Weaning, milk feeds or water. Few questions from first time mum

[snowchick1977]

Hi

Dd is 6 months old. Ebf until 20 weeks when we introduced bottle of nightime formula.

We have started weaning her these past few weeks. She has slowly built up to regularly eating 3 pureed meals a day at 9am, 1 and 530 but during this time hardly drinks any milk in the day.

If i offer her a boob at 11 & 3 she will take it but almost just to quench her thirst.

She takes the majority of her milk at night having a 7 ounce bottle at 7pm and 7 ounces at 3am, sometimes has another feed in the night too.

My question is should the milk still be the primary source of food in the day? Or is it ok for her to just be quenching her thirst. She seems to love the fruit and veggies but im just a bit worried that shes not taking enough fluids.

Nappies and weight gain are ok.

Or should i offer her water juice?

Im clueless

Id appreciate any help or advice

Thanks x

It's normal when they start weaning that they drop the milk feeds during the day. If you think about it, between breakfast and lunch, you have 4 hours, then another 4.5 hours to dinner. And you are offering milk just 2 hours from a 'feed'.

If you don't want to stop breastfeeding, you might need to consider switching the formula back to bf at night. (I assume you are using formula at 3am too, given you say 7oz). Or very soon you'd end up not breastfeeding at all. If stopping bf is what you want, it's not a problem ofc.

Also, if you look at this page, NHS says you need to give multivitamins once your baby drop down to 500ml or less formula. But I'd try to maintain that level at least.

Oh and I offer water every meal.

Also for the bf comment. Dropping the formula doesn't mean you can't go out at all. Your baby obviously is loving her solids. During the day, she could be offer snacks like yoghurt at 11 and 3 if you aren't with her. At night, she can still be offered a bottle if you go out.

Snow assuming that you want to continue bfing, I'd offer her the boob on waking. You say she has breakfast at 9, what time does she wake up?

I'd offer it again at 12 pm and then again at 4pm.

At this age it far more important to get the milk into them rather than the solids.

Like One says, offer water in a cup with solids but if you think she is thirsty in the day please don't offer her juice. There is no nutritional content in juice. If you think she is thirsty just offer her more bfs .

Milk should be the single most important part of her at 6m and bf should be offered around an hour before meals to keep BM the major part of her diet.

I keep posting this so apols. if you have seen this before:-

6-8m need 130 kcals of complementary foods and 485 kcals from milk (approx 650ml of bm at 75kcals per 100ml) total 615 kcals a day

9-11m need 310 kcals of complementary foods and 376 kcals from milk (approx 500ml of bm at 75kcals per 100ml) total 686 kcals a day.

12-23m need 580 kcals of complementary foods and 314 kcals from milk (approx 420ml of bm at 75kcals per 100ml) total 894 kcals a day.

Full details here on page 18. Pleae note that there is different values for industrialised/developed countries and developing countries. I have listed the industrialised/developed countries figures.

Babies under 6m take an average of 800mls a day (all babies are different though) which is about 600kcals. So at 6m really you are just swapping some BM for some complementary foods and adding a little extra to their kcal intake not swapping most BM for a mostly complementary food diet (despite what most HV would tell you).

Water doesn't need to be given in any great quantities with meals, just to help her get used to drinking from a cup. Juice is pretty much devoid of nutrients but backed with sugar so best avoid it and give water instead in her cup.