When does food become of nutritional value?

[SharkSkinThing]

Just curious.

DS 6.3 months old, EBF. Lots of finger foods and spoon feeding, but when does the food I offer actually give him any calories of value?

Am asking as I always offer milk above food - is this wrong?

I've noticed that he's spacing out his feeds a bit more (from around 3 to 4 hours), so I'm thinking he must be swallowing something to make his tummy full?

it has nutritional value from the very beginning.

It is not "wrong" as such to offer the milk first but you might find he is more enthusiastic about solids if you rejig your milk feeds to be significantly before, or after you offer solids

eg:

7.00am - milk
8.30 - breakfast
10.30 - milk
12.00 - lunch
2.00 - milk
3.30 - afternoon tea/snack
6.00 - Dinner
7.00 - milk

That was DD's eating schedule at 6-7months except she dropped the 10.30 milk.

HTH.

I think by about 12 months it's 50/50 milk calories and food calories, so at 6 months milk is still much more important. I am sometimes offering my 6 month old food first and sometimes milk depending on the time of day - e.g

wake-up milk
8am breakfast
10am milk
lunch time food followed by a milk
4pm milk
5pm food
bedtime milk

Sorry for the delay - thanks so much for your answers. DS has dropped the morning milk so we're making progress.

Do either of you still feed in the night?

nope. DD dropped her dreamfeed at about 6 months (which i was very grateful for as I had gone back to work).

DS has a formula dreamfeed of about 100ml at 11pm, then mostly sleeps til 6am when I bring him into bed with me to feed til 7ish. About twice a week though he wakes for a feed between 4-5am though, so I feed him and he goes back in his cot.

Sounds promising - we're nudging DS in that direction.

He feeds at around 11pm and 2am, so I'm going to start refusing the 2am feed. He tends to wake at 4.45am at the moment, so I could always feed him then instead, and hope he goes back down - at the moment he doesn't!

Any suggestions?!!