When did your DC start dropping feeds?

[Wildwaterfalls]

EBF 6.5 month old DD here, just started weaning (BLW) but so far still on 4 feeds during the day, another 2 during the night.

Just wondering when others found their DC started dropping feeds during the day particularly. I know it's too soon now, but kind of hoping we'll have morning and evening feeds only by the time she's one and goes to nursery.

If I can get away without introducing bottles / ff that would be brilliant but not sure if realistic.

TIA

We did BLW too and ds started dropping feeds at 11mo or so when I introduced don't offer don't refuse. He was a very poor eater (solids) so I had hoped this would increase his appetite. It didn't. He just didn't eat or feed!
He eats brilliantly now (18mo).

Mine (also ebf and blw) suddenly dropped a number of feeds literally overnight at 9mo. Unfortunately (as far as this thread goes) he was feeding 2-hourly in the day and hourly at night until then! At 10.5mo he's going 3-hourly in the day and still pretty much hourly at night.

I know this seems to be unhelpful, but it was the sudden drop at 9mo I wanted to point out! It was surprisingly dramatic, I got quite engorged for a couple of days.

Well DD was also having 4 feeds on the day and one or two at night when we weaned her (BLW). She loved her food straight away and after a few weeks (could have been a month or so... Memory a little sketchy, sorry!) she dropped the night feed. She dropped her mid-morning feed at about 9 months. She's 10 months now and can go without her afternoon feed without really noticing as I accidentally found out last week so by 12 months I imagine she'll probably be dropping it.

They are all different of course, but if you find yourself approaching 12 months and she's nowhere near dropping the daytime feeds you can take action then. But when you get there, it may depend on your DD's attitude to food/sippy cups/bottles etc what course of action is best for you.

It is entirely possible she'll do it all by herself though :)

Mine has more than that at 18 months! She can go longer during the day if I'm not around though and is allergic to cows milk which makes it trickier. She was really slow to catch on to solids.

In answer to your question it'll be anytime between now and 24 months that they drop milk feeds nice broad answer there, sorry!

Some babies drop quite quickly around 8-10 months when solids/BLW just "clicks" with them; and you hear if babies striking at that age too. Others boob monsters take longer.

How long had you got in mind to bf until?

My dd took to BLW like duck to water but her bf didn't decrease much, unless I wasn't around. At 17-18 months she's just cut 2 feeds (bedtime and 11pm) and it felt quite 'instant' rather than gradually reducing. Like pp said, they just drop and you don't realise until you're engorged!

By 10-12 months they're are normally less reliant on bf and/or can be distracted with solid food/snacks/expressed milk until your back, so your ideal that you described (am and pm feed) is realistic. I've been more or less doing this since 12 months plus a few 'drink' bf during the day or mammoth ones when teething, upset or miserable

Hmm thanks all.. Sounds like it is a little hard to predict how where we will be in six months time. FWIW I am happy to keep going with bf as long as she wants, with the exception that I won't be able to do it during the day once I go back to work.

We'll have to make a call closer to the time as to whether we will go with expressed milk, ff, or no milk feeds at all depending on where she is then.

At least she loves her water from a sippy cup so that's encouraging

i went back to work 3 days a week when dd was 12 months and on those days she had cows milk from a bottle. Apart from that she didn't drop any feeds until hand foot and mouth forced us to go cold turkey at 24 months!

Oh yes, thanks, cows milk will of course also be an option at that stage.

About 8/9 months for DS1, IIRC, I think around the time his BLW solids intake really ramped up (it also made my period come back...).