Weaning Confusion
Hey so my baby is 9 months old. We’ve worked up to 2 solid meals a day but he still mostly plays with it. He’s still having 4 x210ml bottles (formula) a day. We mentioned this to his paediatrician, he told us we should be giving him solids before milk, 3 solid meals a day & dropping bottles or giving less milk so he’ll eat more.
I’d said to him, I don’t think he’s eating enough solids to be dropping a bottle to which he replied, well he won’t he more solids if you keep offering 4 bottles.
So now I’m super confused as to the right thing to do. I’m torn because I know milk is their main source up to 12month. I just don’t want a situation where if I start offering more solids & less milk but then he still ends up eating very little solids but then also less milk so might be missing out on nutrients?
Am I just overthinking this? How did everyone else know when to drop bottles? TIA.
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That's very odd advice. You shouldn't start offering food before milk until 12 months. It's perfectly fine for baby to just play with food at this age. Weaning is not recommended until 12 months
It all depends on a lot of things I guess, if your child has reflux or perhaps overweight. I'm sure he had a reason. I would probably just start reducing his milk feeds a little to 150mls and trying to feed him before his bottles. You don't want a 2 years old that doesn't yet eat solids as this process starts at 6 months. After all it is your baby and you know what's best for him ♥️
The advice is correct. You should offer those solids before milk, so the baby eats real food while hungry and then essentially top up with milk whatever space is left in his stomach. This way he'll eat more and will naturally drink less. The doctor is right, by offering milk first, you fill in his stomach, so he doesn't want to eat. Eating solids is important at this stage as milk/formula don't provide adequate nutrition on their own anymore.
Link is here
https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/breastfeeding-bottle-feeding-solids/solids-drinks/introducing-solids
Around 9-10 months you can start offering solids before the milk, but honestly they’re still very young at this age. Exposure and offering lots of different foods is great, but some don’t start eating more solid amounts until like 18 months!
So that rate in which amount of solids goes up definitely varies. Most important is that they are offered foods - try different textures and gets to experiment with it - from there it will lead to more eating. But how much they actually eat from it you can’t decide unfortunately. 😅
I guess my confusion then is how do you know when to start dropping bottles? He can’t stay on 4 bottles forever. I don’t want to drop one too early then he misses out on nutrients or loses weight etc but then at some point he will need to transition to less bottles I just don’t know what the right thing to do is :/
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