solid feeding schedule

[RebekahDSC]

My DD is 7 months and breastfeeding about every 4 hours.  She's also having solids 3 times a day.  I generally feed her the solids about an hour after she nurses because I thought I read somewhere to do that.  However, I'm concerned that this could be encouraging snacking, as she eats a lot of solids and then often doesn't seem to nurse as well as she used to.  Would it be better to nurse and feed solids in one "sitting" so she gets full meals each time?  I definitely don't want to encourage snacking as we are still trying to figure out night feeds......

[Rebekahb]

i agree that you should BF first and i believe tracey's book says wait awhile before solids but i think it also depends when your BF's are.  With my DS1 he drank at 8,12,4,8 so had breakfast,lunch,supper following first three feeds.  DS2 drank 7,11,3,7 so after 11 and 3 feeds there was a bit of a break until solids.  I agree that you don't want to get into the snacking habit so maybe would cut back a bit on solids to maintain good BF's as solids are kind of the 'bonus' nutrition at this point

[RebekahDSC]

Thanks for the response! Hmmm... I have been wondering about cutting back on solids, but more so because I've had a couple people comment to me recently how much she eats!  However, we are following the pediatrician's recommendations on amounts (as well as her cues.)  When your kids were around  7 months, how much did they eat?

I've been noticing she gets fussy to eat now about an hour after nursing (probably because she is used to that now) whereas she used to go 4 hours fine with only a little solids once a day. Does this mean she is relying on snacking now?

[Shiv52]

My DD1 ate HUGE amounts...so for dinner say she would have had 2 cubes of savory, 2 of fruit and a yogurt.  But it never affected her milk intake.  DD2 ate less but cut her milk intake way down and then wanted to BF much more often as she wasn't getting enough milk so I cut way back.  BM has many more calories per oz than any solid food you would be offering at this stage so if your LO is eating huge amount of solids and not taking as much milk then her calorie intake will be lowered even though the quanity of food is more if that makes sense.

I think amount of solids varies totally between babies but I always followed the advice that solids at such an early stage was for fun and experience and should not effect milk intake.  So if milk intake is being effected too much it probably is wise to cut back until she is taking proper milk feeds again.

HTH x

[becj86]

I had issues with DS being given snacks too soon before his BF's and that caused him to not really feed well for two day feeds - translated to me doing two NF's (which we haven't done in months!) that night and then having to wean him off it again over a few days by tranferring the calories back to the daytime. I'd really ensure her milk intake isn't dropping, as Shiv is right, milk has way more calories than any solids you'd be giving her.

Don't worry so much about what other people think about how much she eats... I have had the same people tell me on consecutive days that DS eats way too much solids and that he's too skinny. Even a child health nurse telling me in an interview before he was weighed, "oh he doesn't need to eat that much, he's only a baby you know" then once he was weighed, "you need to get more solids into him, preferably carbs and an extra BF as well if you can, he's not gaining enough weight".