New eating schedule for milk-drinkers?

sechat322 · May 2013

Inspired by Lallymom's post below, I was hoping to see whether you all changed your kids' eating schedules once they transitioned from formula/breastmilk to whole milk at around 1.

Right now, my daughter eats breakfast then gets an immediate follow-up bottle, gets lunch and dinner the same way, and gets a plain bottle for "snack" at mid-afternoon (no solids then). She is an excellent solids eater, and I don't think she's going to miss the bottles/formula much, so we're planning to do things pretty cold turkey.

My question is whether, once we make the switch, we should give her whole milk in a straw cup along with her meals/snacks or whether we need to make the "giving of milk" a whole separate event (as it is now). Right now, she uses a straw cup with water at meals. If we give her milk with her meals, do we just make a cup with water available other times?

We are thinking of moving her to a 3 meals and 2 snacks format (one mid-morning, one mid-afternoon, with meal times being at actual proper meal times). Does this seem right to you guys?

SusieBW · May 2013

Once we got DD off bottles at around 11-12 months, she just started eating regular meals and occasional snacks. We've always given her milk with meals and water any other time.

christinak22 · May 2013

sechat322:
We are thinking of moving her to a 3 meals and 2 snacks format (one mid-morning, one mid-afternoon, with meal times being at actual proper meal times). Does this seem right to you guys?

This sounds like a great plan. I give DS a bedtime bottle just because he loves it so much, but otherwise, he just gets a cup of milk in the morning with breakfast and water the rest of the day (though he was still drinking about 16-18 oz of milk at 12 months). We feed him regular solid foods at meals until he stops eating and starts playing with it and a snack between each meal.

lindslalala · May 2013

DS eats 3 meals and 2 snacks with milk at meals and water in between. It took a few weeks after switching to sippys/WCM for it to work out like this though. Initially I was still giving him milk when his normal bottle times would have been (separate from meals/snacks). He was barely drinking anything and got really frustrated. The routine we do now works really well for us.

sechat322 · May 2013

thanks, everybody! this is all very helpful. i'm not too worried about giving her milk with meals because she's so solids-focused that i don't think access to milk would put her off her food at all.

chardonnay24 · May 2013

We did (and continue to do):

Breakfast with milk

Snack

Lunch with milk

Snack

Dinner with water

Milk before bed

Dee1028 · May 2013

Here is our schedule:

Breakfast with milk

Snack with water

Lunch with milk

Snack with water

Dinner with water

Small snack and water before bed

I cut milk later in the day because they had colds and I was worried it was making them even more phlegmy. It worked so I stopped giving it later in the day and at night.

blu-eyedwife · May 2013

So my kid's been on 3 meals a day since 6 months, so I'm not sure how helpful this is.

At 11 months he moved from bottle to straw cup with breastmilk and daycare introduced an afternoon snack. At that time his schedule looked like:

Wake and nurse
breakfast
nurse before daycare
lunch (with straw cup of milk)
snack (after lunch with straw cup of milk)
nurse after daycare
dinner
nurse before bed

This schedule continued until around 13 months when he dropped all but the first and last nursing session

Wake and nurse
breakfast
lunch (with straw cup of milk)
snack (after lunch with straw cup of milk)
dinner
nurse before bed

New eating schedule for milk-drinkers?

Re: New eating schedule for milk-drinkers?

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