Author Topic: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?  (Read 2492 times)

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Offline violagal

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Hi all,
My DS is 8.5 months. He has been on solids since he was 6 months and is ff and has a very healthy appetite. However the last two days he's been draining all 3 bottles and eating every scrap of food I've given him. This morning he woke early 5.45am and wouldn't settle and when I'd tried everything else and tried milk at 6.15am he drained it and went straight back to sleep! And just now he took his bedtime bottle and drained it (I make up 8oz) and cried for more then took another 2oz.

Our routine and amounts are currently like this:

6.30am milk 6-7oz
8 breakfast. 1 slice toast with mashed banana (he only gets about 1/4 of this down). 5oz porridge (made with formula) and 1 tbsp fruit purée.
9.30/10 half hour nap.
11.30 lunch. 6oz protein jar. 3oz yoghurt with 1tbsp fruit. Rice cake/rusk afterwards.
1.30 milk 6-7oz
2-3.30 nap
4.30 dinner. Finger foods usually pasta twirls with sauce and a bit of whatever dinner is ie fish, mash etc. 4-5oz meal usually mashed veg/fish with cous cous or grated cheese or lentils. 4oz fruit purée.
6.45 milk 6-7oz.

I guess my question really is should I be increasing his milk or just the solids? With the solids is it literally keep going until he stops? He generally has been stopping when full but today when he had his pasta and ham jar at 11.30 he was ravenous and took it in about 5 minutes as well as polishing off the yoghurt and half a rusk!

His weight is between 50-75 percentile at 9.2kg so not overweight. He did just start crawling a week ago though so does that usually coincide with a need for more calories??
Thanks ladies...


Offline cath~

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Re: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2013, 13:42:06 pm »
Since he's fully on solids now, the UK guidelines are that he needs 500-600 ml (17-20 oz) of milk/day, including any milk in food. So it sounds like your LO is getting plenty of milk so iiwm I'd go for introducing more solids rather than milk. Just follow his lead as to how hungry he is. My LO was def hungrier once she started crawling too. Sounds like he's doing great :)
« Last Edit: June 17, 2013, 13:44:18 pm by cathn »
DD1 - 8 years old
DD2 - 5 years old

Offline Buttonbobs

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Re: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2013, 21:23:45 pm »
Seeing as you only have one solid meal after he wakes up from his nap, what about offering a snack on wake up from the afternoon nap and then offering dinner a little later, say 5.30pm. If you could do this without impacting on BT it might be worth a try. If you think this won't work for your LO, perhaps offer a snack before bathtime and milk and Bt routine. What do you think?

Having said all of that, LOs do go through phases of needing more milk, has his solids intake reduced recently, eg from teething pain? When my DD is teething, she tends even now to eat less in the way of solid food and take a bit more from her milk. When she was under one I went with it and added more formula - if she took it I let her you know.
~ Naomi ~




Offline *Kara*

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Re: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2013, 03:44:43 am »
Hello :)

My DD was taking 3 good sized meals of solids and also 30 ozs of formula at this age.  It could well be an increase coinciding with crawling and needing more...

Couple ideas:

- offer high calorie items such as avocados/pasta/meat bits (as opposed to jarred foods as they contain far less actual food)

- increase bottles to 8 ozs each

- swap back to 4 bottles a day... first three ~ 6 ozs and then 8-9ozs at bedtime.  With such a large volume of solids, I would be tempted to do this to encourage lots of fluids with each meal and ward off any constipation that can happen with a jump in solids.. I did bottle then solids for each meal at this age, then gave a full BT bottle.

In Canada, recs are still milk first then food at this age...



Offline violagal

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Re: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2013, 18:58:43 pm »
Thanks so much for all your suggestions, I have done the following which has seemed to help;

- made bottles up to 8oz again and offered more when drained
- increased variety of finger food before the now 'mashed' course so he's getting more in the way of bread, homous, mince etc than just veg and fruit and
- offered water and snack after each nap

Breakfast today was the whole slice of toast with mashed banana, couple of slices of pear and 5oz porridge! And that was 1.5hrs after 8oz milk - he's definitely matching me for intake now!!

And thanks for the heads up about teething, he currently has no teeth but will be sure to offer more milk if he needs it when they arrive.

Offline *Kara*

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Re: 8.5 month growth spurt? Keep increasing milk or solids or both?
« Reply #5 on: July 02, 2013, 05:33:27 am »
Oh my!  Hungry boy!