When does baby go from eating every 3 hours to eating breakfast, lunch and dinner?

[Wugz22]

I'm sure it's too soon for my 5 month old but I'm wondering when does his eating become more like 3 meals a day, with "snacks" in between?

 

[noon_child]

I never fed every three hours so don't know what that refers to, but my LO had her food when we had ours and if she was hungry inbetween she still nursed, as milk is still really important nutritionally up to and beyond a year old. I introduced snacks when she was too busy to sit still enough to nurse as often.

So we probably had 1 meal the rest milk at 7 months, 2 meals the rest milk at 8-9 months and three meals the rest milk at 9-10months. She started snacks around 1yr as she dropped a lot of breastfeeds when she started nursery.

 

[MindUtopia]

Agreed with the PP, we never fed every 3 hours to start (with solids anyway). It was just normal mealtimes when we would eat. We started one meal a day (lunch) at 6 months and were at 3 meals a day at 7.5 months, plus milk probably 5 times a day. It's probably been since 12 months that we also do snacks. Now at 15 months, my daughter often has 3 meals a day and 1-2 snacks and just a cup of milk at night (sometimes also in the afternoon with her snack). I think for most babies, they start eating enough to understand that food satiates hunger somewhere around 8-10 months, which is when they might want a snack, but you're still feeding them probably every 3 hours if not more with meals, snacks, milk, etc. I think they pretty much keep that up until school age when they probably don't have the chance to snack as much.

 

[Wugz22]

I suppose I'm referring to when baby was a newborn, he was hungry for milk every 2 hours. Now he usually goes 3-3.5 hours between milk. Do they still need milk every 3-4 hours during the first year, or does that change once they are eating solids?

 

[noon_child]

I suppose I'm referring to when baby was a newborn, he was hungry for milk every 2 hours. Now he usually goes 3-3.5 hours between milk. Do they still need milk every 3-4 hours during the first year, or does that change once they are eating solids?

Depends how much they are actually "eating" and how much is playing with food, learning to pick things up, cough things out if they are too big, getting smeared all over their face. In the learning stage I think it is important to offer milk first and solids after so they still get roughly the same number of milk feeds as they are used to. Once they are properly eating full meals this is less important. When my LO was properly established eating 3 meals her day was still full of milk like this:

6am - milk feed
8am - breakfast
10:30am - milk feed
12:15pm/1pm (whenever she woke) - lunch
3pm - milk feed
5:15pm - dinner
7pm bedtime feed

 

[Wugz22]

Thanks! That helps.... so when they are having a meal... do they have milk then too? Or offer water?

 

[noon_child]

Thanks! That helps.... so when they are having a meal... do they have milk then too? Or offer water?

We always did water.

 

[cherrylips100]

I've only just started offering 3 small meals. I started off with just 1 meal then 2 meals, whilst still giving them 4 hourly milk feeds. It doesn't seem to have affected their milk intake so far and my plan is to drop a middle of the day bottle by 8 months. I don't give them water yet or anything with meals but will do when they are eating proper food.
Now
8am milk
10.30 'breakfast'
12.30 milk
2.30 lunch
4.30 milk
6.00 dinner
8.15 milk

 

[MindUtopia]

Ah, now I understand what you're asking. Yes, to start, they will probably keep up the pattern of when they want milk as they won't be eating much. We offered milk at all the usual times she'd always want milk and then have a solid meal after. Probably around 8 months, the amount of milk she would drink started to decrease and she dropped the mid-morning bottle completely at 9 months and also stopped wanting a bottle during the night. 9 months was also about the time when she really started to eat for the sake of eating and not because it was just something to play with. She would also drink water from about 9 months as well, but had no interest in it before that. It wasn't until probably 13 months when she had more of an interest in food and less in milk (so that now, we usually only have a cup of milk once or twice a day, and her main food source is solid food). To begin with, her usual pattern looked something like this:

7am - milk
8am - breakfast
11am - milk
12pm - lunch
3pm - milk
5pm - dinner
7pm - milk
(then also one bottle over night - usually about 3 or 4am)

Now at 15 months, it looks something like this:

8am - breakfast
12pm - lunch
3pm - snack (sometimes with a cup of milk as well)
6pm - dinner
7pm - cup of milk before bed

 

[fieryphoenix]

My lo still eats or nurses or both every two-three hours, he's a big boy though!