When did you switch to 3 bottles a day?

[Anonymous]

My ten month old has 4 bottles a day: 7:30am, 11:30am, 3:30pm, and 7pm. We offer her 8 oz each time but she barely eats 23 oz a day. Lately, she has been only taking in 2-3 oz at the 3:30pm feeding, which makes me believe she is getting ready to go to 3 bottles a day. However, if we drop that feeding, I am not confident she would make it up in others and she takes so little formula to beign with. She also has 3 solid meals a day and I try to offer her yogurt and oatmeal with formula at at least two of them. Any thoughts on how I can transition her? If I were to drop the 3:30 feeding, do I replace it with anything else? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

My 11 month old still has 5 bottles a day because she has never been able to handle more than 5 ounces at a time. With that, she will drink anywhere from 20 - 25 ounces in any given day as she doesn't always finish the middle of the day bottles. She also eats 3 meals daily and 2 "healthy snacks". Her portions are smaller than what I see a lot of the kids in her daycare eating, but she rarely eats all of what we offer. It's challenging because we feel like we're still feeding all the time, but she's just not ready to eat larger portions.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, don't have the answer to your question - just more questions. I have a 10 month old as well - she eats 5-6 bottles per day (4-6 ounces each). Am I supposed to be weaning those?? I thought food at this age was "practice" and that the majority of their nutrition should still be from breastmilk/formula. She has a solid food (baby-food) breakfast and dinner and fingerfoods for lunch.

[Anonymous]

Op here, I was also under the same understanding that until they turn 1, the majority of their nutrition comes from formula/bm.

To 15.31, if it helps, my daughter went from 5 to 4 bottles when i notived that when she consistently ate very little at one particular feeding. I figured it was time to drop it and she automatically ate more later. Though I am not sure she will do it now because she seems generally uninterested in formula I would only wean yours from the 5 bottles if she is showing signs of dropping a feeding....otherwise, (as our ped said), as long as she gets 24 oz a day, it doesn't matter how often you feed her.

[Anonymous]

I know formula is different, but my Ds was still nursing twice a day and drinking 4 5-oz bottles of breastmilk daily when he was a year old, and that's with being a very good eater of solids. Offering just 3 bottles doesn't sound to me like you'd be giving her enough opportunity for fluids. I see ounce-wise those are some huge bottles though, is there a reason why that is versus offering more frequent smaller ones? (Again, I'm clueless on formula.)

[Anonymous]

Op here. I was asking because it seems like at one of the feedings, she rarely drinks more than 2-2.5 oz and I was wondering if that would be a sign that she's ready for bigger gaps between bottles during the day. She also gets water with her meals and has plenty of wet diapers, so I am not so much concerned with her getting enough fluids. It' s more the nutritious aspect of what she gets from milk.

[Anonymous]

OP: I was wondering this very same question today! Our bottle feeding schedule is like yours, but just bumped up by half an hour for each. Also, the volume per feeding that we offer is anywhere between 5-7 ounces because over the past few weeks DS (8.5 months) seems to only be consuming about 3-4 ounces per feeding. Today I thought - hmmm, maybe I should just try three bottles 7 am, maybe 2ish, then around 6:45 or so. I figured I'd do 7-8 ounces with each of those and then solid meals in between, of course. (We've also begun to offer him water in a cup, which he loves.)

I am still pondering it all. I think a book I read said that at my son's age, babies typically eat 20-40 ounces of formula/BM a day.....need to confirm that though.

If you make the switch, let us know how it goes!

[Anonymous]

16:42 here again. I just re-read my post. regarding what DS currently eats - i should have said that he only consumes about 3-4 ounces usually for two of his feedings. And sometimes we'll put it in the fridge and re-offer it an hour later, at which point he'll finish it. He probably gets about 21-24 ounces a day, just different volumes throughout the day. That's why I was thinking maybe 3/day would be better?

[Anonymous]

I have a 10 month old who also eats 4 bottles a day, three meals.

My pediatrician was surprised she was taking so much at once but was like "good for you!" and didn't think we needed to add another bottle or anything. She usually eats 21-23 ounces a day.

I have the same question - would be nice to do 3 but don't think she is ready.