How do you drop a milk feed for a 7 month old and am I giving her enough solids?

[Willowwisp]

My DD is 32 weeks old, I waited until 6 months to wean her and she has taken to it really well, she eats everything I give her (apart from banana) and seems to love food!!

Having read all the books (I know I shouldn't), I'm under the impression I should be reducing/dropping her 11am feed so she is more interested in food (but she is anyway)!! But how do you do it, do you drop an oz a day until she has nothing or do you just drop it and don't give it to her??

I'm also concerned about how much food I'm giving her, I had her weighed today and she is 16lb 13oz and on the 25th centile (she only gained 12oz in 6 weeks), the HV said to bring her back in two weeks and to keep an eye on her?? She is fine in herself and an absolute delight so I'm not worried about her at all!

She has porridge for breakfast and 7oz formula, then 5oz at 11am, lunch at 12.15 which is all homemade AK recipes, 5oz at 3pm, dinner at 5pm and finally 7oz formula at 7! So she is getting plenty of milk and eats all her meals. The containers I freeze the food in contain around 3oz and she has a couple of cubes of veg as well. I seem to be feeding her all the time and feel like I'm doing it wrong and it could be easier??

Arghhhh this weaning business is a nightmare to get your head around! Someone tell if I'm doing it right or wrong please .....!!

at 7 months ds still had 5 milk feeds with one being in the night. He went to 4 feeds at 8 months (gave up night feed) and dropped to 3 around 9 months and 2 around 10 1/2 months. I dropped them when he lost interest in them rather than intentionally reducing/cutting them out. You routine sounds similar to what mine was - I'd just stick with it and cut milk when your lo shows signs of wanting less.

I think at 7/8 months I felt like I was feeding DS all the time - he normally has a morning nap about 3 hours after he first wakes up and then I offer him milk after that, then we offer him milk between lunch and tea, and if he has a long nap or if we're out and about, these feeds really do blur into each other. He's now been at a childminder for a month, and I'm hoping she will feed him different things that we don't but he still has lots of milk at 11 months. Sometimes he won't be interested in milk, other times he'll knock it back eagerly.

If she seems well and happy, I wouldn't worry too much about the weight thing, though must confess that after a really rocky start in terms of weight loss, D was huge at 2.5 months and has continued to grow. I was quite disappointed when I last saw HV that she didn't bother to weigh him, just called in a couple of colleagues who'd also met us a few times to gasp at how he'd grown. We've met a couple of other babies born the same week and one woman's jaw hit the floor when I said actually your son's a day older!