BLW, breast feeding f up, sheer terror of change now things are going well - advice please!

[BlueyDragon]

DD is coming up for 6 months. BF was a complete mess up for lots of reasons that are too boring to go into again (I'll save that for my late night guilt sessions) so she's been bottle fed exclusively on formula since about 6 weeks. She's fed on demand, except first thing in the morning when I feed her anyway because after 14 hours without a bottle she must need some!, but doesn't seem to know where the bottom of the bottle is and so eats 4 7oz bottles a day. She sleeps well at the moment and has done for about 6 weeks.

I want to do baby led weaning, partly to compensate for the bad start and partly because it seems to make sense and less work to me, but am terrified of changing what currently works so well. So I'm on here in the hope that Aitch and her cohorts can give me some backbone by answering the following:

Do I start straight out on 3 meals a day?
If she's having a bottle at 7 a.m., is it OK to give her breakfast at 8? I don't want to overfeed her either...
Will she start to cut down on the milk she drinks (and does it matter if she doesn't), or have I broken my baby by messing up BF and reaching for the bottle?

P.S. I did try Aitch's blog but can't figure out how it works. I went back to work this week and my brain is too full to cope.

[Seona1973]

I do a mix of puree/finger foods so dont know the ins and outs of BLW but firstly calm down and take a deep breath

I personally started with 1 meal a day and worked up (fairly quickly) to giving 3 tiny meals a day at our normal meal times i.e. they werent always at the same time as milk feeds. DS's feeds at 6 months were as follows (give or take half an hour here or there)

7am-milk
8am-breakfast
11am-milk
12pm-lunch
3pm-milk
5pm-dinner
7.15pm-milk

He also had a bottle in the night until about 8 months so he was taking 5 bottles - 4x7oz is not excessive by any means.

I think the mainstay of BLW is that you offer the solid foods while maintaining the levels of milk you give and as your lo gets better at handling/eating solids then they will drop their milk intake naturally. Some babies will do this quicker than others so your lo may not change her milk intake for quite some time.

You seem to feel quite guilty about bottle feeding, but hey, if your lo is happy and thriving with it then thats all that matters (I have started breastfeeding twice and given up early but my kids have survived and that the main thing )

[monicker]

There are no hard and fast rules but what we do is whenever we sit down to eat, DD joins us and we put a little food on her plate. The first few weeks she ate virtually nothing and played with it, but then eventually she started to wolf everything down. You'll be fine!

Milk will still be the main source of calories for the rest of your baby's first year.

[lulumama]

don;t think of it in terms of meals at first...just offer finger food when you eat you r breakfast , lunch and dinner

if you were doing puree, you would not expect your LO to have 3 proper meals straight off from teh start

you;ve not broken your baby by bottle feeding...i bottle fed both of mine, and they are absolutely fine..please don;t beat yourself up about it..there are often complex reasons why we don;t breast feed , and feeling crappy about it, won;t help!

give milk before food, and let her play and learn about taste and texture, rather than expecting her to eat a meal

pieces of lovely peach and nectarine are good, steamed carrot , courgette, broccolli and cauli are good to start with, to have a good play and munch on

milk is still the main source of nutrition for the first year, solids are a complement to milk, not a replacement, she will guide you..

[ruddynorah]

what lulumama said.

remember blw is for your baby to learn to eat through playing with the food, not through hunger. so you don't need to cut out milk or do anything at all to encourage it, just pass bits of food over, all different colours, textures etc. as your baby's need for food increases, her ability to eat it will increase. it's like at first they don't need much food so they aren't capable of eating much.

good luck!

[olivo]

what the others said!
we started out just giving dd the odd bit of fruit or veg then after a month or so gave her tea, then breakfast and eventually lunch. she is now 10 mo and has 3 meals plus snacks buts till has at least 3x8oz of milk - milk is still the most important thing for her. she sometimes takes more, sometimes less but is always offered plenty.
btw, you havent messed up with bf - you tried and it didnt work - and your dd is in no way broken.
good luck, i'm sure you'll both be fine.

[BlueyDragon]

Yes I do at times feel horribly guilty about the BF thing and it's worse when you read the BF mafia type stuff about how your child will be horribly obese and eat nothing but turkey twizzlers for the rest of its life if you bottle feed. Intellectually I know that's not necessarily the case but you know how the parental anxiety thing goes.

Thanks everyone, you've made me feel much better and answered my questions. Now I just need to food proof my dining room

[Aitch]

lol, been there and done that bluey. if you get a minute, have a look at teh breast adn bottle feeding bit of the blog, you will see a wee rant from me. a rant? more like a primal scream...