Milk to food ratio. Worried.

[Oxygen7880]

Hi ladies, my lg is 7 months old and I have been weaning her since she turned 6 months. She wasn't much interested at first but has slowy improved and now has 3 meals per day (which i upped from 2 after a health visitor told me she should be doing 3 plus snacks at 7 months).
My concern is the amount of milk (formula) she is taking. The amount has dropped from 28-32 oz (4 bottles) per day when I started weaning her down to 16-21 oz (3 bottles). My health visitor came this week and told me that by now she should only be having 2 bottles of milk per day and that food should be the most important part. I was shocked since I was still giving her 4 bottles (even though she was barely touching them sometimes).
From everything I have read it says that milk (formula in my case) is the most important and I have read various amounts that a baby of her age should still be taking. Most of the time I read at least 21 oz.
Anyway I just felt that I must be doing it all wrong and so the next day I dropped her bottles to just 2 as the health visitor said. My lg only took 14 oz that day. It really concerned me. Since then I have increased this to 3 bottles and even with this she sometimes (like today) only takes about 16 oz.
I know she get some milk from her food but does that make up for the lack of formula.?
She is just under the 9th percentile and just made 14lb. So shes a little dot and im wondering if I should reduce her food a bit so that she takes more milk. Or am I completely wrong and my hv right? I just dont know what to do.

 

[MindUtopia]

I would say your HV is completely wrong. At her age, she should be having milk before food and prioritizing milk, particularly because she is on the smaller side too. My daughter was smaller too when she was little, and milk really is important at that age, much more so than solids. You will notice she'll want less and less of a particular bottle (at a certain time each day) as the amount of solids she has pick up, but I wouldn't try to cut any out if she hasn't refused them. Formula is much more calorie and nutrient rich than food. Also, I don't know many babies that age who have 3 meals plus snacks. My daughter wasn't on 3 meals til she was 7.5 months and she didn't even have snacks until probably 10 months when she dropped her mid-morning bottle. She was still on 3 bottles a day at a year and only dropped to 2 probably around 13-14 months. In my experience, that's pretty typical. Unforunately, HV do give terrible advice sometimes. I would trust your gut and follow her lead. If she will happily drink her bottles if you offer them first, keep offering them. Eventually, she'll start to prefer solids more and drop them. But there's no reason to hurry it. I'd ignore your HV. You're doing it totally right.

 

[Oxygen7880]

Thank you for your reply. Do you think 16 oz is enough? I am giving her an 8 oz bottle when she wakes (7.30am) and she almost always takes it all. I give her breakfast about 9ish and then her second bottle between 11-12 which she tends to take 5-6 oz. She has some lunch at 1 ish, supper at 4 and then her last bottle at 6/6.30, after which she goes to bed. The last bottle is the issue I think because she only took 3oz tonight. That's why I was considering reducing her solids.
Pretty poor when I question a hv advice isn't it.