Okay, so DS2 is breastfed and on 3 meals a day - he is 7.5 months old - at the moment I have been offering a bf before I give him his breakfast, lunch and dinner - so when does it change to offering the food first and then a breastfeed after - yep, I know he is my third but I can't remember what I did with DD and DS1 and someone said to me yesterday that I should be doing food first, but I thought milk was still the primary food source and the solids was just a top-up afterwards.
Til about 12 months, breastmilk (or formula) should be the primary source of nutrition and therefore, it is best to offer first so that solids do not displace milk intake. DD was around 10 months when I stopped worrying about when each was given in relation to eachother (in other words, not specifically offering solids first but not going out to my way to offer breastmilk before solids either) and just kept an eye on how many breastfeeds she was having in a 24hr period.
As the others have said, the aim is to have them eating 3 good solid meals (plus snacks) at about 12 months when solids do take over as the primary source of nutrition. The time between 6 and 12 months is about working towards that point. At 7.5 months I personally think it is way too early to swap around the order. When you get to 9, or probably even 10 months that might be a better time. Personally, I tend to think that leaving it till 12 months is probably a bit too late, as there is a transition period that they need to go through where they begin to realise that solids actually fill them up and BF isn't the only thing to cure the hunger pains - in my experience that took a good couple of months.
Mind you, I tended to go the other way and separate the BF and solids. DS would wake up at 5.30am or something like that and have a BF. I'd then offer him his solid breakfast at around 7.30am. If he ate well, he didn't have a BF till 9.30 or 10am. But if he wasn't into the solids, he'd have a BF not long after. But again, I didn't start doing this till at least 9 or 10 months. Before that, I treated eating solids as more of an activity or something to do - if he ate something, great, if not it was all about the experience.
By the time we got to 12 months he was eating 3 good meals a day, along with lots of snacks and having 3 BF's a day.
Thanks ladies, yes I totally agree, this person yesterday was very argumentative with me about it and I am annoyed with them now for putting doubts in my mind.
DS is 8.5 months and goes both ways, it all depends on when he wants his bf. Atm he is feeding before a sleep so will have his solids not long after he wakes. He is still bf-ing heaps in 24 hours though, like 6+ times so I am not worried about solids over taking milk intake lol. And we do BLW so he doesnt eat a massive amount. My MCHN has said that from 8-9 months to start offering solids first to milk, but idk seems a little early imo. If DS was doing feed-play-sleep I would be offering milk first. If he has a longer wakeful period or wakes in between meal times (at like 11am or something), I try and shove the boob at him before he is due of a solid feed lol.
I have really struggled working out what to do with DD - pretty much since she started solids I have felt like I didn't know when to offer breast and when to offer food. Funny cos I don't remember it being an issue with DS! Anyway, I was reading DS's baby book the other day and I had written down his routine at 10 months. Tried that with DD (9 months) today and it worked well. So our new routine is going to be BF when she wakes, breakfast about 1.5 hours later, sleep. Breastfeed when she wakes (although I will drop this one soon), lunch, breastfeed, sleep. Afternoon tea when she wakes, dinner, breastfeed, bed. Fingers crossed that this works!!!
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Milk before food....until what age???
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