Weaning and formula

[Gems1783]

My LG is 8 months old and is doing well with weaning so far. I've always followed the 'offer milk before food' advice and then waited half an hour to an hour before giving food.

I just wondered if and when others changed this. As in, offering food first? I wonder sometimes if she is hungry so takes a lot of formula which fills her up so she doesn't have as much food. Hope this makes sense. She has dropped how much formula she takes a little bit. She seems to eat most at dinner time but breakfast and lunch can be a bit hit or a miss some days.

TIA

By that point I tended to do formula a good hour and a half or two before food, so bottle at 7, breakfast 8.30, bottle at 11, lunch 12.30, bottle 4pm, dinner 5.30 and then bottle before bed.
I then started to reduce how much she had in the bottles during the day by a couple of oz so that she’d be hungrier for lunch and dinner.

Agree, milk about 2 hours or so before food. I definitely wouldn't expect them to be hungry again after only half an hour. It doesn't matte much if the times are traditional meal times. Just far enough after milk, but not so close to naptime that you have a grumpy, tired baby. I would say we didn't really actively start to offer food instead of milk until about 10/11 months but by that point she was eating really well. I also think it depends on how much milk and other fluids she's taking. Especially in this heat, I would continue to offer plenty of fluids. If she drinks lots of water at meals, then you might need to worry less about the formula, or if she already drinks loads of formula, then cutting down here and there isn't such a big deal.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah it's always a balancing act between giving food not too close to milk but not too long after that it's near nap time. She's doing well so far so will just keep an eye on fluids and take cues from her on dropping oz etc

My DD was on a pretty set routine from 6 - 8m of bottles approx 7,11,3 and 7. And then meals around 8am, noon and 5pm.

At about 9m I dropped a daytime bottle. So she currently has bottle 7ish, breakfast 8ish, snack at 10.30ish, lunch 12ish, bottle 1ish, snack 3ish, dinner at 5ish and bedtime bottle. I intend to keep this for about a month and then at 10m drop the lunch time bottle for a cup of cows milk. And then aim to drop the morning and bedtime ones by 12m. That’s pretty much exactly what I did with my DS, but of course DD may have other ideas.

I found they both increased their solids once I reduced the milk. They are both really good eaters though so I didn’t have any concerns about dropping a bottle. And we still have the odd day where I’ll give her an extra bottle because it’s convenient for what I’m doing or she seems hungry or whatever. Every day is different!