food and drink routine - can you help me get sorted please?

[olivo]

dd is nearly 8 months and started eating (BLW) about 5 weeks ago. she has been having 4 6oz bottles a day, roughly, 6.30, 11, 3 and 6.30, plus a 5oz dreamfeed. she started nursery a couple of weeks ago and doesnt seem to drink much there, making me think that now she is eating ( lots, according to them!) she needs less. But when would i give her milk (say 3x7oz plus df) if she eats at 8, 12 and 5? would i give the bottle before or after lunch?
sorry to ramble, very confused!!!TIA

[LittleMan]

Hi there
At around 8/9 months my ds was also on this kind of pattern, but without the dream feed. The first milk we removed was the mid-morning one, so would have milk when woke, then breakfast, snacks (rice cakes, breadsticks etc) mid morning, then lunch around 12ish, then milk ~3ish then dinner at 5 and milk before bed. He is now 10.5 months and down to 2 x 8oz bottles, one first thing and one before bed. My ds started nursery 2 months ago, and although seems ok pretty much refuses to eat there so when I pick him up I have a starving little monkey to deal with. Not sure if it is environment or doesn't like food so don't really know what to do about it! Well done to your dd for eating lots! Hth

[BizzyDint]

mine went something like this

milk 7am
breakfast 8am
milk 10am
lunch 11.30am
milk 2pm
tea 4pm
last milk 6pm

then she dropped the 10am milk
then then 2pm milk went and was replaced by a snack. she now also has tea a little later due to the snack. she's nearly 11 months now. very recently she's started having her first milk with her breakfast in a beaker rather than as two seperate things.

[olivo]

thanks guys, looks like she may be ready to drop the morning bottle then, my other timings seem to be similar to yours. darent drop the dream feed yet as she's only been sleeping through for a few weeks and now i'm back at work, cant face the thought of broken nights. will prob wait for half term!!

will try at the weekend then if it all goes bottoms up, nursery wont havwe to deal with it! they have been so cool about the BLW, i dont want to hassle them with more things!!

[LittleMan]

You could always try reducing the milk gradually. We did this with all ds' milk feeds that we wanted to get rid of. We would remove an oz every 3 days until we got to 2oz and would then take it away altogher. It gave him a chance to get used to the reduced milk and make it up in other areas. You could always reduce milk and add a snack item in instead. Might be worth ago, I am sure nursery will be happy to give what milk you ask!

[clairemow]

or alternatively, you could just carry on doing what you're doing at home, if it suits you and DD, and let the nursery days be different. My DS is 7 1/2 months, and is drinking much less milk at nursery for his 2 days there than he does at home, and also has tea much earlier. Doesn't seem to matter to him that it's different there, and he still sleeps well at night.

FWIW, DS usually has 3 8oz bottles, at 7, 3 and 6.30, and has solids at 8, 11.30/12 and 5, give or take half an hour here and there. He dropped milk mid morning a few weeks ago - just wasn't interested at all, so I make sure he has yoghurt or cheese or some other milk based products at some other point in the day.

[olivo]

thanks everyone. i think i might go cold turkey with the morning bottle at the weekend, and give her a snack instead. if that doesnt work, i'll try reducing it. then i'll tackle dropping the dreamfeed in few weeks (prob by reducing too)! will up the amount in the other bottles too. and i need to get her to drink water too - she just doesnt! can'r keep up with what i should be doing!
thanks again