Then when Stuart came home and I was finishing putting dinner together, she kept signing more, so I realised she was hungry.  However, she hadn't eaten a great deal at lunch as we were out and she tends not to then.

Ladies thank you again, very much appreciated.

Pauline

[Lippy Chick]

Hi since I lasted posted Alice's sleep has been all over the place, just plain refusing to sleep twice now in the day.  So we started today to transition to one nap.  So that means feeds are a bit all over the place too.  Today we did:

7.15 wake and bottle (6oz) (was very sick after that, small amounts but about 6 times)
9am solids (sick a couple of times)
10.30 sleep (she only slept an hour and that was with W2S)
11.30 wake
12 lunch solids.  She ate loads.
1.45 bottle (6oz)  Wasn't sick at all.
She refused the next nap, wouldn't go down at all.
4pm bottle (4oz) was very sick again.
Tried again to get down for a nap, but refused.
5.30 dinner ate loads again and wasn't sick after at all.
6.35 bottle (6oz)
7 bed.

So as a result of that, we are thinking that the milk is causing her to be sick.  Yes, milk should be her main source of nutrition until she's one, but if her body is telling us she's having too much are we supposed to ignore that, not very BW?  Not sure how to proceed though.  Her sleep and feeds have gone a bit pear shaped and so clearly weren't working.  We do follow Alice's lead and try not to introduce a new schedule when she's not ready, but it does seem like she's trying to tell us something here.

A lot of thought needed to go into this one I think.

Plus where is everyone?!!!   

Pauline

[Freya'sMum]

Pauline,

Eryn dropped to one nap at 11 months, I was really stressed by this, but she actually had more sleep in 24 hours with 1 long morning nap than when I was trying to enforce a second 1 in the afternoon, which made me feel better about the whole thing

Having 1 nap actually makes meals and milkfeeds easier to fit in IMO. I'm sure I've posted this before, but this was our 1 nap routine from 11 months:

7am milk
7.30am solid breakfast
10am nap (90mins)
11.30am milk
12:30pm solid lunch
3pm milk
4.30pm solid tea
6.30pm milk
7pm bed

as she got older, the nap and second milkfeed switched places, so now she has her milk at 10am and her nap at 11am.

Even if Alice only has 5oz per milkfeed, she's still getting 20oz in total, plus I'm sure she has dairy in her solid diet too, so she ought to be having enough

Hoping the sickness stops soon

Ax

[VickyB20]

Well I have a problem.  My boys are still hungry.  They have been waking up any time between 4am and morning and wanting their bottle of milk then.  If they don't get the milk, they wake up every 10 or 15 minutes until they get it.  Last night, Brynley had hardly any dinner and woke up at 10, then 10:15 then 10:30 then downed 6ozs of milk, cried at the end of the bottle and then had another 3ozs.  It's insane!!  He'd already had 8ozs at 7pm!

After lots and lots of trying to figure it out, my intellect and instinct tell me they are genuinely hungry.  I need to somehow get more food into them in the day.  But I don't know how to.  The HV I saw today said I must cut their milk (they have between 20 and 25ozs a day over 3, sometimes 4 bottles) to 2 bottles - on waking and at bedtime and no more than 15 ozs.  But I have absolutely no confidence that they will make up the calories with solids.

Oh what to do?  Any suggestions?  We had about 3 weeks of nights with sleep and now they're up again!

I even took a bowl of cereal (Oatibix minis) up to their bedroom and tried to encourage them to eat it before bedtime tonight.  They had a couple of pieces but were having much more fun throwing them at each other!!

Vicky
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[lyndsy_p]

So sorry that Alice is so sick Pauline. I agree that you have to take the milk consumption into consideration. I really stand behind OUR choice to eliminate the 4pm milkfeed. BTW what does her vomit look like? Is it watery or is it food like? Graesha has vomitted a watery "curdly" type substance in response to lactase in my milk. I know that doesn't have anything to do with your situation, but I am trying to wrack my brain!

About the naps: Graesha is napping after 3hr30 of A time in the morning now (her nap is 1hr-1hr15). Maybe try moving that nap closer to 1045am. She may be cranky for the 1st few days, but likely she's not sleeping lots because she's not tired enough for it. I would also try to push bedtime a little later if she does have the pm nap. Graesha sleeps 11hr30 at night now, so she's not in bed before 730....I guess I should just post her routine:

E 7 BF
E 830 solids
S 1030-1130

E 1130 BF (or 8oz EBM)
E 1245 solids
E 230 snack
S 3-4 OR 430

E 5 solids
E 7 BF (or 8oz EBM)
S 730 asleep

[Lippy Chick]

Alison, thanks for your reply.  That is really helpful.  Yesterday she just refused point blank to go down for the second nap.  She did the same thing with her third nap in the evening at 7 months.  We were hoping to get a few more months of two naps, but it's not really up to us a lot of the time, more's the pity.  So she was fine lasting from 11.30 to 7pm?  Alice did wake a few times last night, we'll see what happens today.  I know what you mean about fitting everything in, it just takes a bit of readjusting. 

