Dropping bf left, right and centre and BLW - is this OK?

[BosomsByTheSea]

Our DTs are nearly 7 months and have been (mostly) BLW (except porridge where both babies and I have spoons) since 6 months. They are absolutely stuffing food in - porridge, sandwiches, fruit, veg, pasta, casserole - you name it!

They have been fully bf up till now - about 6 feeds during the day and one sleeps through, the other feeds a couple of times at night. I bf on demand.

Yesterday, they had a bf first thing, big breakfast of porridge and banana, early lunch of avo sandwiches and slices of pear, and they didn't want another bf till 4pm!!! (I had to express to avoid exploding!).

I offer water after each meal and they do drink some - maybe 2 oz - nothing like as much as they used to drink from me.

Is this normal? Will they get dehydrated? Sorry to be dim.

Wees and poos fine - one Dt (the one that doesn't feed at night) has got firmer, but still soft, poos.

Thanks in advance for experiences / advice. I've also posted this in weaning.

I would probably say as long as you are following their lead then it should be fine - provided they appear to be healthy, are gaining weight, etc. But I am not an expert.

I do know that it's not as important that they drink much water at this stage - you can keep offering breastfeeds as well as this is like a drink for them. When you say they didn't want bf until 4, did you offer it at their normal time, or did they just not ask for it?

i thought the offering water advice was normally for formula babies? i'd ditch that, maybe? there's quite a lot of water in porridge and banana, so if their nappies are fine they will be too i'd have thought. ime 7 months is peak time for hoggishness with blw and they probably will settle back their eating when the novelty wears off a bit.

Thanks Bertie and LeSinge. I'm offering the water because I'm worried about them getting enough - very quickly after starting weaning they stopped asking for so many feeds. Maybe they're not asking for milk though because of the drinks! I haven't been offering in the past few days - though before that I did - not offering was precipitated by a visit to baby group where there was a finger foods session this week - after seeing how much the DTs ate, bf supporter asked how often they were feeding and was very surprised that I was still feeding 8 times a day (DT2 has gone through 5 centiles since birth - 2 in the last 5 weeks ).

She suggested I wait till they asked rather than offering every few hours, as I was before. Hence the big drop in the number of feeds.

Hoggishness is right! I call them my little piglets!

In that case I would probably go back to offering more breastfeeds - it's great that they are taking to food, but milk is still more important at this stage. Maybe offer less often than you would have before, so it doesn't feel like such a step backwards?

i think that's REALLY weird advice from the bfc, did she say what she was trying to achieve with it?

DD really dropped down on her day feeds when she started motoring with food. She would even refuse to feed when I offered and got a little constipated. But I did keep offering and she came back to it, to the extent that she still has day feeds now at 15 months (DS had dropped to morning/evening only by same age).

I would question what the bfc said too - was she worried that they were having 'too much' food/milk?

I think she was surprised that they were still having pretty much the same number of feeds given how much they were eating too.

I am very happy to go back to offering every 2-3 hours or so; it's tricky as, though I call it 'demand feeding', the DTs were so slow putting on wweight at the start that I fed them at the least provocation, so I'm not really sure now if they are hungry or not - they will nearly always take the boob if I offer them a feed!

The bfc has been fantastic up to now - very supportive and really helped me to ebf the dt's by being so supportive. I may have misinterpreted her advice as she has been spot on up to now.

Thanks for all the advice so far - Rhinestone, I hope my 2 are feeding at 15 months too!

tbvh i would ignore her, both of my dds ate amazingly for a while, then dialled the amounts back a bit as i said earlier. but neither dropped a bottle (so i can be confident re litreage iykwim?) until 13-14 mos. go back to what you were doing, imo.

Thank you all!

We've settled into something between the 2 extremes now - and they seem happy enough.

Thanks for all the advice