feeding my baby

I sometimes find it helpful to compare how Nate eats with the way other babies eat, as far as how often, how much, and what they are eating. It's not like a competition or anything. It's just that I can get ideas from other moms about how I might better go about feeding my baby. So, I just thought I'd put this out there.

Since Nate was 4 months old, he's been eating 30 ounces of formula per day, in 5 6-oz bottles between the hours of 6 am and 6 pm. We've gradually added solid food meals, and now he is eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When we added the third meal, he started occasionally leaving his bottles unfinished. Many days, he would total 26 oz of formula, rather than his previous usual of 30. But, he wasn't leaving the same bottles unfinished every day. Sometimes it was his second and fourth bottles that he didn't finish, sometimes his first and fifth. Sometimes he finished all of them. We tried decreasing the amount we gave him with his solids meals, but he would sometimes still be hungry. It was totally unpredictable.

If that was unpredictable, what's happening now is a complete mystery. He has 3 teeth coming in. Two of them have just peeked through the gum. I saw them yesterday morning. The third is still below the gum. (These will be teeth 3, 4, and 5 for him, as his first 2 came in 5 months ago.) His mouth hurts, and I think it's making him not want his bottles.

Typically if he has less than 20 oz of formula, he will wake up hungry in the middle of the night. If he has 24 or more, he sleeps through the night. Between 20 and 24, it's a toss-up. I feel like right now we're always trying to get him to eat, all day long, trying to reach that magic number of 24 oz.

Today he had 19. But, I was able to get him to eat more solids. This is our ultimate goal anyway - over the next few months he should eat more solids, drink less milk. I'm hoping it works.

His previous schedule: 6 am bottle, 9 am puffs or cereal and bottle, 12 pm jar of veggies and bottle, 3 pm bottle, 6 pm jar of fruit and bottle. He wouldn't take the solids and bottles right after each other. We usually had to give him a 45-60 minute break. And the bottles were all 6 oz, until recently. Naps would be between the 6 & 9, 9 & 12, and 12 & 3 meals.

His schedule today: 6:45 am 6 oz bottle, 10:15 am puffs and 4 oz bottle (he didn't finish the bottle until close to 11), 2:30 pm jar of veggies, 4 pm 6 oz bottle, 5:15 pm jar and a half of fruit and veggies, 6:30 pm 3 oz bottle. Naps 8-10:15 am and 12:45-2:20 pm. What the heck?