Feeling totally clueless

So this weaning thing, well it involves both weaning onto solids - going okaay I guess, and weaning off the breast and onto formula from a bottle or cup - going very slowly. Felix drank 60ml from his Doidy cup today, but it took about 25 mins. This is either a fantastic result, or, seeing as he should be drinking about 600ml a day and needs to be doing it independently in about 6 weeks' time when he starts nursery, could mean we're heading slowly towards total disaster.



But the main point is, I really haven't a clue what I'm doing. I just muddle along without a plan. I'm not the kind of mum who gets up in the morning and goes, Right! Today we're going to drop feed (a) and replace it with a cup feed of x ml and then drop feed (b) and replace it with y oz of solids and then we'll increase it all by z over the next c weeks... I don't have regular feeds to begin with, so I just sort of make it up as I go along.

The result is mainly that Felix is plonked in the Bumbo, which can be at any time of the day, and might be offered a cup feed, or some solids, or a combination of both. Since I'm trying to feed him when he is hungry but before he gets too frantically hungry, I'm going by the clock, i.e. time elapsed since he last ate or drank anything, but I can never be sure I've timed it right when I try to feed him. Since it's such a painfully slow process anyway and it's always accompanied by some crying, moany-type noises it's hard to tell whether he's not sufficiently hungry and is rejecting what I have to offer him, or is just taking his time and trying to get the hang of it. (Or, now I see it in writing, the third option is that he is hungry but is still rejecting what I have to offer him because he wants boobs.) I've had various success, sometimes I persist and he does gobble a load of food up, and sometimes I persist only for Felix to vomit up what seems like an entire bowl of pureed veggies seconds later. And very often I tell myself that I'm just going to feed him solids and try and get him to drink from a cup and then make him go hungry for the next 2 hours only to cave in to his appeals and top him up with booby milk half an hour later.

So he's in his Bumbo right now, and has been eating a decent sized blob of foul-smelling carrot and broccoli puree, but it's going down really slowly and at the same time he is making big time whiny crying yelpy moany type noises. And they could mean "I'm so hungry this isn't doing it for me right now, give me BOOOOBS" and they could mean "I'm really not comfortable in this seat but I reckon I could still eat some more veggie slush" and they could mean "I'm not hungry and not interested" but right now, and for most of the day, they've sounded like "I want to do a big poo". I'm worried that I translate all his noises as "I want to do a big poo" but he, well, strains, and has done three today already so I can't be that far off the mark. But he has been sipping at some water from the Doidy quite eagerly, so I'm also wondering whether he's actually saying "Give me a decent drink goddammit to wash this thick gloop down with" so I've made some formula and have left him a wee while for it to cool and brain dump all my inconfidence onto the blog.