Confused about weaning my 5.5 month old

[user1494168328]

Hi, my DS is 5 and a half months old and has been showing all the signs of being ready for food for a while now. I started giving him a few teaspoons of purée a couple of times a day and will work up to 3 times a day in a week or so. I feel like I am feeding him all the time though! I am following a guideline I found where you keep all of your existing milk feeds and add in mealtimes in between. So the day looks like this (approximately):

7am - milk (6oz)
8.30am - few spoons fruit purée
10.30am - milk (6oz)
11.30/12pm - few spoons veg purée
2/3pm - milk (6oz)
5pm - currently milk but may add/switch to veg purée
6.30/7pm - milk (6oz) .. bedtime
10.30/11pm - milk (4oz)... dream feed

I feel like perhaps I should combine some of the milk and food feeds or it's just round the clock and I'm giving him too much? He still seems to be taking full milk feeds.

Any advice or sharing what you do would be amazing!

Yes try combining milk and food. I give my daughter about half her bottle to take the edge off her hunger, then food, then the rest of the bottle if she still wants it.

IMHO it is too much to feed solids 3x per day. One time per day is enough for 5.5 months old. Slowly adding adding another meal per day after a month. So each month add one solid meal.

user the current NHS guidelines are to build upto 3 meals between 8 and 9 months so the information you've found sound like it could be out of date

user - my DD was on a similar routine at 5.5 months. Our 5pm feed was vegetable puree (rather than milk).

We started weaning at 4 months since (1) DD has reflux and our GP recommended early introductoin of solids and (2) I have read all the latest research I could find (including results of the EAT study) and felt there is reasonable evidence to support the hypothesis that early introduction of solids reduces risk of allergies later in life. I know NHS/WHO recommendations are different but they are based on old (2002) research.

DD is now 6.5 months and is on 3 meals a day. I agree it may feel like we are feeding her all the time (and it was a real hassle a few weeks ago) but the good news is that she loves vegetables. I hope her tastes will not change too much later in life and she will remain a healthy eater:). Vegetables are low calory food and DD keeps following her percentile curve so I am pretty comfortable she is not having too much.

Annabell Karmel's book is very useful for laying out a timetable of milk/solid feeds at each weaning stage, it made it very easy with ds.