how much milk? and can you do BLW before 6 months?

[fairy1303]

DS is 20 weeks.

We have started purees this week.
he is loving food but I'm not sure he is getting enough milk - he used to be still hungry after 7/8oz every 3 hours, now he will barely manage 4 oz, over sometimes an hour long period, every 4 hours.

He is only having a few spoons of puree a day.

Iam also interested in doing a mixture of purees and BLW,but is it ok to do this before 6 months? or should I wait?

I know they should only have fruit and veg at this stage but could I do veg finger food (for example), or would he choke?

I would cut back on food if he is drastically cutting his milk. from 6 months 20oz minimum is recommended alongside meals but he isnt at that age or stage yet so should have much more milk. The general rule of thumb is 2.5oz per lb of weight e.g. a 10lb baby may take around 25oz of milk per 24hrs.

You should only allow your baby to self-feed finger food if they are physically able e.g. they can sit up well with little support, they can grasp food and bring it to their mouths, their tongue-thrust reflex has gone.

If those things are true, then appropriate finger food should be ok e.g. well steamed carrot, broccoli etc. There is a risk of choking when anything (purée or finger food) is in a baby's mouth. It's probably a good idea to do a baby first aid course anyway so you know what to do in the unlikely event of choking.

We started BLW 2 weeks 'early' (I think that's 24wo) - DS showed all of the signs of readiness, had done so for some time, and had reached the stage where he was routinely grabbing or trying to grab bits of food from us. We did finger food veggies as the only 'food' (not that he really consumed it) until he reached 6mo (26wo, I think) just to satisfy my worries over technically weaning early. He typically had steamed mange tout, broccoli florets, baby sweetcorn... things that were easy to hold. I would steam them briefly then plunge them in cold water, partly to cool but also to keep some sturdiness about them as he was unimpressed with anything that mushed easily (like banana or steamed butternut squash).

He had no problems, happily just gummed on the veg for a while and then eventually threw it somewhere. He has never choked, he had used his gag reflex a couple of times in order to bring tomato skin to the front of his mouth and then remove it - he likes cherry toms and tends to eat them whole Main thing is obviously to be there with your baby whilst they eat, and if it looks like they need help then just help out.

As for the milk thing, food is for fun at this age so milk still takes priority. However he may move past that and up his milk intake again. At 7mo DS started to have a spoon-fed breakfast of porridge (had been BLW up to that point) and so was actually consuming more as he didn't take in much of the BLW foods yet. We found that initially he started dropping feeds quite drastically - from 35-40oz per day to about 20oz. He is 11mo now, each day he has a larger porridge breakfast (spoon-fed), with 1-2 snacks (self-fed), and 1-2 other meals (mixture of self-fed and spoon-fed) and he is drinking 32-36oz of milk across 4 bottles.

*larger porridge breakfast than at 7mo, I mean.