Milk first or food first?

[mrsalwaysawake]

I thought it was always milk first, then offer food, to make sure baby doesn't fill up on solid food and not want the milk they need, but a friend's health visitor has told her that that's only if you give solids before 6 months, and after 6 months you should offer food before milk.
Which is right?

There isn't a right or wrong - there are two different ways of thinking :)

I tend to give them a fair bit apart so they have equal opportunities :)

Breakfast around 7.30
Milk around 9.30
Lunch around 12.30
Milk around 2.30
Dinner around 5.30
Milk around 7

All in all, so long as they get enough in a day of either, they will be fine :)

Ha ha, that's my problem - how do I know he's getting enough milk. What's 'enough' at any stage of weaning (BF)??

He will get enough if he's offered enough :)

Offer him those meals/bottles and he wont starve himself. If you can start now, not stressing about food, you will sail through the toddler years. Honestly, they do not starve themselves if offered food/bottles.

a minimum of 20oz is recommended from 6 months to 1 year. I always gave milk first and food an hour or more afterwards and then as they got older and ate more solids the milk feeds started to decrease and eventually got dropped and replaced with a snack and drink of water. At 6 months our day went like this:

7am - milk
8am - breakfast
11am - milk
12pm - lunch
2.30pm - milk
5pm - dinner
7.15pm - milk

ds also still had a night feed until 8 months (he was bottle fed)

I don't know how much my son drinks, as he is breast fed. Don't think he's having much less than when we started weaning, and still feeds at least once in the night.
I have come to the conclusion that the milk/solids timing is not the thing I need to worry about, anyway. How much he eats is entirely yummy-nes-dependant, not time-dependant!

Milk first until 12m as it is the most important part of their diet (both calories and nutrient wise).

Really they don't need to take any less milk until about 9m. I post this everywhere as it really does cut through the confusion about solids vs. BM so apols. if you have seen it 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.

Milk first just feels like the right way to do it, anyway. Friends seem very keen for their babies to start dropping milk feeds, and hubs thinks it should be food first, as otherwise how will he start to take less milk if he always has milk before dinner, but I don't really want him to have less milk yet, he's still so young! Although if it was all in the daytime that would be better!

DD is nearly 10 months. I still give milk first as she always eats her food after having milk but sometimes doesn't want her milk if she has had food recently. I don't really know if this is right but it seems to work.