How many feeds a day at 6mo - advice please?

[curlyLJ]

My LO is just coming up to 6 months and I am about to start weaning (all the signs are there and she is SO interested in food!) but I was wondering about the amount I still seem to be bfeeding her.

It seems like she is always feeding, there's none of this early morning/mid morning/mid afternoon business - some days I seem to be getting my boobs out non-stop! Is this right, or should I be trying to schedule feeds a bit more by now? (have always fed on demand) She only feeds once or sometimes twice in the night, so I know she can go for longer stretches.

Also, she has started to do this thing where she will be happily be entertained by someone else, but the second she is handed back to me she is headbutting my chest and winging for a feed - even though she seemed to not be bothered only 10 seconds previously. The whinging sometimes happens if I just walk into the room! SHe is teething at the moment, could this be causing the extra clinginess/need for feeds? It's driving me a bit bonkers but I really don't want to stop. Will she just feed a bit less often as solids become more and more established?

Thanks in advance

It's probably because she feeds so much during the day that she sleeps well at night. Teething does tend to make them want extra feeds - both for comfort and for the natural painkillers supposedly in breast milk.

FWIW my LO fed bang on hourly(!) when she was that age. She has gradually decreased since starting solids (no pushing or scheduling on my part, I enjoy sitting on my arse ) and now at 9mo feeds much much less.

I found much easier to have a routine once started weaning, with both DD and DS1 a day at 6 months would look something like this:

7am breastfeed
8am breakfast - babyrice, pears and EBM
9.15 sleep
11am breastfeed
11.30am lunch - carrots
longer sleep
2.30pm breastfeed
6pm breastfeed, followed by babyrice and apples, followed by fromage frais, by 7-8 months I moved the solids to 5pm before the breastfeed.

I always offered solids after a breastfeed as at that age they should still get most of their nutrition from milk.

My DS2 is 4.5 months and is feeding maybe 8 times in 24 hours, including once in the night. I will try and have schedule once we start solids to make sure he still gets 4 good daytime milk feeds.

mine has started having recognisable feeds and sleeps since he started solids. mealtimes are more or less at the same time every day and breastfeeds/naps have aettled into a pattern in between without me trying.

(until yesterday, that is - currently has a cold AND teeth coming through, refusing solids and nursing every two hours).

curly my DS was exactly like this before we started weaning at 6 months. We are combining (mainly) BLW and some spoon feeding and I have just continued to bf on demand but do meal times on a schedule. What has happened over the last 2 months or so is that DS has started to become more 'regular' in his demand for milk during the day so I find that he now feeds first thing in the morning and feeds to sleep at night as always but asks for a midmorning and midafternoon feed (although the times can be very variable) and will occasionally have a lunch time feed also.

(he still feeds at least twice during the night but that is an entirely different issue )

Just realised that that wasn't very clear.

What I had meant to say is thatbefire weaning we had absolutely no routine (except day was day and night, night) but since weaning he has naturally fallen into a more regular after wrt his feeds and naps, but that he still feeds on demand.

I prefer it that way as it means that I don't have to stress too much when he doesn't eat much at meal times as I know he'll make it up with milk and if he does eat well he'll just have less milk.

DS2 is 24 weeks now and hasn't really had "solids" but he has cadged a few nibbles of things I /DS1 was eating (is a fast little sucker). He probably feeds about 12 times a day I think. Not always both sides but jumps on pretty regularly.