7 month old still drinking lots of milk!

[owltrousers]

Hi All,

Ds has just turned 7 months. He's a big boy (20lb) and has always loved his milk, he's fed SMA anti-reflux formula as suggested by our GP after he displayed reflux symptoms early on. Always got on great with it.

We started weaning at 5 and a half months, mixture of baby-led and purees - he was never massively interested at the start but would munch here and there. Now he's just turned 7 months and does eat quite well, especially the purees he'll have 1 large savoury ellas kitchen pouch a day as well as yoghurts, crackers, crisps and fruit and veg snacks.

My problem is he still very much wants his bottles, and cries for them. His day tends to go like this -

6.30 - wake
8am - 6oz bottle
8.30 - naps for 2 hours
11am - brunch (puree, toast, fruit)
12.30 - 6oz bottle
1pm - naps for 2 hours
4.30pm - 6oz bottle
5.30pm - dinner (savoury puree, veg, crisps)
6.30pm - bed time and 8oz bottle
10.30pm - dream feed 6oz

All together he's having over 30oz milk still, and sometimes he wakes at 3am and will not sleep unless he is fed. I'm worried he's being overfed.
I realise we need to make some changes somewhere but not sure where/how.

Any advice would be V much appreciated.

Around then is when I dropped the 8am bottle and did breakfast, bottle mid morning and then lunch

I wouldn’t worry until 1 though as I believe before 1 food is more meant to be ‘for fun’ / getting them used to textures and eating etc.
My HV did tell me that at 1 my DD should be having approx 1 pint total across the day ( which includes milk as an ingredient in any meals e.g weetabix )

That sounds pretty normal to me. My first was definitely on 5-6 bottles a day until 9 months when she dropped down to 4. My second is 6.5 months and bf, so it's a bit different, but definitely has way more milk feeds than that in 24 hours. Unless there is genuine concern that his weight is way off the charts (which it shouldn't be at 20lbs because I'm sure mine is at least that and he's only 80th centile), then there's no reason to worry he's being overfed. Babies who are overfed vomit it all up after and it doesn't sound like he's doing that. He clearly knows what he needs, so I'd just go with it. It will likely change a lot in another month or so as he gets a bit older.

At around 7 months we had dropped down to 3 bottles. How about trying a snack after his nap to get him through to dinner, removing the 4:30 bottle?

If he cries for it still just try again in a week or so.

Totally normal. DD was 13 months when she had her last bottle durring the night.