More Solids = Less Milk ???

Background:


Our 6 month baby boy has always been a poor/efficient drinker. Meals are often 10 minutes of fast sucking and he is full. When we give him expressed milk he does 150ml at average.


We started solids a month ago (because baby went down on the weight 'curve'). We focus on high calorie, high fat solids like avocado, briwn rice, sweet potato, oatmeal.


We always mix the food with breast milk. Now he likes it quite thick, but still we mix.


To make the oatmeal thick, we have to put in a lot of oatmeal. This is because the breast milk has enzyms that 'digest' the oatmeal.


While he has never drunk a lot of milk, he seems to eat a lot of food.


He eats about 150-175 ml of food at 10am and at 5pm each day. prior to the meal he usually does about 10 minutes at the breast.


Since starting solids, he has inched his way back up the weight curve which we are thrilled about, he is 'thriving' once again.


Issue:


On the days we feed baby 150-175 ml oatmeal (thick) at 10 am, he is not hungry for his 1:30 feed - I mean not at all! - but will eat by 4 or 5 pm. This sometimes happens with avocado too if he eats a lot (175ml).


I always read that solids should be an addition to breast milk, not a replacement. But we think he is soooo full that he just doesn't want to eat for a few hours. (instead he wants to play, laugh, bounce, try to crawl, scream, etc...)


I asked the midwife about this and she feels that since baby is eating high calorie food, and it is mixed with breast milk, and he is gaining, that we shouldn't worry - maybe he is just full.


Here is the question:


Has anyone else experienced this?


Any ideas, comments or suggestions?

Here are some of the calorie amounts of the foods we are giving him:


Item - KCalories per Ounce - Fat grams per ounce

Breast Milk - 22 - 1.5

Avocado - 46 - 4.21

Brown Rice - 30 - 0.22

Sweet Potato - 26 - 0.04

Oatmeal (thin with water) - 20 - 0.39 (but we make ours with breast milk and much thicker than this, so we think it is a lot more)


Foods we do not give him becasue not enough calories:

Peaches - 8 - 0.07

carrots - 7 - 0.03

Summer squash - 6 - 0.09

Thanks Cara, in our case less means from 10 minutes a feed to less than 1 minute. I think this is a bit of an extreme version of 'less'


It is not that I am stressed or worried about this, more curious if others have similar experiences when their babies eat a lot of solids.

i'm not a midwife - but I do feel that the drop is a bit sudden. Perhaps cutting down on the volume of food he is eating may help.


Also - offer breast first - before any solids - give him the milk he needs first then move onto solids.


The first "breast feed" I dropped totally was the afternoon one - which sounds like your 1:30 one. Perhaps you can consider dropping this one breast feed and make sure he gets a very big feed before his bedtime.


The second one I cut (around 8 months) was the lunch time feed - and then at 10 months, my daughter was down to one feed a day - only the evening feed.

Hi HKCC


I always offer the breast first - he gets about 10 minutes before we do the solids.


Then he chows down 150-175 ml of high calorie solids.


It is his next feed he is not interested in.


HKCC - did you introduce solids at the early afternoon meal your baby dropped?


But due to his low weight, midwife and doctor say I should not drop a feed (although it seems like he is).


It is interesting when you dropped your feeds, I was under the impression that didn't happen for the first year!