Suggestions needed re adpating feeding routine for 6 mnth old

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DD is 27wks and I need to start weaning but not sure how to adapt her feeding routine and things like what time to offer solids, how much and which bottles to drop first.

This is her routine:

6.30-7am 8-9oz
10 am 7.5oz
1pm 7.5oz
4pm 7.5oz
7pm 7.5oz

She won't go longer than 3hrs.

Any tips will be great.
Thanks

Personally I would just give her little tastes of food at the same time you eat. Give her as much as she seems to want. She will drop her bottles when she is ready.

I'm a GF fan so I can tell you what she says! Start with the 10am and offe half the milk, then a tsp of baby rice, then rest of milk. Each day increase the amount of solids and decrease the amount of milk given b4 hand. Once you've started her on protein then you can start with solids and replace milk with water afterwards.

Also after couple of days, move babyrice to last feed and add apple or pear - giving half milk, then solids then rest of milk. She says to then introduce new veggies at morning feed, gradually increasing amounts and stick with rice and fruit in evening for a while. After a while you can move solids in evening forward, and dreplace 4pm feed maybe, then give milk at bedtime.

HTH

Hi, I nanny for 6.5 month old twins (chaos)
here's our daily routine, bearing in mind we started weaning at 5 months.

7am 7oz milk
8am rice/oat cereal in 2-3oz milk with fruit puree (current fave is porridge with apple and cinnamon - us grown ups eat it too, scrummy)
9-1030am nap
1115am 6oz milk
1145am 3 or 4 icecubes of veg puree (current fave sweet potato and courgette, sounds and looks foul but seems to go down well)
1230-2pm nap
3pm 6oz milk
415ish-5pm nap
530 fruit puree and yoghurt (current faves are mango and greek yoghurt)
7pm 6oz milk

They are wanting more solids and less milk, and soon I'll be offering them finger food and water in a sippy cup. We've just started on white meat and white fish, mixed with a veg or with apple and they love it. I've found with all the babes I've looked after, most are ready to wean at 5/6 months, and starting then has meant they are only on the purees for a month maximum. In another fortnight I'm pretty sure both babes will be on mush rather than puree, and will be munching on steamed fruit and veg sticks too. I love the weaning stage as I love cooking and seeing what flavours and textures the babes like. I am a little gung-ho with the meals I prepare, in that at 9 months all of my previous babes were digging into mild curries, chilli and spaghetti bolog made with red wine and fresh basil. I believe in using no salt, but feel a baby benefits from trying food with flavour to it rather than bland puree and mush, surely it makes for a more enjoyable experience. As far as jars go, I have used Hipp and found them to be quite tasty (yes I am guilty of trying them just to see) and probably the best out there. All my babes are now hearty eaters and most ask for their new nannies/au pairs to cook curries etc (one of them said no, she only did fish fingers etc as she "didn't have time" to prepare fresh food. When she herself told me this I was amazed. She also criticised me for making difficult food, as she cannot make it for the children. The children are in school all day and she has nothing else to do!!! But I am sure thats a whole other issue....

Thanks ladies. You won't believe this is my second child. She is completely different to ds who was ready to wean at 4mnths and took it like a duck to water. DD is completely different and paed has been pressurising me to wean since 4mnth due to reflux and other issues. She just wasn't ready at 4mnths nor at 5mnths. This is going to be our 3rd attempt.

Nannyk - how do you make the oat cereal. Need to avoid rice cereal as dd suffers to ongoing constipation issues. Do you cook it then blend?

Hi,
I basically grind porridge oats in coffee grinder beforehand(PITA but works a treat) to get a smoother consistency powder. Then I make up the porridge with formula milk and zap in the micrawave for 3 minutes or so (this is for 6-8oz milks worth of porridge) Then I add whatever fruit I want, ie banana, apple, pear. I did try making it first then blending it but it didn't seem to like being made with the formula milk, it went a weird consistency. But the powdered form works a treat.

I grind enough porridge oats to do a couple of weeks worth of porridge, then store it in a tupperware container.

One of my lo's has reflux too, and to combat that we have been putting a teaspoon of rice cereal in her bottles. This really helps weigh the milk down a bit and her spitting up has reduced hugely. I know its generally not recommended to put cereal in a bottle, but in my experience if it means a baby keeping down more than 4 or 5oz of milk and not needing feeding an ounce every hour, its a huge benefit to everyone concerned! If you are concerned about constipation, just add a little more fruit to the daily solids and make sure you offer lots of water. Our Paed has ok'ed what I have done, in fact he has commended it as he was at al loss himself as to what to do (he had recommended hourly feeding of an ounce or so to get enough calories in her). I researched on the net and found a few sites that offered advice on reflux and one common factor was putting a tiny bit of cereal in a bottle, and it works for us.

Maybe it would help, I don't know. Anyway, best of luck and if I can help in any way please let me know :)

Thanks Nannyk. Luckily, we were never at the 1oz every hr stage. DD's reflux was more to do with milk intolerance and excessive acid that is why I haven't forced her to wean when she wasn't ready. She has been on rantitidine since she was 6wks and we started Neocate at 15wks which made it manageable.

