is eating every 3hours alot for a 5month old? advice please!

[michelle89]

we have just started to wean our 5month old ds, we started of dropping one feed of milk and giving him solids instead, he loved it.

a few days later we did two solids a day, which was milk every 4 hours then two solids during day 3hours after milk as hes sleeping 6hours a night.

now we are giving him 3 solids a day but if we kept to that schedule he wouldnt have milk for 11hours, so we decided to give him milk every 6hours, so at 12am, 6am, 12pm and 6pm and inbetween give him food, so he's eating every 3hours. is this alot?

ever since i was 12 iv been eating 1 meal a day, and to some-one that eats very little it seem an awful lot to eat every 3hours. am i over feeding him or am i being silly?

at 5 months he should probably have more day feeds - solids at this stage is for new tastes and textures and not to try to fill them up - it should be in addition to the milk not instead of. When ds was 6 months he was on 3 small meals per day but still had 5 milk feeds e.g.

7am - milk
8am - breakfast
11am - milk
12pm - lunch
2.30/3pm - milk
5pm - dinner
7.15pm - milk
in the night till 8 months - milk

I would probably add in any milk feeds you have dropped and give solids inbetween

According to the World Health Organisation between 6 and 12 months, 50% of babies' nutrition should come from milk. Since they are learning to get used to solids during this period (the WHO assumes that solids are introduced at 6 months), I would assume that milk gives them more than 50% of their nutrition at this sort of age.

Agree with Seona - solids should complement milk feeds and not replace them in the early days.

My 5 month old DS (who's not on solids yet) feeds about every 3 hours during the day and once or twice in the middle of the night.

I eat or drink something every hour or so, though, so it doesn't sound very often to me!

My 5 month old has 2 meals per day at the moment, but i havent dropped any milk feeds. Her routine goes like this:

7am - milk
8.30-9am - breakfast
11am - milk
3pm - milk
4.30-5pm - tea
7pm - milk

She sleeps through til 7am then. She has only had 4 milk feeds a day since she was 10 weeks old when she no longer woke for her middle of the night feed...