More than 20 oz of milk - is this ok?

[bluesmile10]

My ds is 7 and half mo - has been on solids now since 5 months. He does however love his bottles of milk and at present has around 24 oz a day. Health visitor has said he should be having between 15 and 20 oz.

Should I be taking one bottle away during the day?

Also considering giving him a feed early morning as he is waking at half 5 and dont want to give breakfast at this time, so that would increase it even more.

How gradually should I be cutting it down?

When my DD was around 7 months she went down to 3 bottles a day. She dropped the mid morning bottle around this point. She she had one first thing in the morning at waking up time, one after lunch time nap at say around 2pm and one at bedtime, say 6:30ish. So probably between 20 and 24oz a day. She is now 9 months and has about the same, although she leaves a bit of her morning bottle, so she probably has slightly less than 20oz in total. I think 24oz is fine and you don't need to worry too much about cutting it back. Just take your lead from your DS. If he starts to eat more at meals and drink plenty of water, you might be able to cut 2oz from his bottle maybe.

is he taking well to solids? eating 3 meals a day? if so, i would keep up the bottles so long as he wants them.

I was told 20oz is the minimum to aim for so am always happy when DD goes over that.

7.5 months seems young to be cutting down on milk. They say "food is for fun until age 1" after all. I think I'd follow his lead on it - he should make a natural progression at some point.

I thought they were still supposed to be drinking a pint of milk at age 1 anyway - isn't that 20 oz? So why should it be going down to 15? Sounds like advice you can safely ignore :)

24oz is fine as a minimum of 20oz is recommended from 6 months to 1 year. At that age ds still had 5 milk feeds as he still fed in the night till 8 months. Could you add in a supper before bed rather than give extra milk in the morning? I wouldnt cut out milk unless your lo indicated he wanted less

Thanks, I was reluctant to cut it out - he loves his milk!

Seona1973 - do you mean give him something alongside his bedtime bottle, porridge or something?