Hi,

I've just started weaning my 6 month old and im so confused abouthow to space out milk and food. At the moment Ben has baby rice after his second feed of the day at lunch time. He eats all this which is good. He has five feeds a day every three hours of 8oz and sleeps for about 10-11 hours at night. I know that food isnt replacing milk at the moment and will be like this for a while. Im just confused about how you give three meals a day i.e. how to know when ben will be ready for this, when to give him his milk and his food (he has to have his whole bottle before food otherwise he wont drink the rest of his bottle after). I have looked everywhere and nowhere clearly explains this just how to start and then jumps to 3 meals a day.
Please help - let me know how you did this with your little one's etc.
Im only weaning now as he's 6 months and thought i should otherwise he would still be on milk as he is fine with this and sleeps through the night.
Also when should i start to give follow on milk and goodnight milk?

I think thats everything :-)
Sorry if i sound stupid but this is my first and cant find help anywhere else.

Thanks in advance :)

This is a good question! I am thinking about starting to wean my little one. He is almost 23 weeks and I'm trying to hold out for another 3 weeks.
I think that the baby will let you know by automatically cutting back on certain milk feeds. It's probably too early in your weaning process to try and judge this right now.
Good luck hun!
x

I am also stuck with this - I think I'm doing it all wrong! I give my 6.5 month old 7oz bottle at 7am, breakfast of porridge at 8.30, nap at 9am, 7oz bottle at 11 (he doesn't always take it all) nap after thet, lunch between 12.30 and 1pm, bottle at 3pm (again doesn't always take it all, nap time, dinner at 5pm, 8oz bottle at 7pm for bed time - he then usually slleps til 7am. This could be so totally wrong and I could be really making a mistake and over feeding so do let me know what you think! Hope it helps! xx

Ive been advised and recommended to just follow your baby and what they seem to want. I think the most important is giving the milk 1st, as this is still really essential until 12 months (a baby should really still be having 20oz a day up until 12 months). My lo feeds at 7.30am, 11.30am, 3.30pm, 6.30pm & 9.30pm, so I will do breakfast at 8am, lunch at 12.00pm and dinner at about 4pm. Saying that this will probably all go out the window when we start properly! xxxx

I've been giving Zach baby rice for a week now, and I've been giving him it 3 times a day, allowing him to have most of his milk first then some baby rice, then the last bit of milk. Most of the time he has all his baby rice and all his milk. Only on a couple of occasions has the bottle gone unfinished, but then he would sometimes do this before anyway, so not too worried. Also I'm only giving him a small amount of baby rice as I'm intorducing it rather than using it to replace the milk.

Hi. I was completely confused by weaning until my HV explained & gave me a book. Milk is major! Babies should have between 600 - 800ml (20-25 fl oz) a day until one year old, either breast, infant formula or follow-on milk. Solids is as well as milk feed, not a substitute.

Join www.hipp.co.uk They send you a day by day weaning guide in the pack, really usefull. Also samples, coupons & a big bib with an orange elephant on.

My son is always hungry, so I'm using the advice given but not sticking ridgedly to it. I started Scott a few wks ago on a bit of baby rice mixed with breast milk, then mixed with fruit puree. He gobbled it down. He's 23 wks now & has been eating cereal, homemade veg puree at lunch & homemade fruit puree at tea. And he tries to grab anything I have, he nearly got my chocolate cup cake the other day lol
Hope this helps Yvette x

Same here! My DD is now 19 wks and was suggested to wean early as she is a big girl and was on the 'hungry' formula milk from 2 weeks. She is currently having 5 x 8oz bottles a day and 2 lots of rice (lunch and tea), but I am unsure if to drop a bottle and add a breakfast rice? what is best...?

I had all these questions but it just kind of fell into place as we went along. I started with just a bit of rice at the end of one feed a day, then gave it in the middle of the milk feed then at the beginning. Then i started giving fruit and veg purees, then i gave rice at one milk feed and fruit or veg at another, eventually puree or rice at three milk feeds. By this point, Theo was getting really hungry all the time, still having 8-9 oz milk at each of his 5 feeds a day and starting to want his feed earlier than our usual 4-hourly routine, e.g after 2 hours so it made sense to give him his solid food in between milk feeds so it ended up 7am milk, 9am breakfast, 11am milk, 1pm lunch, 3pm milk, 5pm dinner, 6.30 milk before bed and then a dream feed of milk. Before I knew it (literally within days) he was so hungry still that his solid 'meals' had become rice plus veg or veg and potato and fruit for dessert. I should add that this all happened before Theo is even 6 months as he was so hungry I couldn't have waited that long! So he's now having all that (and quite a lot of solids at each meal now) plus 5 x 8-9 oz milk feeds and he's still only 5.5 months. Just go with the flow and it will soon sort itself out - it may not happen the same way for you and your baby as it did for me or for others but you will get there eventually!

My HV recommended baby-led weaning and it is SO good and SO easy. It is hard to understand completely until you read the book which they sell on Amazon for about £7.

It is different to anything described by anyone that has replied so far but we have had huge success with it. Seriously worth trying or at least reading in to. It will also explain all the what and when to feed questions

Hope this helps!
Julie