How much solid food should I give my 7 month old?

[tryagainsardines]

Hello,

Turning to mumsnet to see if I can get some answers. My DS is 7 months old. He was on 5 bottles of 210ml daily with one solid meal of two table spoons once a day. (He didn't take to solid food easily hence still early days of weaning.)
I've just upped it to three solid meals of 3 tablespoons and dropped his milk intake to 600ml. With finger food and healthy snacks in between. Can anybody share their food routine? I'm not sure I'm giving him enough. He doesn't always finish his solid food and still wakes for a bottle at around 2am.
I haven't managed to find anything conclusive. I would just like a guideline and then can judge if I am feeding my son enough. Thanks in advance :)

Did he drop the milk or did you? I left the milk the same when weaning and they dropped the intake by themselves. It's maybe a bit early to suddenly drop from 1050mls to 600mls of they aren't taking a huge amount of solids. I didn't give snacks until 9/10 months and used them to replace a bottle feed e.g. dropped the mid morning feed and gave a snack and water instead. How many bottles are you giving?

I keep offering the same milk feeds and find that they naturally start to drink less or mess about more with their milk feeds as they get more interested in food and are eating more. The baby I'm looking after at the moment cut out her mid morning feed first then the mid afternoon one a few weeks later.
When she wasn't eating much solids, she would let me know she wanted her bottle, get upset if it was a bit late, drain it empty. As she got better at eating, I'd still offer her the bottle, but she wouldn't be that bothered about it, maybe mess about with an ounce or two and that's when we knew she was ready to drop it.

Thank you both for your insight.
So I will keep the feeds the same as what it was and wait for DS to drop them.
Am I giving him enough solid food? I can't find any info on the NHS website and the back of the formula box says up to 600ml a day (but as mentioned will wait for ds to drop to this.)

I couldn't tell you how much my DS were eating at that age. I would just feed them until they stopped/lost interest. I always offered a combination of things they could eat themselves and purees at meals. I just let them reduce their milk intake themselves as well.

Don't worry too much about how much DS should be eating, let him guide you. If he's eating all three meals, try him with a bit more the next day. If he's not interested don't give him more.

I remember thinking weaning was stressful with my first because I didn't know how to do it 'right'. By the time I had my youngest I just dumped stuff on his high chair tray and let him get on with it himself!

At 7 months it doesn't matter if they don't take much as strictly speaking you wouldn't be starting weaning until 6 months. There is no set amount to give them as at the start it's about new flavours and textures not to fill them up

Really he should have as much milk and as much solid food as he’ll eat. When he doesn’t want anymore, then he’s finished and it’s enough.

Mine is 7 months. I have no idea how much he eats quantity wise, but a few spoonfuls is probably about right for some meals, others maybe hardly anything as he just plays with it. Sometimes he might have an extra snack or a cup of milk (formula) as I’m trying to get him used to drinking from a cup. He probably has 5-6 feeds a day (bf) and then maybe 2-3 during the night. As long as you feed on demand though, you can’t really go wrong. They know what they need better than we do.