Forum Feeding

Feeding schedule

11 replies

Babbeltje
Hi ladies.

My daughter turned 1 last Saturday, how does time fly! I'm curious about your toddlers' feeding schedules. I'm wondering if my daughter's last bottle of formula isn't a bit too much. I'm also wondering how long I should continue with follow-on formula, and when I can introduce cow's milk. Here is her current schedule:

8:45 bottle with follow-on formula and two scoops of breakfast cereal.
11:30 fruit snack
11:45/12:00 nap
14:00 180ml follow-on formula
15:00 snack (baby biscuit, rice cake, etc.)
16:30 dinner
18:15 bottle
18:45 bedtime

That last bottle is quite close to dinner. She finishes her plate and 9 out of 10 times the bottle goes down fine too. But I wonder if all this isn't a bit too much. She's definitely not overweight or anything, but still.. Sometimes I get the feeling she goes to bed absolutely plastered. I also think I'll give her the fruit snack half an hour earlier, so she can go to bed half an hour earlier too; I notice she's completely exhausted by 11:45.

Also, I'd like her to eat a slice of bread, but it's not working out. She plays with it and if she does want to eat something, she doesn't make any chewing motions. (She has two lower and two upper teeth, no canines etc) Does anyone recognize this?

Replies

  1. Babbeltje started this #2

    Eh, Liesje has to make choices.. Funny, autocorrect hihi

  2. Hartje #3

    Hey, that's nice! My son is now just over two weeks past his first birthday. So technically they can have everything now, including cow's milk. My son had to come off the breast (because of the new pregnancy, I didn't have enough milk anymore) but he found follow-on formula disgusting, so he's been drinking regular milk since 7-8 months old. He's an easygoing and happy eater, so maybe not the best comparison, but I roughly stick to this schedule:

    Around 7am: porridge bottle, more than 250ml (Bambix 12+) and 1 slice of bread
    Around 10am: a cookie and a drink (or the slice of bread if he hadn't finished it in the morning)
    12:30: 1 slice of bread, and if he finishes that quickly, offer a second one or breakfast cake
    Sleep 13:00-15:00
    15:30: Cookie with a drink, then he usually doesn't eat much
    17:30: 1 potato, 2 tablespoons of vegetables with some meat, dessert.
    19:00: Bedtime until the next morning.
    In the mornings and afternoons he drinks a 250ml bottle of lemonade, so he gets almost a liter of fluids.

    Does your girl eat less during the day and therefore extra much in the evening?

    Any idea to soak the bread for her, so she can nibble on it? My son doesn't have any teeth yet either, though I sometimes think they're coming. Four bottom teeth and four top teeth, but I don't think eating bread has anything to do with it; they can do that without teeth too.

  3. Babbeltje started this #4

    Thanks for your reply, sweetheart I’ve been playing around with some ideas and came up with the following schedule:
    8.30 200 cow’s milk with 6 spoons of Bambix
    10.30 fruit snack/cookie
    12.00 slice of bread with 100 follow-on milk (the bread doesn’t go down so well and I’m using up the follow-on milk and want to move away from it completely)
    Sleep
    14.45/15.00 fruit snack/cookie
    16.30 evening meal
    18.15 bottle of formula

    I’d like to add a dessert to the evening meal and I want to stop the last bottle. I’ll use up the last pack of evening formula and then stop and see how it goes. I think that last bottle isn’t really needed anyway I find it a bit tricky and nerve-wracking sometimes, haha. What do you usually give as a dessert? I’m thinking of yogurt with a splash of Roosvicee. Danoontjes have too much sugar and the special baby desserts are way too expensive for me.

  4. Hartje #5

    Like your schedule, his looks pretty much the same as mine. Yeah, it's sometimes trial and error! Sometimes he only eats a few bites and some porridge in the evening, but then he still sleeps well, even though I'm worried he won't. They figure it out themselves anyway.
    Here he just eats all the porridge we eat too, often vanilla yogurt, which we all find delicious.

  5. anoniem22 #6

    Hi, I also have a question about my little guy's feeding schedule. He's been 8 months old for a while now, and I've started a similar topic before, but man, I'm so unsure about it... especially because the Nutricia packaging says 3 bottles for 8-month-olds, but here we're having 4 or even 5.

    Here's how it goes:
    05:00 first bottle 180 ml, 6 scoops of formula, then straight to bed
    07:30 fruit 250 g granules
    09:00 bottle 180 ml
    11:30 whole bread roll with 60 ml water, tea, or juice, alternating choices
    13:00 180 ml
    15:00 snack: baby corn or baby cookies
    16:00 vegetables
    18:00 180 ml

    And sometimes, when he can't sleep or gets something else, he gets another 80 ml of ready-made puree for his pajamas.

  6. anoniem22 #7

    Oh, that's only half the story haha. So I do supplement with solids, but he still wants his bottle every 4 hours. I wonder if that's too much? He never spits anything up, of course. There are days when he eats a bit less veggies or drinks half a bottle, but generally he's on this schedule now. And when I compare (yes, every baby is different, right? I do it unconsciously), he eats and drinks a lot, and he's still underweight according to the CBG. Probably because his eczema uses up a lot of energy. Anyway, what do you all think, is this really too much?

  7. Amy #8

    You can give cow's milk from 1 year old.

    My kids just follow the family's routine from their first year on.

    7:30-8:00 bottle with tea and milk and a sandwich

    10:00 fruit

    12:00-12:30 lunch and tea with milk

    13:00-15:00 nap

    15:00 tea with milk/small snack (soup stick/cracker/fruit)

    17:30-18:00 dinner, just eat along with the pot and water.

    19:00 sip from the breast and sleep.

  8. Babbeltje started this #9

    @anoniem22,
    When I look at the schedule like this, I think wow, that's a lot, but if your baby really needs it, I'd say keep it just like that for now.

  9. anoniem22 #10

    Yeah, that's true, thanks for your reply! When did you start weaning your baby?

  10. Babbeltje started this #11

    It went very gradually. After starting with solid foods, I slowly weaned off the bottles and increased the amount of solid food. Up to a year, bottle feeding is still important, after that kids are big enough to get the necessary vitamins etc from regular food
    Are you already adding some cereal to the milk in the morning and/or evening? That fills them up better than just milk. My daughter got rice flour at 4 months and cereal in the milk in the evening at 6 months, which also helped her sleep much better.

  11. anoniem22 #12

    Aww, okay, yeah, I hoped so too, but he still wants all his bottles, so I'll just continue with this. Yes, from four months we also started rice cereal here, and then at 6 months you'd switch to a cereal porridge with grains. I couldn't get that down him through any teat, so I'd have to feed it to him on a plate, which I don't really like. And in the morning, it wouldn't go down fast enough anyway. Plus, he eats a whole loaf of bread if it's up to him, even more, so he's getting plenty of grains. I sometimes give him a Nestlé cereal porridge at night. That goes down fine too, even if he's already had four 180ml bottles. He's really into food and drink these days; he can't eat without looking at the food in his mouth, haha. So I try to eat with him at the same time.

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