Starting at 6 months - question about milk intake.

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi there,

DS is nearly 6 months and I was planning on starting him on some baby rice next week and seeing how he goes. His weight gain has slowed but I am not sure if he's now due a growth spurt of the snuffles are affecting him.

My DS has a bit of a pattern with his feeding. He takes a large feed (both sides) first thing in the morning if he's slept through and it then takes him ages before he's hungry and then I struggle to get enough feeds into him before bed. (I have never done a dream feed). What I was wondering is if I give him solids at say 830amish (i.e 1 hour + after his breast milk) will it be even longer until the 2nd feed or do you think he won't wake up so hungry so won't be so full after his first feed once a rhythm is established. I obviously don't want him cutting back too much on his milk but it does seem to take ages for him to digest it. Perhaps if I start the solids there won't be this swing between massive feeds at the start of the day and little feeds towards the end of the day.

I am not sure if I am making sense but would welcome some suggestions. I think he needs something else now because the margins are getting too small if he takes a bad feed I know he'll be up at night. Although he goes ages between feeds it seems the calories aren't enough (could that be true). I was expecting the feeds to get closer together when he was showing signs of getting hungry but it just seems he keeps them spread out just as much but wakes up at night (is that normal or am I missing something?).

Thanks is advance.

J

[tylersmommy]

Hmmm...with his feeding pattern, you might see if you can get away with giving him solids sooner after his nursing. You can try 30 min after or even right after. That would give him more time to digest and hopefully not affect his appetite for his next nursing as much. If he isn't hungry enough to take a bite that soon after nursing, it's hard to say how solids will affect his nursing pattern. Give it a try and post back after a few days to let us know how it goes...then we can tweak it from there if needed!

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Thanks for the input. No sooner as I start thinking one thing another thing happens. I am fighting a breast infection at the moment so I wont be doing anything until I can get that settled. I really need him to nurse more often right now but DS has never fed under 3 1/2 hours even as a baby. The only exception was the evening cluster. I should be thankful but I reckon I got blocked because he slept through the other night. I was so full and it  hurt to sleep but I was to exhausted to get out of bed. I obviously should have done.

Will post back once I start in a couple of weeks.

J.

[tylersmommy]

Oh no! I hope you feel better soon!

[BabyBsMommy]

I don't know if you'd feel comfortable doing this but my son takes his biggest feed in the morning, too.  When we gave his cereal an hour later he ate that no problem but wasn't very interested in his 11am AND 3pm feeds.  Once we knew his tummy was fine with it, we moved the cereal to 5:30pm, a little more than halfway between his 3pm and 7pm feeds.  After 4 weeks, he now takes 3 tbsp of rice cereal at this time and a full feed at 7pm.  He took the full 7pm feed right from the first day we gave him cereal at dinner time.  We just introduced oatmeal today in the morning and I'm not sure if we'll leave it at the am or not - he didn't eat a huge feed at 11 but he started doing his food fuss at 2:30 (and I fed him at 2:40 - downed both sides, eating for 30 min instead of the usual 15).  Just a thought...

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi thanks for the suggestion.

I think I will have to give that a go. I'm just getting over a breast infection. I've had to pump in between his feeds and now I am struggling to get 4 in by 7pm because he is so full of milk!!! If he takes a feed past 3am that can rule him out of action until 11am still.

I like the sound of what you did. Hopefully he would still then take a good first feed of the day to keep his intake up.

I here a lot of mums talk about too frequent feeding but not the other way round.

Thanks again.

J