adding second meal

Short answer is no. Some babies take to solids really quick and will quickly progress to 3 meals and others take a while longer. So if he is eating well at one meal offer another, if he's not keen then just leave it a week or so and try that second meal again. If he is keen then that's all fine.

I'm going to be a dissenting opinion. LOL

My personal view is that it's NOT a race and solids are supposed to complement their milk intake not become a major part of their diet right away. Milk has way more fat and calories ounce for ounce than any food you can be offering so I'd take it slowly. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should or that you have to.

Making the transition to solid food can be really hard on their tummies and by loading them up quickly you can exacerbate this problem....in fact DS2 got so bunged up 2 weeks in that I went back to only offering 2-3 times a week and once his tummy had settled again I started offering everyday.

His first month on solids he only had one 'meal', we introduced a second meal a month later and about 3 weeks after that we introduced the third meal. Until they are between 9-12 months old they don't actually NEED solids at all. A side effect of introducing solids too quickly with DS1 was that he started to refuse milk, and as he was a 'lightweight' this was the last thing we needed him to do.

It's up to you as the parent to do what you feel is best but if it were me I'd hold off for a bit longer.

That is one of those great urban myths, especially if we are talking about a bf baby. A full term exclusively bf baby has enough iron stores to usually last a MINIMUM of six months(usually 9-12 months), and it's not like some magic wand gets waved when they hit 6 months and bam their iron stores are starting to deplete, or as some believe depleted.   This is one of those stupid things that we (and other countries) took from the Americans, where they regularly supplement their babies/toddlers with iron just because they've reached a certain age.

This also doesn't necessarily apply to ff babies because the iron from formula and food isn't as readily absorbed (bioavailable) as it is in bm. Even so, iron fortified formula is still going to have all the iron in it that they need . Ideally you should be trying to get the iron from natural sources because the iron from iron fortified foods don't actually absorb that well. There are things you can do to boost their absorption of iron without upping their solids intake unnecessarily.

In case anyone actually wants to know WHERE I got my info from, you can find it here.

thanks for the replies. I will say upfront that I would have loved to wait until RYan was 6 months before starting him on solids (due to food allergies on my DH's side) but after about 3 weeks of Ryan crying/screaming with hunger after almost every breastfeed, watching me eat, etc I decided to try him on some pumpkin. My personal preference was to introduce solids rather than formula. (And I tried everything to up my supply in case that was it - ate heaps of protein, drank lots of water, was on my pump 40 minutes a day to simulate more supply - but nothing seemed to make him satisfied).

After his first meal of pumpkin he was super content and happy and had a 3 hour nap!

So - I have decided to introduce a second meal as he seems very hungry.   For instance - yesterday he sucked me absolutely dry, then 45 minutes later ate 1/2c of pumpkin, then 20mins later (after his shower) he plowed through another 120mls of EBM that I'd managed to store away. And after all that he STILL woke up at 4am and had a HUGE feed. He's a fairly big baby - but only in terms of length, his weight is average so he's long and lean. It's not like he's eating so much that he's getting chubby rolls - he can barely seem to eat enough to cope with how long he is growing. Honestly - who knew I was incubating a basketball player!

In regards to his system, he seems to be coping well. There will always be an adjustment period but he used to be on the maximum dosage of Gaviscon for a LONG time so he is quite used to having slow bowels...