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Early weaning hoo-haa!
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12180052
Is this affecting anyone else? What are your views? Did you wait to wean till 6 months?
I say affecting, but really it's too late for me, Superbaby is 6.5 months and and in the process of being weaned already (started weaning at 5-and-a-bit months after doing my own research when HV refused to contemplate any eventuality except exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months). Of course now I'm feeling a teeny bit smug, until in 2 years someone will do a study that proves that babies weaned at 5-and-a-bit months are stupider than other babies or whatever, and then I'll be laughing on the other side of my face.
One thing I have noticed is that the media are sending out some very dodgy and frankly irrelevant messages - I have seen headlines like 'Breast is best?', 'Breastfeeding may not be best for babies after all'. :shocking: I bet the baby food and formula companies are rubbing their hands with glee.
Is this affecting anyone else? What are your views? Did you wait to wean till 6 months?
I say affecting, but really it's too late for me, Superbaby is 6.5 months and and in the process of being weaned already (started weaning at 5-and-a-bit months after doing my own research when HV refused to contemplate any eventuality except exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months). Of course now I'm feeling a teeny bit smug, until in 2 years someone will do a study that proves that babies weaned at 5-and-a-bit months are stupider than other babies or whatever, and then I'll be laughing on the other side of my face.
One thing I have noticed is that the media are sending out some very dodgy and frankly irrelevant messages - I have seen headlines like 'Breast is best?', 'Breastfeeding may not be best for babies after all'. :shocking: I bet the baby food and formula companies are rubbing their hands with glee.
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What was the advice at the time? I remember when my nephew was a baby they advised you to start from 4 months anyway. Although, that said, the government generally couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery, so why on earth would we trust them to advise us on how to raise babies?
I haven't even told my HV about it, cause she gave my friend some real grief about weaning before 26 weeks. She's a bit of a guideline nazi.
I bottle fed Niamh but didn't buy any of the ready made food in jars for her. I was against them as thought they were expensive and I cook fairly well.
As for the guidelines, each child is different and the fact that HV or midwives are so nazi about it is ridiculous. If your child is showing the signs of needing more than just milk then start the weaning process. If they are not showing the signs then don't. It's simple. It's about reading your *own* child and their *own* needs - not the generic.
From about four months Rosie simply wasn't getting full enough from the milk, she'd demolish 8oz in about four gulps and still be hungry, which was causing problems with posseting- she couldn't physically fit that much milk in her little tummy, so half of it came back out. We used the hungry baby formula and dissolved rusk and baby rice in the bottle to make it more filling, which worked to an extent, but only to an extent.
By five months she was on the baby porridge and on the jars of the stage one baby food, whilst we worked out what she liked and what she didn't like. Now we still give her stage two jars, they're good for when we're out and about, but also our own food. The only crappy thing about that is not being able to use so much seasoning
We told our health visitor about it quite late, because we decided Rosie knew more about what she wanted than some faceless bureaucrat at the Department for Health. It's working, she hasn't died. Our HV is pretty laid back too, even with the co-sleeping and the weaning, which helped, but we still waited to tell because we were Going Against Advice.
Now she's pretty much completely on solids, and we give her cow's milk rather than formula milk. She gets rather grumpy when she doesn't get her bowl of oat and apple porridge in a morning.
I understand the need for advice and guidance, otherwise you'd have people feeding newborns Big Macs, but the WHO advice to wait is partially based on the lack of clean water and food in some parts of the third world. I just can't abide the nazi rules is rules attitude that some HVs have, if the baby is wanting food at four or five months give it to them. Rosie's a very independently minded young lady (apart from sleeping, then she wants us to cuddle in bed with her), she knows what she wants, so I'm quite happy to go with that. We'll even give her the odd treat, she seems to really like malted milk biscuits to chomp on/dribble down her chin/feed the dog. Rosie's been at the 25th percentile from the day she was born, she hasn't deviated at all, so I'm not really going to worry too much.
F wanted to wean about 4 and a half, 5 mths
A, wouldnt take any solids till way gone 6mths. I even had a HV telling me i should have weaned her and to keep trying :rolleyes: Of course I didnt, and just left it till she was ready. I also complained about her because old fashioned HVs giving shit advice that goes against guidelines, especially when its not even asked for or needed, is one of my pet hates.
Id say just listen to your baby.
When baby is clearly not satisfied with milk anymore, eyeing up your dinner and trying to grab stuff off your plate, i think is the best time to try solids, rather than going by a date
I'm just struggling to trust my instincts with the baby, cause historically my instincts have been shit. And it's not too bad when they crap up my life, but I'd be gutted if they crapped up hers!
