My DS started solids just before 6 months, and is currently on 2 meals of solids a day (breakfast and tea), and is going really well - eating lots and lots and getting quite excited about his food. I've been thinking about starting him on a third solids meal a day. Just out of curiosity, I was wondering when you started bub on 3 solids meals a day?
It really depends on the child. Food shouldn't replace milk until close to 12 months, but other than that it's really up to how much the baby wants to eat. One of my DS's was well over 12 months before eating 3 meals a day as he wasn't interested in solids. The other one was on 3 meals a day by 7 months.
Bella has a meal of solids between each of her 4 bottles so:
7 am Bottle (240 mls)
9 am - weat bix
11am bottle
1 pm - fruit & yogurt
3pm bottle
5pm spaggetti or meat and veggies
6.30 bottle and bed for the night
Obviously she doesnt have the same foods every day but thats the way we have settled into a routine and thats the way my MCHN suggested it work and its quite even as Bella is on bottles every 4 hrs so an even number. Some days she eats more and some days less - I just take her lead on that - but she always has all her bottles no expetions - as as you say thats the most important thing.
Sam's been on three solid meals per day since he was about seven months old. Thing is, two of those meals are really only very small.
Our day is structured in a very similar manner to Jakabella's - we have four bottles and three meals and they alternate. If we've been out, or something like an extra-long nap has happened, they may switch, but that's the general pattern of the day. Sam's bottles still happen around every 4 hours (there's a longer gap between the last two for the day, but his biggest meal is in there and we have a later bed time for him), and we've tried to stick with that pattern.
We started with just having breakfast, then fairly quickly added in dinner as he is most interested in solids at night, and that gave us a really nice evening routine of dinner, bath, bottle, bed. When he started wanting his afternoon bottles earlier and earlier, we added in lunch as well. He still doesn't really eat much for breakfast and can sometimes happily skip lunch, but all three meals exist in some form.
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