Posted by
Nicher
19 yrs ago
Have been following Gina Ford on introducing solid. Baby is 6 months and a week and he's already having solid at breakfast, lunch and dinner. For lunch and dinner, he takes a small drink of milk then followed by the solid then remainder of the milk (so it's a combination of milk and solid each meal). Today we took baby to the govt clinic and the nurse there said we should actually introduce solid at one meal first, and replace that whole meal with solid and no milk. Then we can move on to the other meal.... I am quite confused about what to do. My question is:
At what age should baby establish proper meals and be eating ONLY solid at lunch/ dinner with no milk? Is it driven by baby? I wish to make sure he takes enough milk and the nutrients from the milk so dare not replace whole meal with only solid yet. Can anyone share your time-line or experience?
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Hi Nicher,
we are following Gina Ford too. I started off tier-feeding like you but then quickly started offering solids first as bubs would get really upset when I took him off the breast. This is working out very well for us. The only meal where I give milk first is first thing in the morning. Our schedule looks like this:
7:00am Wake & BF
7:30am breakfast
11:45am Lunch
12:15pm Breastfeed
12:30pm bed
5:30pm Dinner
6:00pm 15 mins. of quiet play (to aid digestion!)
6:30pm Bath
7:00pm BF
7:30pm Bed
According to Gina, the first milk feed to drop is the 11:30am one. She advises that you drop this when you start introducing protein at that meal. I started a whole other thread on this as I was quite reluctant to drop this feed entirely. Like you, I wanted bubs to get as much yummy goodness from milk as possible! However, some days, when bubs has had a really good solids meal, he will only take the tiniest amout of BM so they do control their intake naturally. Hope this helps!
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Hi Nicher,
I personally think there are many different ways to introduce solids and how to fit them into milk feeds. gina ford's guidelines assumes you are following her milk feeding schedule, which the nurse who gave you the advice might not necessarily prescribe too. actually my baby's doc said i should replace a milk feed with solids but i chose to follow gina and we are fine. so it really depends on your baby's original milk schedule and how you want to go about with solids.
at almost 14 months, we do the following:
7am: milk in cup
7.30am: breakfast
11.45am: Lunch (this used to be milk at 11am, then tier feeding with milk and solids before becoming actual lunch with no milk)
2.30pm: small cup of milk with fruit/yoghurt (this used to be just milk)
5pm: Dinner
6.30pm: Milk in a cup
7pm: bed
hope this helps!
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Oops, I missed out the BF at 2:30pm on our schedule! Bit of a Freudian slip as bubs is hardly ever interested in this these days and barely finishes one letdown...
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Thank you very much for your advice. Wheelymate you said it right that the nurse who gave me the advice didn't actually know my routine which is soooo true.
My routine now is pretty similar to Wheelymate and Mayafox:
7:30 BF
8:15 breakfast
11:30 2oz + Lunch
12:15 remainder of the milk IF he can still take
3:00 milk
6:00 dinner
7:30 milk
8:00 bed time
Seems like I'm on the right track then!
By the way, the nurse also emphasized that I should start offering congee with veggies, fish and egg yolk (a typical Chinese baby diet). She said we can even offer egg yolk every day (start off with 1/4 egg yolk).
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True, STB, it's most important to follow baby's cues. I'll keep observing.
Another issue though is baby's water intake. I know baby doesn't need a lot of water if he's BF, but Gina also advises to give him a drink of water after each meal. My bub always refuses it. He drinks a few spoonful from the bowl with a lot of struggle, but not from the bottle/ beaker (have got him a Tommee Tippee sippy cup but he doesn't know how to drink from it yet) Is this normal?
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if you're breastfeeding -don't worry about water intake. he'll get what he needs from your milk. It's more important to just show him and get him used to the idea - but not necessary that he take too much at this point.
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Nicher, sounds like you're doing really well. Re the water, my LO was still bf and really didn't show any interest in drinking water for ages - prob almost 1 year, but I kept giving her the bottle/cup so she got used to it. I really think babies know what they need and will take it.
Oh, just noticed HKCC has said almost the same thing!!
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Thanks I'm much convinced :) I was concerned coz worried about constipation. He poos 2-3 days (not too bad), but the poo could come out really hard like a pebble (occasionally). Last when time he forced it out face red, he cried, prob it hurt...
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have you started him on prunes yet? I found prunes, boiled and then pureed - mixed in with rice cereal in the morning was a great way to keep my two babies quite regular.
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Hi All,
One of the things I love about this forum is that not only can you get a bit of (much needed) reassurance that you are on the right track, there are always helpful suggestions that you would not have thought of before. Way to go, ladies!
Looking at other people's schedules makes me wonder whether my 'meals' and breastfeeds are spaced too closely together (and so making bubs take less BM). Hmm... May have to do some experimenting with the timing.
Simplythebest, my little guy is 9 months now. Did you start offering a snack instead of the 2:30pm feed once your bubs started losing interest? I keep persevering because it seems strange to me that my baby only eats 3 meals a day (especially when I am raiding the cookie cupboard mid afternoon hahah). The three meals he eats are pretty big (about 8 tablespoons) but he has gotten really active since he started crawling and is really burning through his fat reserves. Should I be offering more?
Nicher, I agree with the other posters about not worrying too much about dehydration if bubs is still getting lots of BM. I started my bubs on the sippy cup at 6 months when he started solids and he has only just got the hang of it at 9 months. At the beginning, it was just to get him used to it, so I barely put any water in but offered it to him at meals and sometime around 4pm in the afternoon. Just keep trying and keeping it fun. He'll get there in the end -- or not -- some babies totally bypass the sippy cup stage and go straight onto drinking from a cup!
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STB -- I always look out for your posts because I know that you are a couple of months ahead! So much of what I learn from this forum comes from you :-)
So far, I have only given Bubs home-cooked food. Nice to make a special effort now that I am working freelance from home! I sometimes wonder if giving bubs 3 huge meals is the right thing to do, or if I should be giving him smaller meals more frequently.
White, I haven't been giving mine snacks because he seems to be able to last between meals. Sometimes, bubs doesn't actually want any BM in the afternoon but I don't know whether that is because he doesn't want MILK or if he doesn't want anything at all. Maybe I will try offering some extras over the weekend to see if that makes a difference.
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