How much food do you give your 5 1/2 month old?

Hi

For those who started food a little bit early and who are going down the pureed path I am just wondering how much food you are giving/gave your baby at 5.5 months. On the advice of the paed I started my little one on solids at five months with the view to leaving it for another few weeks if he wasn't interested. However he loves it and would I think keep eating and eating if I let him. I am taking it easy and at the moment am only doing one solid feed per day. However am a little unsure as to how much I should give him at this meal? So far we have tried and liked pumpkin, sweet potato, peas, pear, apple and banana along with rice cereal of course. The books seem to talk about the fact that the baby will only take 1-2 teaspoons in the begining but don't really give guidelines as to how much they should be eating and how soon. (I know all children are different but don't want to impact on his BFing).

Any suggestions comments please.

Thanks

On the advice of our paediatrician, we started solids (puree) at 4 months and our little man took to them brilliantly! Our nurse said to start with a teaspoon or two once a day after his bottle. She then said that we should build the amount up by adding an extra teaspoon a day until he was comfortable taking the food. Because he took to solids so well she eventually said to feed him until he didn't want anymore. Like you, I thought he would just eat and eat, but he didn't - he stopped when he was full!

Since we started earlier than you, by 5.5 months he ate the equivalent of a small jar or baby food twice daily (morning and evening) after his milk feed. Because he started so young, we only gave him fruit and veg and then, at 6 months, introduced some meat and started on 3 meals a day after he his bottle.

I suppose to give you an indication of amounts I would have to tell you what we were giving him when he was 4.5 months old (i.e. 2 weeks after starting solids) which was 1 meal daily - probably the equivalent of a half to about 3/4 of a small jar of baby food.

Anelise started off with just a few teaspoons full of food and now she is eating about 2-3 large tablespoons per meal (3 per day)
I always started off by serving up a tablespoon full off food and going from there... if there was too much I could just throw the extra away and too little I could add more to.
I would personally try to give him as much as he wants. I understand you don't want it to impact on the breast feeding, but ulimately that is going to happen as you're weaning your baby onto solid food as the main food source and any breast feeds once they're on mostly food is a bonus :)

FWIW, Anelise eats 2-3 times per day (depending on her mood) but she also has 4-5 bottles per day too.