From birth my son was either being breastfed or fed a bottle 8 times a day. At about 5 months he started eating solids and went down to about 4 times a day and a couple of meals (breakfast and dinner) during the day. At about 9 months he started drinking 3 bottles a day (morning after waking, about 1 hour after lunch and evening before sleep) and eating three meals a day with tiny snacks in between. He is in the 90% for height in the USA and the 75% for weight. Below is what we now do.
Our Schedule:
7-8 am: Wakes up, diaper change and bottle feed (9 ounces of goat's milk--for infants his age (11 months) it is recommended that they don't drink more than 24 ounces of goat's or cow's milk/day as too much milk can cause anemia by binding up iron in the body)
8 am: Breakfast (oatmeal mixed with applesauce, bit of maple syrup and butter and a omega-3 oil) and for "dessert" I take purred blueberries that I've frozen in an ice-cube tray, pour an organic berry baby vitamin mix over it and crush it up. He eats it right up.
My son never got into the habit of using a sippie cup--in fact he doesn't like liquid very much unless it is milk--so he won't drink water or juice--even juice that's sweet. But...we came up with a trick to get fluids in him. We found out that he likes to suck on ice cubes! So, in the case of the vitamins--the vitamin juice--he doesn't want to drink it but because I add it to a cold blueberry slushie mix he'll eat it right up. We also do this with Pedialyte and any other liquid he wouldn't normally drink. This helps keep him hydrated--especially in HK in the summer.
8-10 am: Playtime
10 am-12 pm (sometimes 1 or 1:30 pm if we're lucky): Nap--I lay him down and sometimes lay beside him and tell him, "Shhh, it's time to go to sleep."
I used to feed him a bottle before every sleep time (or nurse him when I was nursing) but realized that since he was filling up on solids more, he was just snacking on those bottles--taking a few sips--so I condensed his feeding times down by making him go longer between bottles until the bottle times sort of condensed into a few solid times instead of little snacks throughout the day. I actually had to keep a log and write his bottle times down for a few days to actually make a gameplan of how I was going to set him on a different schedule and condense his feedings into a few good solid feedings (drinking the bottle instead of just snacking a little). To help tide him over I give him Cheerios a half of an apple (he can chew on it but it is so big he won't choke on it) and dehydrated yogurt puffs to snack on sometimes until he can eat or have a bottle.
12-4 pm: Lunch and Playtime again. At about an hour after lunch sometimes my son is a bit hungry again--so I feed him a small bottle (4-6 ounces of goat's milk). Recently he has been able to skip this step a lot.
Sometimes he'll take a tiny nap at around 3 pm for about 45 minutes or something but usually it's impromptu--him just crawling up on my lap and laying down and taking a rest--but if I force the issue it's more effort than it's worth.
4-5 pm: Dinner. My son loves pasta so I make him my homemade pasta mix with stewed tomatos, wholegrain pasta, zucchinni, carrots and sometimes chicken. To thicken it, I add an organic rice cereal. Sometimes will have chicken noodle soup or lentils or curry.
5:30-6 pm: Bathtime.
This is a habit that tells my son, "Okay, now the evening is here and we're getting ready for bed" He splashes in the water and has fun. Afterward we get him dressed and I have a bottle waiting for him. We sit in his room and read a book or play a game with the lights turned dim.
6-7 pm: Bedtime.
My son finishes his bottle (9 ounces of goat's milk). He is still awake. I pray with him and tell him I love him and lay him down with the lights still on, tuck him into his covers, and say goodnight and then turn off the light. He used to fuss and fuss--but I would just go back to him and lay him down again and tell him, "I love you and now is sleep time."
Like your baby, my son used to be up until late hours as well. He really would stay up until 11-12 pm but by the time he was going down to sleep he would be like beyond exhausted and couldn't fall asleep easily. Then he would wake up at 5 am. (Now he sleeps better--12 hours at a time, uninterrupted--since he was about 5 months old)
Then we started using the 3-yawn rule. First yawn you see is a warning, by the time you see the second yawn you'd better be on your way to getting that child ready for sleep and by the Third yawn that child should be nearly laid down to sleep--otherwise you risk reaching what my husband and I started calling, "The point of no return" where you see a total meltdown and it takes hours to fight your kid to sleep--it took awhile to get him into a habit but that rule really helped us.
Also, we learned that just because the baby wakes up doesn't mean that you have to pick him/her up and feed him/her. We try to make the least disturbance to his sleep as possible--meaning, we won't even change his diaper unless it really absolutely needs it--we avoid turning on lights--even when he wakes up.
When he would wake up at like 1 am, 2 am or even 4 am, we would just lay him back down and keep doing that until he got the hint (and sometimes it took 10-15 times in one night!)--but also we could tell if he was hungry or not by the cry he made--when he's hungry he sort of makes a coughing sound in the back of his throat at the end of the cry--otherwise, we would just lay him down.
Recently, I told my pedaetrician that my son had started waking up at night when he had been sleeping fine for quite some time now--he said that at about 8 months to 1 year, a lot of babies start developing "separation anxiety"--that also affects them while they sleep. Sometimes, all he needed was for us to go in, reassure him that we're still here and lay him back down for him to sleep. That may be something to keep in mind too.
So, I just think you have to be really intentional about feedings and sleeping patterns--because they affect one another--as well as playing times--it all fits together and needs to be in balance. And now that your son is coming up on 1-year-old you have to get away from responding to him as a newborn.
I found myself in that habit--I was rushing to his side and trying to feed him every time he woke up or cried--maybe appropriate for a smaller baby whose nutritional needs are super demanding but I had to realize that as my baby got older I could "push the limits" with him a little more--he was more flexible than I actually realized and if he had to wait a few more minutes or even an hour more for a feeding it wouldn't hurt him. Sometimes distracting him with something else helps me accomplish my goals--making his play time longer--taking him outside--anything to help me set the schedule that works best for all of us.
Hope you can find some of what I said useful. :0)
