Snacking: is it necessary?

[thetraveller]

No idea whether I should be offering snacks to 9mo DS and would welcome advice. He's got a great appetite and has been on 3 meals a day for almost 3 months. He's still on 4 milk feeds a day (breast fed). I was thinking about dropping to 3 milk feeds a day, as he was drinking less at his mid-morning and mid-afternoon feeds for a while. But he has suddenly started taking much more again at these feeds.

Not sure whether I should go with my original plan to drop to 3 feeds, and offer a snack instead of one of the feeds. Or whether I should offer snacks in addition to the milk feeds. He's crawling everywhere so using loads of energy. Not sure how much use the odd rice-cake will be though. Should snacks be more substantial?

I didnt give snacks until my los started to drop daytime feeds and then I gave a snack and a drink of water instead of the milk feed.

I have started offering snacks alongside milk feeds between meals to my 9 mo. Until she had a tummy bug a couple of weeks back, she had dropped her (formula) feeds to about 3-4oz between meals - so more like a drink than an actual 'feed'. At the moment she's making up for the weight she's lost and this afternoon downed a whole bottle and then scoffed a WHOLE hot cross bun

I think you need to be led by your son - he might be having a growth spurt or something. Generally at this age they will eat if hungry and refuse if not. So try a small snack maybe but only after a milk feed to start with?

What else do you offer as snacks Whoami? I've thought a about cheese cubes, steamed veg sticks, bits of toast or rice cake (although not really sure about the point of rice cakes). Love the idea of hot cross buns, but I'd probably end up eating them and DS wouldn't get a look in .

Hmmm... that's pretty much the extent of my snack repertoire there in your list

I do offer bits of cucumber, banana, cocktail sausages, or anything i'm eating if i think dd could manage it and it's suitable. You don't want anything too substantial or they won't eat next meal. sure there are azillion other things but they would probably involve effort and that is a bit sparse in our house!

Not a rice cake fan either, no calories and a bit wodgy. Might as well eat cardboard.

rice cakes are good carriers for peanut butter or philadelphia though.

my dd also loves peanut butter and jam sandwiches.

raisins of course, and she never says no to a peeled pear (she spits out the peel if i leave it on).

slices of ham, cubes of cheese...

i find snacks are a good way of filling nutritional holes, ie if she only ate bread and fruit at lunch I might give her some cheese or ham as a snack.

my dd has no bf's in the day now (just one in the am and one before bed), and I replaced all the feeds with a snack and a drink of water

for me snacks were often a distraction...you're getting fed up in your buggy, have a rice cake etc. not ideal but life often isn't!

I tended to do mid morning and mid afternoon snacks as and when I dropped those milk feeds. I'd go for raisin bread, bread sticks, fruit etc

Thanks for all the tips. DS wolfed down half a leftover pancake with some Philadelphia this afternoon. Guess we'll be snacking from now on!