Weaning - what next?

[Prometheus]

I started weaning my 5.5 month old DS a fortnight ago. He has had pureed carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash and AK's sweet veg medley.

He takes 210ml of formula 4 times a day and I give him puree between feeds at lunchtime. He is taking maybe 10 baby spoonfuls of puree. I will try him on green veg and then fruit in the coming weeks but what next? The amount he takes is nowhere near enough to replace a milk feed and it is almost like we have the puree as a game rather than filling his tummy. Am I doing it right? When should he have a 'proper' lunch without milk or do I just keep on with small amount of puree for the foreseeable future? Thanks for any advice!

the milk will stay the same until he starts taking more food - he will then normally start taking less milk by himself so no need to do anything yourself. You could try adding in another small meal if you wanted. I did lunch then dinner and breakfast was the last one to be added in.

I'd start trying to give him the puree at a "normal" feed time. Maybe start with one of his daytime feeds. Make up his bottle as normal, then offer the puree first. See how much puree he wants, then offer the milk afterwards and let him take as much as he wants. Over a few days, gradually increase the amount of puree you give him, and he will naturally decrease the amount of milk he takes.

Where I live (Belgium) they're quite keen for you to drop a feed before you try puree at another time, but I think things differ a bit in the UK. With DS, we did the above for his "lunch" feed, eventually dropping his bottle at around 6.5 months. We then started with fruits at his afternoon feed, doing the same (increasing puree, reducing milk), and he dropped the afternoon milk feed at around 8 months. Once he dropped that, I introduced a kind of "tea" at around 5.30pm, as he was getting hungry after just having fruit in the afternoon.

DS was in creche from 5.5 months, so we kind of followed what they did - hence the meat/veg for lunch and the fruit in the afternoon.