6 mth old- how balance formula vs. solids

Hello. My 6 mth old has been on solids for about a month. I have a couple of the usual baby books and a baby cook book. I've also scoured the internet, but can't find any decent info on how to schedule the baby's feedings and how much formula to give.


I am worried we are overfeeding her as she looks like a little Michelin man and is 95% on the growth charts. No one believes she is only 6 mths old and our medical insurance won't cover doctor visits for weight concerns, so it's been difficult to get consistent advice from her doctor.


My feeding schedule is as follows:

7am 150ml formula

9am 1.5 tablespoon mixed grain cereal + 2 fruit cubes

11am 150ml formula

3pm 150 ml formula

5pm 2 vegetable cubes (frozen purees)

7pm 180ml formula

10:30pm 150ml formula (in process of stopping this)


Can anyone point me to any good sources of feedings schedules/ how much or what you did/ doing with your own 6 or 7 mth old? Thanks a lot.

hi kilwinning,


what are your baby's naptimes? because from the feeding schedule, it looks almost like your milk feeds are scheduled like what gina ford recommends. if you don't don't already have her book on weaning, you might want to consider it as her feeding schedule is fairly similar to what you are doing, except that the 9am solids is usually not long after the 7am feed, say 7.30am or so because that's supposed to be breakfast. and when you have introduced all 3 meals, it should look something like:

7am - milk

7.30am - breakfast

11.30am - tiered milk feed and solids..eventually this milk feed is dropped and becomes lunch.

2.30-3pm (after nap) - milk

5pm - dinner

after 6pm, before bedtime at 7pm or so - milk feed

dream feed at 10.30pm, which can be dropped eventually.


milk intake - at 6 months, milk is still the most important part of your baby's diet so even as milk intake decreases with more solids, you still need to ensure that your baby takes the min. amount for her age - gina has some guidelines on that as do most baby weaning books.


solids intake - it really depends on how well your child feeds, babies all eat different amounts! but at 6months, i find the idea is more of introducing solids to your child, letting her know milk is not the only food for her but at this point, it's not meant as a full meal replacement yet...so you don't really want to introduce so much solids that she cannot possibly drink milk after that. e.g. her solids at 5pm, feed enough but still ensuring she takes a good milk feed at 7pm to see her through the night since you plan to drop the 10.30pm feed.


hope this helps, i'm sure others will have advice for you too.

hi wheelymate, need your advice too since my bub is starting solids in 10 days. He will be 6 months. Right now his feeding schedule looks like this:


6am/10am/2pm/6pm/730pm( a smaller feed to last him through to 11pm).Then another feed at 1130pm(this is not fixed as he sometimes sleeps through the night).


But when he does sleep through the night, he will wake up at 5ish, SOOOOOOOOOO hungry.


which are the times I should be introducing solids?


Thanks

My baby is 6.5 months and we started solids 2 weeks ago. Her schedule at the moment is like this:


730am 6-7oz bottle

930am breakfast - pureed fruit or veggies mixed with rice cereal

10am nap time

1230 6-7oz bottle

3pm lunch - pureed veggie with chicken, about to start introducing other meats

330 nap time

5pm 4oz bottle

630pm dinner - pureed meal of some sort

8pm 7oz bottle then straight to bed


She always seems to be hungry by late afternoon. I'm guessing she's loading up on the calories so she can sleep through the night. She used to feed more often but less in quantity because she was breastfed. She's completely weaned and on formula now. And after I sleep trained her, she stopped taking a bottle before taking a nap. This made me able to increase her milk per bottle and lessen the number of bottles in a day.


My doctor also said my baby is slightly over weight, but he said once she starts crawling she should be just fine. At the moment she is already extremely active. We let her go on the floor majority of the time she's awake. She literally does not stop rolling all over our living room. I think that is why she gets hungry so quickly. I can't imagine how much she'll start eating once she starts to crawl!


So Kilwinning, your baby isn't eating as much as mine! And my baby definitely eats twice as much solids per serving as yours. Maybe it'll help if you give your baby more tummy time to roll around and be more active. And maybe she just has slower metabolism. So far your feeding schedule seems fine. Stopping the dream feed would help though.


As for Germaine WS, just do what wheelymate suggested. Start by giving solids after his bottle in small amounts. Solids should be treated like dessert just to get them used to the texture and the idea of another form of food. After your baby gets more used to it, you can start increasing the amount and variation.


Baby411 has very good information on the measured amounts you should be giving your baby in terms of liquid and solid nutrition. They give you the amounts in quantity/number of baby food jar/calories. They even teach you how to compute for how much calories your baby should be taking for their weight. Although they do caution being overly accurate will just stress you out.

My bub was quite chubby until she started crawling. They tend to burn up the calories really fast once they get moving!

Thanks for all your replies. I guess I will need to be patient and wait for her to become more active. We do tummy time, but she hates it- she loved until until we went on holiday for 2 weeks where we didn't do it as frequently b/c of sightseeing, etc. When we got back, she suddenly didn't like it anymore! But she loves standing and trying to walk, so we do that with her a lot to help her exercise. Hopefully cutting out the dream feed will help and we will reduce her bottles slightly too so that in total she'll get about 700ml/ day, rather than the 810 she has been getting. We go to the doctor next week for her 6 mth shots, so hopefully I can get some input from the doc also! TLY, thanks for sharing your schedule, it's interesting to see what others are doing! I don't know anyone with a baby the same age as mine...

Hi mommies! My 6.5mth son is on the following schedule (give or take 30mins) :


630 or 7am 4oz formula

play time until he gets sleepy or falls asleep

8am 1hr nap

9am 3oz formula

play time until he gets sleepy or falls asleep

1130 1hr nap

1230pm 2oz baby brown rice, 1/4 avocado and 1oz sweet potato (or root veggie)

play time until he gets sleepy or falls asleep

230 1hr nap

330pm 4oz formula

play time until he gets sleepy or falls asleep

445 30min nap

530pm 2oz baby brown rice, 1/4 avocado and 1oz sweet potato (or root veggie)

3oz formula

play time until he gets sleepy or falls asleep

730 1hr nap

830pm 5oz formula

Quiet play in his crib

10pm 4oz formula (if he doesn't cry, we don't feed him this feed)

10 or 11pm down for the night


Total 16-20oz of formula per day, we just started solids for the 10 days. He used to drink a combo of breastmilk and formula totalling 27oz but i can't get him to drink more formula since we started solids. Also, he used to go down at 8pm and sleep through until 7am but since we started solids he won't go down until 10 or 11pm even if we leave him in the crib and ignore him. he won't cry, just stay awake rolling around his crib.

tly thanks for your advice. One other question, in the beginning, do I split the feed between the solids and bottle? Ie he is taking full 8 ounces of milk now, do i reduce the bottle by say 3 ounces to 5 ounces. and add the 3 ounces to his rice cereals? assuming that i am doing the solids and bottle at the same time.


Is it actually better to feed the solids and formula separately as kmama does it?