Should I drop a feed?

[Babydreaming]

Hello,

My baby is small (2nd centile) so I have always been advised to offer frequent feeds.

He is now 8 months old and all the advice seems to say he should be fed 3 times a day (morning, afternoon and evening). He currently gets 5 feeds (7,11,3,7,11). He sleeps through on that and is gaining weight slowly. He takes between 4-5oz per feed and has never managed more than that. He's been really slow on weaning and I'm wondering whether to cut out the 11am feed to encourage him to take more solids. At the moment I think he gets about 20 calories a day from food...I know that isn't great! He just never seems hungry at meal times and hates being spoon fed so I've resorted to mainly baby led weaning and he loves playing with food but doesn't swallow it!

Is it time to drop a feed, do you think that would help?

He also can't use a sippy cup yet!

No. Milk should still be his main source of food until 1yo. It contains all the nutrients your baby needs. Just do the BLW thing and give milk.

Does it contain enough iron though? I keep reading that babies of his age should be eating otherwise they won't be getting enough iron!

Are you FFing? I ebfd so really not massively knowledgable on formula but I'm sure that formula has everything needed for the first year

Don't they say that 'food before 1 is just for fun'? I would carry on with the milk if that's what he wants. I feed my little one purees so I know how much she's eating but with BLW they can eat a lot less so still rely on milk. I use formula and I think it has enough iron.

Just and idea but have you let your ds attempt to suck on a pouch of Ellas or similar? My ds took a long time to settle into solids (constant gagging and vomiting over lumps any bigger than an pin head ) but he did get excited about pouches.

Please don't panic about it all too much though. As long as he's following his centile, wet and dirty nappies etc you're doing fine. Ds still has days now at 22mo where he lived on fresh air and bm and other days where I can't fill him up. He eats a good range of food when he is hungry (moules mariniere is a current fave ).

I think food becomes more and more important at this age. Sure milk might still be the main part of the diet but it is very much a transition stage i think. So I don't agree that food is only just for fun.
My son was way below 50 percentile first 6 months. He always loved his food (still does), but reflux didnt help. So from 6 months i started to introduce all groups of food one by one and by 8 months i am pretty sure he was already eating quite a bit. I found that foods like mashed avocado, salmon, hummus and breads were really nutritious in addition to the fruit and veg. He loved it and very happily transitioned to having solids as his main nutrition.
His weight gain improved dramatically and he is now a super healthy 2.5year old and has steadily been on 90 percentile for ages

I'm sure mine had 5 feeds up to 8 months. Why not offer slightly less in the 11 and 3 feeds to see if he eats a little more solid food. A minimum of 20oz is recommended up to 1 year

Far more calories in milk than any small amounts of solid food they're eating at that age, especially if mostly playing with it!

Don't drop the milk given he's small

I wouldn't drop a milk feed yet; he'll probably drop one by himself when he's ready.

DS2 is 11 months and still has 3 or 4 8oz bottles a day. He was still having 5 bottles at 8 months, 8oz a time. He's just about ready to go down to 3 bottles - 7am ish, 3/4pm ish and 7pm ish. Weaning has been slow with him but he's getting there and seems a lot hungrier for food over the last 3 weeks or so. We were doing just BLW but he wasn't getting much at all and I was starting to worry. We're now doing a mixture of BLW and jars/pouches and he's eating so much better. I made some lovely purées/mashes but he wouldn't eat them at all! If he's having what we have for dinner he won't eat it mashed, he wants it as we have it.

Don't worry, he will get there.

My DS was on 3 or 4 bottles a day at 8 months. Probably 4. I think we made the switch to 3 when he was closer to 9/10 months and then his eating really took off and we dropped the remaining bottles down to one a day by about 12m. He was pretty big though and loved solids so much less concern over him getting enough.

But they were 8oz bottles so 24 -32 oz a day. Sounds like your DS is having max 25 oz per day so I personally wouldn't reduce his milk just yet.

I feel like I've tried everything with the weaning. We're under dieticians too so lots of input. We started with purées at 4 months which he just spat out til 6 months. At 6 months I introduced new foods and some finger foods. He started to push the spoon away when it went anywhere near him but loved picking up food and playing with it so decided to go for BLW but we are at 8 months now and he still doesn't really swallow anything! I try and make home cooked food and follow lots of baby recipe books but none of the advice seems to work for him! I know he will get there eventually...it's just painfully slow!

Follow the advice of the dietitian but I personally would not drop the milk.

Have you tried giving him high fat food? Sticks of cheese, toast covered in butter and advacado.

Yeah! He does pick them up and put them in his mouth but then spits out before swallowing.

Then keep with the milk as he needs the nutrition. Maybe post of some blw boards about it. My dd is on 90% percentile and took to blw well but at 8 months was still having formula twice night and twice in the day. The NHS website says if you are traditionally weaning to move toward 3 meals a day atb9 months.

I had a very small baby (premmie) who had little interest in food. Zero interest in baby led weaning but would let us spoon feed her small amounts. We just kept up the milk so she was getting calories from that. At around 1 we were advised by our paediatrician to start cutting milk to get her to eat more. It worked at that point, but I think 8 months is too early.