How many milk feeds once on 3 meals per day?

[CallaCate]

My DD is about to turn 6 months and has gone quite suddenly onto 3 meals per day. (We were BLW but she started waking up every 2 hours wanting feeding so started spoon-feeding as well as she clearly couldn't meet her hunger by self-feeding.)

She is EBF and until now hasn't had much of a routine. I was trying to get her to feed about every 2 hours through the day. How many BF does she need now she's eating? I'm trying to get into some kind of routine (otherwise it is impossible to fit all the BFs, meals and naps into a day) and this kind of thing seems to make sense to me:

7am BF
8am breakfast
morning nap
11am BF
12pm lunch
afternoon nap
3pm BF
4pm dinner
6:30pm BF
7pm bed
9pm dream feed

The dream feed is currently BF but we're going to change it to formula soon. Hoping then she'll go through and drop the 4am feed. So that would be 4 BF + 1 FF per day. Is that enough? I will continue to BF on demand if she needs more some days but need some kind of plan otherwise she'll end up sleeping through lunch, being hungry for a BF at dinner time etc.

Thanks!

A baby from 6 months to 1 year needs 500-600mls of milk a day. I think in old money this is about 20oz. Of course if you are BF then you don't know how much DS is getting but if you do 4 feeds a day that are a decent length and a bottle at night, I'm pretty sure that she's getting enough.

I think if you're breastfeeding, as long as your baby seems happy, I wouldn't worry too much about meeting 'quotas' - I never knew how much DS was getting from the day he was born but he seemed happy enough so that was good for me!

Hunger needs until they are 1 should be met by milk, not solids. So the solids you offer are as a complement to milk, not the other way round iyswim.

I fed to demand and let dd find her own routine. If hungry, offer milk first then solids.

And there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that formula makes a baby sleep longer just in case you're relying on that making a baby sleep through. It's normal for a 6 month old to wake for a feed and by the sounds of it, one 4am wake is exceptionally good.

Of course you do what suits you as a family, but don't believe that your baby 'should' be sleeping through or in a fixed routine at this point.