5 months: solid foods and dropping a bottle (?)

I was going to look in the "First Year Handbook" sticky but the links aren't working there for me...

Ok, so the babies are over 5 months old now - time flies and now I'm trying to introduce solid foods to them. So far they are doing OK, Mia got the hang of it last night with opening her mouth etc. Lauren likes to blow rasberries with her food, ah, proud mother I am.

Anyway they are probably a week or two away from having a few "real" ounces of cereal and maybe some mashed fruit or veg.

So - right now they are taking 6 seven-ounce bottles per day (they are not finishing all 6, I'd say they are topping 35 ounces per day, maybe a few more) at 6AM, 9AM, NOON, 3PM, 6PM, 8:30PM. I think I was supposed to start dropping down to 4 or 5 bottles per day by now? Should I wait until they are eating that "real" dinner before messing with the bottle schedule? And do I switch the times up?

The daycare ladies claim they just don't seem to be that hungry, but I just freak out thinking about switching the schedule and that they might be hungry. Any advice?

 

I probably wouldn't mess with the bottle schedule until they stop being interested in a bottle at a certain time of day and/or you get onto a more regular food schedule. When you first introduce solids it's more for practice than actual nutrition for some time, so you want to make sure they're still keeping their milk intake up. If you do feel the need to drop a bottle though I would probably push your 6 pm one back a little bit and cut the 8:30 one out. Give them a bottle around 7 pm and make that their bedtime. But really, I wouldn't mess with the schedule unless there were problems where they were refusing bottles or something.

 

I agree with Jen, I didn't start dropping bottles until they started showing signs that they weren't quite hungry yet. However, another option, is to drop a bottle but increase the ounces in the other bottles. Around that 5-6 month mark My twins were drinking around 70oz combined in a day. My dd (the chunkier one) was gaining weight too fast, so I had to add more solids in and reduce her formula intake, per our ped's order's. Otherwise, I didn't tinker too much until they started eating more consistently.

 

Thanks for pointing out the dead links! I'll look into those!