Lynsdy, depending on what time she wakes this morning, I'll probably drop that 4pm feed today, if she sleeps long enough.  This morning her vomit looked just like milk, it can be quite curdled.  Sometimes it is the food she's bringing back up, but generally milk.  Well she's just woken up after 35 minutes of sleep.  Great!!

Pauline

[VickyB20]

Pauline - really hoping dropping that feed works for you.

Regarding naps, my 2 looked like they were dropping to one nap about 2 months ago but they needed to go to bed at about 5pm to make it work!!  (Which clearly didn't work for us!)  So I engineered our days so that they could have a cat nap in the car at about 11ish, then home for lunch at 12pm and then down for their proper big nap after lunch at about 1pm.  Now, most days, they go through till 1 or 1:30 pm no problem at all from a 7am wake-up although we always have quiet time (a walk in the buggy normally) at around 11 because they can get grouchy around then.  If they are totally knackered, they'll drop off for a few minutes during that quiet time which give them just enough energy to get through to their proper naptime IYKWIM!

I also had to bring lunch forward to about 11:30 on a few days.  It coincided with them dropping their mid-morning bottle so it worked out alright.

Thinking of you.

Vicky
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[jaylabliss]

i'm in a feeding slump. anyone had any new good ideas??

[lyndsy_p]

jaylabliss....cubed yams roasted in the oven with...wait for it...nutmeg and garlic powder. Grae loves this!

[Lippy Chick]

Thanks Vicky.

Today she did the old routine, short morning nap and long afternoon nap.  So today she did:

7.15 wake up and milk feed (6oz)
9.30 solids
10.40 sleep
11.15 she woke up (aghhh)
12 lunch (solids)
1.30 milk (6oz)
2.15 sleep
4.10 wake
4.30 snack of raisins (she was quite sick again from about 5pm until dinner, all curdled milk, bizarre)
5.30 dinner
6.40 milk (6oz)
7.15 bed.

Tomorrow I'm going to try 3hrs 15 again and see what happens.

Jaylabliss, the tuna croquettes go down really well.  On the recipe section.  I'm thinking about making the muffins with carrots in them instead of banana, a bit like carrot cake, without the icing.  Good way to get fruit and veg into her.  Haven't made the jelly yet, it doesn't feel like jelly weather here at the moment.

Pauline

[Freya'sMum]

Vicky,

Eryn still had a nightfeed until nearly 14 months - she was genuinely hungry! - then she stopped it herself (the need for food, the actual NW took a bit longer to go - oh that's right, she still has them ) - so maybe you'll just have to go with it for a bit

I'll suggest the same thing to you as I did to Pauline, instead of dropping milkfeeds, why not reduce each milkfeed by 1-2oz, that would help to maintain the structure of the day, but still reduce their total milk intake

Ax

[grahamsmama]

Jaylabliss- I've been making meatloaf and hamburgers with lots of different veggies, carrots, celery.  Last week I made a meatloaf with kalamata olives, roasted red peppers and feta cheese.  The kids all liked this (I was surprised by that!)
I found a recipe I want to try for a pineapple/zucchini bread.  If I get a chance to do it this week, I'll let you know how that goes.  I figure if I make it with whole wheat flour and leave out some of the sugar (it calls for two cups!), it could be quite healthy.

[VickyB20]

Thanks for the tips.  Yesterday, I added in two extra 'meals'!!  (Yup - I'm now lifting them in and out of high chairs FIVE times a day!!)  BUT it seemed to work.  They didn't ask for milk till 6:15 this morning, which is a vast improvement.  So instead of just a small 'snack' mid-morning, I just kept giving them more and more snack foods (cheese, bits of ham, banana, raisins, blueberries, grapes) until they stopped eating.  Neither yesterday nor today did it affect what they ate for lunch, which was my fear before.  If anything, they actually ate more lunch today!  Very strange.  I also added in a 'snack meal' after their pm nap and then put dinner half an hour later.  (Yesterday and just now, I did actually cut their pre-nap bottle to 4ozs, and they didn't grumble too much.)  So overall, they ate much more yesterday.  About the same at each 'meal' but with much more in between.  Here's hoping it will also work tonight!!  A year of sleep deprivation is just too much!

I should have figured this out earlier really.  Their dad is a total grazer... he often leaves food on his plate at meal times but snacks throughout day right through to bedtime.  (He often brings a pack of crisps or a pastry up to bed... a habit I hate, by the way!!)  He's 6'3" and seems to be doing ok on it!!  So I guess it might be the same for the boys.

I'm also making an effort to give them more meat.  I'm veggie, so it's tricky, but I think they need it.  Ella never did so it's new territory for me but their metabolisms are sooo different!

Anyhow, enough of that.

Sorry that Alice is still being sick.  Is she distressed by it or is she just taking it in her stride?  I really hope it's the former.

Oh another thing... Brynley is using a fork!!  He picks up the food in his fingers and then tries to put it on the fork and then eats it off that!!  It's so sweet to watch!  (Although one wonders why he bothers given that he has the food in his hands in the first place!)  So thanks for the tip on forks v. spoons!!

Hugs,
Vicky
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