four month old won't bf during the day anymore

[maxbear]

I fully bf my ds until 16 weeks when he started to do it constantly and much more frequently at night. I therefore started to wean him and he quickly took to it as though I had been starving him. He is now 19 weeks and on 3 meals a day he has about a jar per meal or equivalent (although he prefers jars to home cooked ). Before bed he will have a 10 - 15 minute bf, another one during the night and another one first thing. During the day whenever I offer the breast he will suck for about 1 or 2 minutes and rarely has more than five minutes. This afternoon however I fed him lying down and he had a good feed of about 15 mins, obviously I can't bf him lying down during the day. The week before I started weaning he was crying constantly and since I have been giving him food he has been more content so I don't want to stop feeding him(solids), I am just so worried that he is not getting enough milk and that I am damaging him by giving him too much 'solid' food at such a young age, what do you think? should I just chill out about it or should I do something, maybe take a sofa with me wherever I go for lying down bf?!

maxbear, you could maybe post this on the bf folder, too.

It does sound as if the solids are taking the place of milk - this is a known effect of early solids

You say you would not want to stop solids as he seems to enjoy them, but would it be possible to reduce them? 3 jars or equivalent is a lot at 19 weeks....could you give him less, or replace one of the jars with something less calorie-dense, such as steamed fruit or veg? He's almost certainly not old enough to do any self-feeding, so it's no use suggesting you try this, I don't think. You can offer him less solid food and try to sandwich it between breastfeeds, so he has breast, steamed carrot (or whatever) and then more breast.

At the same time, you can offer him even more breastfeeds at other times, as you are doing - to be honest, older babies do take less time at the breast, and he may be getting more than you think. A few more 1-2 min feeds in the day would indeed increase his milk intake, and all the evidence indicates that this would be a good thing, as you suspect....babies of this age need most of their nutrition from milk, and this is the case for quite some time yet.

HTH

Thanks tiktok, I have only been giving him jars as we were on hols, now that we are back home he is having steamed veg & babyrice and today he has not taken as much and has bf more. I made him wait until he seemed to really want to bf instead of just trying him when I thought he needed it and he did feed for longer, although it was still only for ten minutes. Having said this he has had lots of extremely wet nappies today so I think he must have got quite a bit. It is so hard not to be totally paranoid!