Weaning Breast to Bottle - which feed first?

[LittleMan]

Hi All
Just looking for some quick advice. I started weaning ds at 20 ish weeks, he turns 6 months tomorrow and is doing well, up to 3 meals a day, with milk first thing and in between meals. My dilema is that have my own business (my partner is running it at the mo) and as it is getting close to christmas I need to get more involved again so need to move away from breast feeding but don't know where to introduce a bottle first. Routine at the mo roughly:
7.15am B/F
8.15/30am Breakfast
11.00ish B/F
12.30ish Lunch
3.30/4pm B/F
5.30pm Dinner
7.00pm B/F before bed
10.30 Formula Dream Feed
Any ideas greatly appreciated!

[fluffyanimal]

Why not try with either the mid-morning or mid-afternoon milk feeds when he is more awake. The bedtime one might be the hardest to drop as he might like the comfort.

[shish]

Littleman - Just a question - Did you set this routine or did it just happen. My ds is 5 months old giving lunch and dinner at the moment and b/feeding on demand (refuses bottle)

Generally sleeps around 10/10.30pm - 8/8.30am and feeds 2-3 times in bewteen. Have been giving lunch at 12/12.30 and dinner 5.30ish

Any advice?? What's good for b/fast at this age??

[shish]

... He usually b/feeds every 2 hours

Would really appreciate some tips from you.
Thanks

[LittleMan]

Hi Shish
Um, I guess it was kind of a bit of both, just happening and setting it - I kind of just suggested it to ds and he adapted it to suit him.
We started off weaning at 20 weeks, he was feeding roughly every 3.5 hours during the day then, which is something I had encouraged by gradually lengthening the amount of time between feeds, but also to be honest he just started to go longer too and when I tried to feed him if he wasn't hungry we'd have a bit of a to do! He was mostly waking twice in the night aswell then (say 2/3am and then 5/6am then awake at 8.30pm). During the day he would always feed around 8.30, 11.30, 3.30, then 6.30 before bath and bed, so when weaning just did b/f as normal then added food directly after 11.30am feed, then same to the 3.30pm feed. Found that with just one solid meal he started sleeping to 5ish, then would wake around 8.30/9pm for more milk, once 2 meals added he went to 6ish, then finally 3 meals through to 7 (we dream feed at 10.30pm still), so I just adapted things as we went along really. I gradually increased the length of time between milk and solids just so that he would be more hungry and willing to take greater quantities of solids, but he never had any issues with this really, I try not to leave more than 1-1.5 hours between milk and solids though. Sometimes he doesn't drink much at 11ish, but I have learnt not to worry too much and I think that in time I will get rid of milk here entirely and bring lunch forward - once well established on a good range of protein foods too.
As for breakfast, you can get some cereals/muesli's by Organix that are gluten, wheat, dairy etc etc free and as I am a bit too lazy to express or make formula in the morning, I just mix with cooled boiled water instead. Now he has reached 6 months I will probably start to give some weetabix and milk + banana or something.
Sounds like your dc is quite a regular eater still so this may not suit you both quite so well perhaps?
Hope some of this helps a bit.
Littleman

[shish]

Thank you so much for your reply. He can sometimes go for up to 3 hours after a meal, so I'm hoping to end with a routine a little similar to yours, which was why I asked.

Really wish he would go back to sleeping longer at night... and take the bottle!!

[deaconblue]

I did lunchtime feed as ds' first bottle feed, mainly so that I wouldn't have to get norks out in public while out for lunch. Then I replaced the afternoon, followed by mid morning and left the early morning and night time ones til the end. We moved from breast to bottle a bit too quickly though - with hindsight I would have taken two months rather than one to make the change.