Times of meals for 8mo

[aquavit]

Our dd is eating very enthusiastically but now she's crawling the amount of milk she wants is also going up again (I'm guessing the two are linked!), especially in the evening, and she has just started to wake in the night for a feed (which she hasn't routinely done since she was 3 months, lucky us). Currently her last, and smallest, solids meal is at about 3.30, so I wondered if perhaps I should be giving her more solid food later in the day.

We've adopted a pattern of breakfast, early lunch and early tea because it fits with what her nursery does, but now I'm thinking of adding a fourth meal. What do other people do? Is there any reason why she shouldn't have solids closer to bedtime?

DD has always eaten with us so breakfast at 7ish, lunch 12.30, tea at 5.30 (goes to bed at 7). She also has snacks at about 11 and 4. Food close to bedtime has never really been a problem for us and she definitely wouldn't be happy going from 3.30 till bedtime without anything.

thanks greensnail - that's helpful! I gave her a fourth meal last night and she was obviously grateful for it and ate loads, so am now feeling a bit silly for not thinking of it before. And she slept through again last night

hooray! Hope it lasts

DS2 eats with us so 7.30, 12.00 ish and 6.oopm. He has milk in between these meals and before bed. BUT he still wakes up twice a night too!

at that age my lo's had meals at 8am, 12noon and 5pm with milk in between and before bed

These all seem like much more sensible mealtimes than ours! I ploughed on with our four-meal strategy yesterday as she was at nursery in the afternoon and it seemed to work OK again. Wonder if it is typical for nurseries to do such odd mealtimes - I guess it is because they feed the older children a bit later and there's less strain on the kitchen this way.

Thanks for all your replies.

maybe it would help when you're at home to treat the 3.30 meal as a snack, and then to do another meal later in the afternoon around tea time.

I've also been amazed at how early the nursery meals are! My DD (9 months) also eats with us the days she is at home (approx 8:30, 1 and 6) and seems to flit between the 2 routines quite well. As greensnail says, we've not had any issues with food close to bedtime.

When I'm not working, she normally BFs around 4, which is when she has solid dinner at nursery, so I'm just swapping those round so that on nursery days she has solid dinner at 4 and BFs when I get in from work and again at bedtime, and on home days she BFs about 4 and has solid dinner about 6 with bedtime BF. It seems to be working for us.

I was planning to do what greensnail suggests and treat 3.30 as a snack on the days when she's at home (they currently only give her veg and fruit at nursery anyway so it's not as though she's used to a particularly filling meal at that time), but it's interesting that your dd is happy with two different routines wicketkeeper.

Mind you she was looking around for her solids supper AND for milk when she got home from nursery last night though, so I think I'd better keep up with the fourth meal after nursery even if I do things more sensibly on the other days...

My dd started nursery at 18 months and still needed a large snack/meal afterwards until she was around 2, but ate fewer meals at different times when she was at home.