Hi, I'm glad your dd is ok with the reflux. my lo had a hell of a time. The reflux was brought on by chronic overfeeding (nightmare maternity nanny). Basically lo was being forced to have 9oz of milk every 4 hours from 4-8weeks old. I started when she was 10 weeks and the poor parents were in a state as lo was throwing up most of every feed, screaming in agony, and had acid reflux constantly. The parents accepted what the maternity nanny had said, that lo was just a sicky baby. WTF. And because the parents paid a fortune for her, and trusted her implicitly, they thought what lo was going through was normal and that lo was indeed a sicky baby. We got lo to the paed asap and he recommended hourly feeds of 1oz and also 5ml of Zantacx3 a day. We did that for 3 days, and lo was so distressed and hungry all the time, so I hit the net, called some maternity nurse mates, etc and basically stayed up all night trying to find a solution that would help both lo and her parents who by this point were having a breakdown. When I read several articles about rice cereal in the bottle I thought well it couldn't get much worse, so I tried it the next morning. Little one drank a full 5 oz and kept it down, she also slept for more than 20 mins, the first time in 2 months. Since then we have cut the Zantac down to once a day, she hardly evr spits up, has no gas issues, etc. And the parents have put in a complaint about the maternity nanny with the agency that sent her. Personally I think the maternity nanny should have undergone some kind of disciplinary action or something as she caused lo to have what the paed and the dr at hospital both diagnosed as being reflux brougfht on by overfeeding. WHo nfeeds a 4 week old 36oz milk a day?? Little one's twin brother, ironically would stop after 3 or 4 oz and would not be forced to continue as he was a third of the size of his sister. Now he is 1/2" shorter and only an ounce behind her, and he eats like a horse. I can tell he's going to be the 3 weetabix breakfast boy in a couple of months, whereas his sister is a little more dainty!!
Anyhoo, sorry for the novel. Have just had a couple of wisdom teeth out and can't manage to do anything othetr than post on here. Sad eh. :)_

9oz at 4-8wks WTF. DD only has 36-38oz and she is alot older. Mat nanny should definitely face disciplinary action. How many other babies have gone through this? And what else has she been doing to them?

Both mine get acid reflux from my dad (his entire family has problems) and the milk intolerance from my mom. Thankfully, I'm the type of person that does alot of research so have always managed to figure things out myself because my GP and HV certainly didn't know what was going on with ds and put it down to colic. Unfortuately, with ds it took 4mnths for me to get a diagonises from paed on reflux and 13mnths on the milk intolerance. With dd I realised she had reflux a few hrs after she was born and when the mw came in because she was crying and suggested that she was hungry, I packed my bags and left. Still it took 6wks for her to be diagonised.

Any ideas what to do with a 2.3 year old that is bouncing off the walls and driving me up them?

LOL at 2.3yr old driving you up the wall. Apparently it doesn't stop til they've moved out.

Sellotape some string to a blunt pencil and get her/him to thread pasta tubes on it to make a necklace. That might use up 5 or 10 mins. Shaving foam on the side of the bath is always fun and they smell lovely afterwards. The Argos catalogue used to shut my last charge up, she would pore over it for hours deciding what Father Xmas would bring her. My Mumboss is always threatening to sell one of the twins on ebay when things get really desperate. The twins are 6.5months old. Poor woman doesn't have a clue whats coming to her LOL. Good luck.

PS I am constantly amazed at the lack of knowledge some paed/hv's show!! I have found often its better just to do the research myself, show the findings to my bosses, and 99% of the time they just tell me to get on with it.

PPS Regarding the Maternity Nanny, I would love to find out who she is. The parents won't tell me. I never met her. But from what my bosses have told me about her she told them she has worked with over 130 babies (God help them) and has examplary references, and get this SHE SPECIALISES IN BABIES WITH REFLUX/SLEEP ISSUES. I just laughed my head off when they let that one slip. And tactfully (a la bull in a china shop) told them anyone with an ounce of common sense/experience would realise that 36oz milk a day for a 4 week old was not only ridiculous but dangerous. At first my bosses stood up for her but now they have seen lo improve and thrive on 24-26oz a day at 10 weeks and now 26-30oz a day plus food, they are seriously questioning her methods. I'd be suing her ass off.

God, I was wishing you won't say that. DS is now asleep. Guess, I will be shoving him at the door by the time he is 18. Got no idea where he gets all his energy from, definitely not sugary foods.

Yeah, I would definitely being sueing her too. The poor baby!! and parents too.

oops, meant 'out' the door

Boarding school at 11. Its a Godsend LOL.

LOL My mom always threaten to send me to boarding school when I was naughty. Unfortunately, by the time I was 16 and wanted to go, she thought it was better punishment to keep me home.

:o
me too. Boarding school would have been fab at 16. Instead I had psychomum who made me revise for my a'levels 18months before they took place. I did pants anyway as I started to rebel after 6 months. Cider bacame my best friend, and it all went downhill from there!!! I'm not a total lost cause though, i went on to do a Law degree. I'm a nanny as my career now though, until I bump in Joaquin Pheonix and marry him and have 6 children (all with fairly normal names I hasten to add. None of this Moses Bluebell Apple Pheonix for me)

6!! You will certainly be keeping Joaquin.

Right off to have some dinner.

Thanks for the advise

I have the WORST teenage crush on him as Johnny Cash. Oh well we all have our dreams eh.

No probs about the advice,hope it helps :)