Solids and milk - which order? etc

[Em32]

I've got ds aged nearly 2 and dd 18 weeks. I weaned ds at 19 weeks but am trying to wait as long as possible this time. If I wait until she's nearer 6 months do I just increase the amounts and move onto mashed and lumps quicker - or what? The books are all designed to fit the needs of a 4 month old.
Also dd is fully b/f. Do I do milk separately to meals, just before meals or just after? What do you think? I don't want to spend my entire life either b/f or feeding one or other child but her routine doesn't fit that well with his. Help!

for ds I just increased the amounts. he took ages to move onto lumps but that could just be him.

at first you should give milk feed then solids, so her main source of nutrition is still milk. solids won't really take over for a while yet.

the milk is nutritionally complete, the solids are supplements (extras). So milk comes first.

i have just weaned my dd at 6 months. apart from baby rice on the first day, she's been basically on finger food. or cut up bits of what her big brother has. she's taken to it really well.

Hi! I started my fully breastfed dd on solids a month ago, at 6 months old. She was probably ready a couple of weeks earlier, but I held off because of allergies - I have them and she has already shown signs of excema - and, more selfishly, because I was taking her to Germany for a long weekend and couldn't be bothered with teaspoons of pureed carrot whilst we were away
Anyway - it worked really well. She took to the solids really well and was on 3 meals a day within a week and eating 3-4 cubes each meal within a fortnight. She also started eating mashed and slightly lumpy food and also finger food pretty much from the word go, as well.
I started with breakfast - I figured that if she was going to have a tummy ache I'd rather it was during the day, not at night! At breakfast time I always breastfeed first, as she is so hungry, then solids about an hour after she has woken. Sooner sometimes, but generally that allows me time to come round and be awake enough to go and prepare it! She then has solids again at 11.30am, which was followed by a breastfeed until she dropped it herself (quite quickly - about 2 weeks ago. Breastfeed again after her nap, so 2.30/3pm, and then solids for tea at 5pm, breastfeed at 6/6.15pm, bath, bed by 7pm and the rest of the evening is mine.
She had been taking a dreamfeed at about 10pm, but I noticed that about the same time she dropped the lunchtime feed that she just wasn't interested any more, so I stopped offering it. She stirred at the usual time the fist night, but I gave her her dummy and she went straight back to sleep, and she hasn't woken for it since.
My health visitor told me to take my lead from dd, which is what we have done. She eats more some meals than others - typically if she has had a lie-in and therefore a slightly late breakfast, she'll not eat so much at lunchtime but she'll have a bigger tea; other days she might eat a lot at lunchtime but not a lot at teatime. I just stop offering when she loses interest.
Hope that helps!

Oh - I forgot to say: I started her on lumps accidentally - my cauliflower puree turned out not to be quite as smooth as I'd intended... She wolfed it down just like everything else, so I decided to ditch the blender! She prefers her chicken in really fine shreds though, so chicken casserole etc. still tends to go in the blender, everything else is mashed/very finely diced. And she loves soft finger foods - things like fruit sticks, rice cakes are best as she likes to grab them in her fist and gum bits off from the end sticking out.

I'm doing the same thing right now and notice that most of the books tell you to break off the milk feed mid-way throught to give the solids, then let the baby top up with milk at the end. Have to say, my LO just screams if the bottle is taken away mid-way through but happily takes a few spoonfuls when she's finished. Or, if I catch her early enough, she'll eat before the milk and then drink the same amount from her bottle.