In the first six months of life, the World Health Organisation recommends that babies only feed on milk (preferably breastmilk). However, once your baby has started to be weaned, nutrition from other sources also play an important part.
Weaning and keeping up feeds
In the early weeks of weaning, whilst some babies might happily devour large amounts of mushed food, most take a while to adjust to this new experience and only be eating one of two mouthfuls of 'solids' at a sitting once or twice a day.
Between six and ten months, babies need more food as they are growing, and you will see the demand for milk increase, but they also have a lot of other 'oral' issues (getting used to next food textures but also dealing with the arrival of teething) and the transition to sufficient solid food may take time. During this period, it is not a good idea to reduce feeds too much, though you might want to wait until after a solids-feeding session to offer a breast or bottle in order to encourage more enthusiastic attempts at eating.
When to move to fewer milk feeds
Although this should happen at around ten to 12 months, try to be instinctive about this as each child is different. If your baby is enjoying solids but needs more encouragement, try to space out milk feeds, going down to about 20fl oz of milk a day.
Long before your baby's first birthday you will find that a big morning and a big before-bedtime feed may well be enough, with just a small milk during the day.
