3 meals...

So today I am tackling the adding of a 3rd meal. We had music class-so I gave the boys their solids before we went. Here are my ?'s in regards to a 3rd meal...

1.) What times are your meals? We don't really have a SET time per se, but probably do once I write it all out!

2.) What do you give for the 3 meals?

3.) Where do bottles fit in? My boys are on 4 bottles/day.

Here's the feeding schedule so far:
7am: wake up-8oz BOTTLE
10ish: wake from first nap-SOLIDS: 1 container of fruit/cereal
11ish: 6oz BOTTLE
3ish: 6oz BOTTLE
4-5ish:SOLIDS:1 container of fruit/1 container of veggie
6:30ish:8oz BOTTLE
7pm:bed

I figure, I add in the first meal after their first bottle-so 8am would be breakfast. Would lunch be around noon after their 11 bottle? The 11am bottle got pushed back because I was giving them solids after waking from nap, so I'm assuming that bottle will go back to 11am if I feed them solids at 8am, kwim?

I am at a loss of what to do for lunch/dinner now. We really aren't on meats. The pedi said 9 months, but it wasn't going to kill them if we did it now. Every few days, I might do chx noodle, or turkey something or other...but it's not consistent. So-what do you do?

Thanks!

 

Hmmm hard to say. We did not add in a 3rd meal (lunch) until they were 9 months old. There was just too much chaos to get 2 or in my case 3 kids fed. So we just waited and just filled them up with bottles. So, if you find that it doesnt work, just put it on the back burner for a bit.

As far as what to feed, I would just keep pushing the veggies and the fruit and rotating variety. They dont care if they dont get meat at a meal

Also check out the FY Handbook above in the "sticky" and that will link you to sleep and feeding schedules and maybe you can find one that you can assimilate into a schedule that works for you. That is what I did. Happy feeding!!

 

Here is our 7/8 month schedule:

8 month schedule
6:00 wake
6:45 bottle (7 oz.)
7:30 cereal with fruit
9:00 nap
12:00 bottle (7 oz.)
12:30 fruit and veggie
1:00 nap
4:00 bottle (6 oz.)
4:30 meat combo meal
6:00 bottle (4 oz.)
6:30 bed


Until I added the meat combo meal, I was doing rice cereal with a veggie at night. It was in between months 8 and 9 that I combined the last two bottles and gave it to them before bed, rather than the one in the afternoon and moved dinner up by a 1/2 hour.

 

Here is our schedule.

700 Get up, nurse,
830 Breakfast (oatmeal & fruit)
900 nurse
930 Nap (usually 1.5-2hrs)
1130 Get up, nurse
100 Lunch (oatmeal/barley & veggie)
130 nurse
200 Nap (usually 1-1.5hrs)
330 Get up, nurse
500 Dinner (oatmeal/barley, fruit & veggie)
530 Bath, nurse
630-7 Bed

The nursing arent exact, they get up and play then nurse once they've been awake for a bit. I like to fill them up before naps/bedtime!

BTW, I LOVE the duck tub picture!!

 

Hi there, here is our schedule and amounts for Maeve and William, they just turned 5 months on May 27th. Hope this helps, we do the bottle WITH the food for feeings. Maeve at 4 months was 14lbs 2oz and Will was 16lbs 5oz. So they are right on track with normal weights, we just have good eaters.

--7am wake and eat 4T of oatmeal cereal with one jar fruit (stage 1 jar) and an 8-10oz bottle of forumla. Maeve always takes 6-8oz and William take 8-10oz of formula at this feeding.
--9am Nap-11am wake and playtime
--Noon, wake and eat 3T oatmeal cereal with one jar veggies (stage 1 jar) and same formula intake for both as listed above
-1pm Nap
-4:30/5pm wake, each has another bottle and 2T of oatmeal cereal and either a fruit or veggie jar.
--6pm Bath time, then another couple ounces out of a bottle and by 6:30pm they are down for the night!

Hope this helps ~jillian

 

If I were you, I'd try to move your 'breakfast' up & give it before their 1st nap. I'd think you could add a 'lunch' between your 11 & 3 pm bottles.

My boys never would take a bottle AND solids, so I had a hard time fitting it all in....3 meals, 4 bottles, 2 naps (occasionally 3 naps still), etc. Yikes! It wasn't long after we added our 3rd meal that we went to 3 bottles & things work MUCH more smoothly now! It'll be a short time period where you don't have a lot of time to get out of the house, but it improves when you start dropping bottles.

We started meat around 7-8 mos. I wasn't told to wait. I always did oatmeal & fruit for breakfast, a fruit & veggie for lunch, & then a veggie (or later, meat) with rice cereal for dinner. I rotated the fruits & veggies daily.

 

When I moved to three meals, I moved to three bottles instead of 4.

8 am bottle then play
9 am solid breakfast (right now, fruit and yogurt with cheerios usually) then play
11 am nap
1 pm solid lunch (right now, usually protein like chicken or turkey and veggies) then play
3 pm bottle a little play (I hope they will poop before nap time!)
3:30 pm nap
6 pm solid dinner (right now, usually protein, veggies and fruit) then play (every other night we bathe at 6:45)
7:30 bedtime bottle
8 pm bedtime