milk adn food

[littleweed]

AM sure I've read somewhere (maybe Gina Ford?) that once babies start ahving 3 meals a day they no longer need so much milk? how do you know when to cut it down adn why do you need to do that?Am reluctant to cut down on milk as he likes it so much! so was wondering what anyone else does. at the mo (nearly 7 months ) he has breastfeed - breakfast - formula milk around 11ish, lunch around 12ish, formula around 3ish, tea 5ish and breastfeed before bed. cheerrs little weed

littleweed, I had both mine on similar pattern at that age. iirc I dropped a day time feed when it started to run into the next meal. ie when the 11am milk wasn't required until 11.30/12.00 and that in turn would make lunch much later and/or less eaten. You don't need to but by a year mine were bfed twice a day only. Then dd weaned and had next to no milk but about 6 months later wanted 4 drinks back!

Littleweed, I think the idea is that when they're taking more protein in their 'solids' that you can start to reduce the amount of milk they drink. So if they're having yoghurt, cheese, meat, fish etc. you could cut back a bit. As my dd hated all forms of protein for ages and has only just started branching out a bit, she is still on 3 milk feeds a day and is 18 months old. I aim to get it down to 2 when her diet improves.

My 2yrs 5 month ds1 still drinks milk around 4 times a day (probably around a pint). He also has a good and varied diet. i think the stuff about dropping feeds/reducing milk is largely a matter of personal preference, so long as a reasonable balance between milk and other foods is maintained - i.e. not so much milk that it reduces the appetite for other foods, but not so little that important nutrients and calories are lost. Within those two extremes there's probably quite a wide range of practices that would be ok.

I would think the pattern you describe of 4 milk feeds a day would be fine, but also that if you wanted you could drop one by now.