how do i get her to drink in the morning?

[forevermore]

i am back to work next week and concious of the early starts with getting 6.5month old dd to childminder etc...would really help if i could get her to drink 7ozs in the morning on waking (7am) rather than what she does now:

2am ish 2-4 ozs, 7am 3-5 ozs (not sure what determines the amount really)

10am cereal (including about 2ozs of formula) and water (and yogurt if she is eating well)

1-2pm 5 ozs, 5 pm (4 cubes)spoon feed and a desrt (fruit puree) and sometimes bottle (3ozs) bath at 7ish then 5-8 ozs.

this totals on average the 20oz requirements, but if she has a day of the minimum (of the ranges i have mentioned, which is quite often, then the 2am feed becomes a necessity. this is why i have allowed it to continue.

does this sound like enough food in the day, any suggestions on tweaking the schedule. is it okay that she doesn't have 'lunch' yet?...she would not drink at 2pm if she had the 'lunch' and i feel that milk is more important at this stage. i sometimes give a yogurt at lunch if she has drunk a lot of milk in the morning.

any advice welcome...do feel that she isn't eating enough, but unsure of what is enough

can i just ask why u give her water? I have only ever given both mine milk to drink at that age

My DD, 10 months is now on 3 meals a day but at six months i think she was only on 1 meal a day (and by meal i would say 3 or so weaning spoon fulls)She has about two oz of water out of a beaker full which she tends not to drink until mid afternoon (it is there if she wants it) she never had water before about a month ago (at most) and then it was more of her just chewing on her beaker and accidently getting some water (she knows how it works now)

I don't know your Baby so don't know if she is eating to much / too little. I found that my DD let me know what was enough so i just went with her flow (iykwim)

Hope this helps.

I would think the only way to stop that 2am feed is to make sure she takes a full bottle at bed time and drop the little feeds. Is she hungry at 5pm? perhaps try given her lunch instead of dinner (for now) she might be more likely to take a full bottle then at bed time.

When she wakes at 2am do you offer her the bottle straight away? if she is sometimes only taking 2oz perhaps she is not hungry and just in the habbit of waking up.

Hope i am being helpfull.

Yeah, re night feed, i know a lot of people don't like the idea of controlled crying, but at 5 1/2 months I felt my dd, who was waking up to feed (breast feed that is) a few times a night, was ready to learn to sleep on her own, and within a few days she was sleeping through till 5am (from 7pm). That meant resolutely not feeding her if she woke in the night, but to be honest, once she was happy to go to sleep alone in the first place when first put down, she didn't even wake up - her sleep assocation was feeding which was why she kept waking up crying in the night. Hope that makes sense.

georgevickylou

this is interesting. did your LO have 1 meal and 20oz of milk or more milk than that at 6months?

was under the impression that 20oz was only enough if they had at least 2 meals a day?

Why don't you try a dream feed at 10.30pm ish? That kept my ds going through till 6amish. He needed this till almost a year old. But it did stop him waking in the early hours and if he did it coincided with a growth spurt.

DD has 3 nine oz bottles now, she leaves about 2 oz at one feed so drinks about 25 ozs now. at six months i would say she was on about 30oz a day.