When does food replace milk?

[katiegolightly]

I've just started weaning my 5mo. She is EBF and has 5 milk feeds + a dream feed. Half the time she will wake up for a night feed. I now also give her 1oz of fruit or veg purees after her lunchtime milk and 1-2 oz baby rice mixed with breast milk for dinner. She is enjoying the lot!

I'm aware that her calories are coming from her milk and I will happily continue to offer a full milk feed and follow up with veg/rice after. But at what point to we go straight to 'food'? When we do this, do I need to suddenly give her substationally more food or is it more of a 'slowly reduce the time on the boob' transition.

I'm unclear of the pace to transition. Whilst I understand that some go on to breastfeed for years, I don't really understand if this tends to be one evening feed for the most part, or if those who are breastfeeding longer term are still offering milk pre each feed.

Anyone know where I can get some good guidelines? I am happy to EBF for a year but plan to return to work, so would prefer to continue bfeeding morning/evenings only at that time if possible.

Someone else will come along with much better advice, but my 8mo has just got the hang of food and we are starting now to get times where she will refuse the bottle after a particularly big feed. It looks like she is naturally starting to drop the lunchtime bottle, which I believe is normally one of the first to go. So its a bit of a 'slowly reduce', going at her pace.

But I'm with you, I'm quite confused as to how this all works in the long term, so I'll be reading with interest!

I don't really know for sure but this was something I was very confused about. I did hear "that food is fun until they are one". I did a mixture of BLW & puréed food.
If I remember correctly I just followed her lead. I stopped BF at 9 months. Then she was on 3 bottles of milk a day (breakfast, lunch & then bed). Let your baby lead the way with her appetite, but I know that milk is still the most important food source at this stage & the solid food is all about learning tastes & textures more than sustenance. It wasn't till my DD was about 11-12 months that milk feeds fully stopped.

Hi,
Milk should be the main source of nutrition until they are 1 but I agree it is hard to know how to reduce it.
At 5 months my ds had 5 full milk feeds and a bit of veg puree in the evenings and a bit of organix porridge in the morning. I did not reduce the milk until he could swallow properly and i was sure he was eating enough solids. I reduced his milk by about a third at 7 - 8 months .

I make his meals but sometimes use Hipp jar puddings. I started with very smooth textured food like sweet potato and veg puree in the beginning and gradually made it more lumpy and varied.

At 8 months he had 7am full milk feed, 9.30am porridge and a little milk feed after (short nap), 11.30 milk feed, 12-2pm sleep, 2pm lunch (three large ice cube size) veg, protein, carb etc, 4.30 milk feed, 4.30-5.30 sleep, 7pm dinner 3 large cubes and last feed a dream feed at 10.30pm.

At 10 months he is on 3 main milk feeds during the day
6-7am -120ml formula
8.30am -half a weetbix with 55ml formula milk for breakfast followed by wholemeal toast
9.30- 80ml formula and a 1 hour nap
12pm -lunch with a snack and fruit or followed by greek yogurt and mashed banana
2pm 120ml formula and long nap of 1.5 hours
6,30pm -dinner followed by a pudding
Bed 8.30pm
10.30pm 180ml dream feed

When he is one i plan to move to just one milk feed before bed.

He started sleeping through most nights at 5 months and regularly does a 2 hour long sleep during the day so he must be eating enough. He is bang on with his weight too.

Hope this helps. Don?t worry too much . Try sweet potato and mashed peas at 5 months.

Currently the advice is to keep offering a bf about an hour before you offer solids until they are one. If you are planning to return to work when DD is one it is fine to bf just morning and night, I did this with my DS and it worked out fine. You won't need to worry about formula and bottles as well then as bottles aren't recommended after 12 months anyway and DD won't really need more than 2 bfs a day at that age. If you work part time you could, if you wanted offer more feeds on the days you are hone, or just offer full fat cows milk if you perfer.

As for the weaning, there isn't any need for baby rice, unless you really want to use it that is. You might want to have a read of 9 good reasons not to use baby rice before you decide though.

Just out of interest, do you go to any Bfing Support Groups? They are usually good places for picking up tips and listening to other Mums experiences of things like weaning and your local La Leche League might even give a talk on weaning and bfing.

Someone, I think its Angeldog, has a chart of how much of their calories they should be getting from milk and how many from solids in their first year. If you post on the bfing/bottle feeding section I'm sure someone will put up the link for you

Oops, i forgot to say that at 10 months he has a snack of a yogurt and rice cakes at 4pm. he would never last 2 - 6.30pm on just milk.