Take formula feeding. The official advice is that you make every bottle fresh, so for the first month I diligently got out of bed at 4am, boiled the kettle, made the formula, cooled it down and then went back to bed with the bottle. Until I saw in the smallprint that pre-making bottles was OK if you were going out, providing you used it within a few hours, normally six. So back I went to the older way of making it, making a batch last thing at night, warming it during the night as needed and throwing unused milk away in the morning. So long as the water was over 63C when mixed with the powder, and so long as the bottle was sterile, there should be no bugs in the milk at all.
As for weaning, baby will generally let you know when they want to wean. Sod Baby was stealing my ice cream cone at four months and sticking it in her gob, so she was clearly interested in our food. We didn't wean her on ice cream, don't worry, but because she was interested in the flavours and textures of our food she was interested in the textures and flavours of hers. At first she didn't grasp it was food, but she enjoyed the taste and the feel of it before spitting it out everywhere.
The funniest thing was when we had the odd Dirty Tea, like fish and chips or McDonald's. It was hard work stopping her nicking all the chips. I have a liberal attitude to food, but I am not letting my baby eat chips :no:
I just wish she didn't have such expensive tastes. She adores the oat and apple baby porridge from Heinz, which is £2 for a tiny box, and gets pretty grumpy when we try and give her something else. And when we go to Betty's she knows fine well she wants our tea, even if we put milk in one of the china cups and let her sip from that. Bloody baby. No doubt we do spoil her rotten and are screwing her up in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, but she's just too cute when she bats her eyelashes and tells me how much she loves me...when I give her what she wants.
You think you're scared now!
You'll be fine. I obv just have an anxiety problem
I would advise you to buy stocks in a kitchen roll company, though. I think our consumption of it has increased by about 5000%.
I generally take the official advice with a pinch of salt, my downfall is reading research studies and what have you and then shitting myself that my child may have increased her chance of getting diabetes in later life by 0.2% because I let her look at a picture of a cream cake (or whatever).
I just worry about other stuff instead, particularly whether every tiny little thing I do will make her as crackers as me in adult life.
That said, I'd rather that than the alternative, which is being my mother and telling me that there is NOTHING WRONG WITH ME RARGH.
I know, that's the worst part, and I still can't stop! I once read two studies - one concluded that you should avoid eating peanuts while breastfeeding cause it can increase your baby's susceptibility to peanut allergies once weaned, and the other concluded that you should eat peanuts while breastfeeding cause avoiding them can increase your baby's susceptibility to peanut allergies once weaned.
*brain explodes*
It is true, though, that a lot of the docs published by the WHO are related to the third world, and don't necessarily fit with developed countries. The stuff about preparing bottles, for example, is third world biased, because they lack the refrigeration capabilities that we take for granted here. In that same vein, breastfeeding is doubtless "better" when you'd otherwise be preparing bottles in unsanitory conditions, or serving up food for weaning prepared in a poor environment. Luckily, all we have to worry about is being over-clean
Plus, all you have to do is look back about 5 or so years, and the advice was completely different. It will doubtless be different again in another 5 or so years, and there's no massive difference in the outcomes.
I started at 4 months as well with a carrot stick - as it was BLW though she didnt' eat any of it she just felt like she was joining in. I talked to the breastfeeding councillor at 5 months who said if she is obsessed by food and sitting up in a high chair (she sat at about 4.5 months) - then there wasnt' any reason to not give it to her.
The thing is though the study said that you should still breastfeed and that formula is bad but noone really picked up on it.
its making me feel smug as well
In india women are actively told by health visitors (ASHA) to eat peanuts as they have lots of protein in them - for me dry roasted peanuts was one of the few ways to curb my morning (evening) sickness.
Most of the official advice is bullshit.
We weaned the kids when we felt it was right for them. Not because some book said so, not because some HV said so. In fact this is pretty much how we have raised them on any subject every since. Sure you get advice from a million and one sources but ultimately you learn to do with what you feel comfortable with - they are your children and you have to live with any consequences.
There is very little science to raising children. We all make mistakes, we all learn something new with each child.
Humans have been raising children for millenia, with and without HVs. We seem to forget that.
To be fair, Wyetry is likely to have had shit from peeps fucks dissing the whole breastfeeding thing to want to express some satisfaction over potentially doing not just her best but 'the right thing' for her child. Honestly- you're a new parent, you know probably know what it's like to worry about doing the right thing, to take other peoples' judgements and implicit criticisms to heart (hence your response). Therefore, please do have enough insight to let Wyetry feel some pride in the real achievement of breastfeeding and successfully breastfeeding and weaning her bub. Just let her feel that satisfaction...
Just as you deserve the praise for having successfully raised your Rosie, so does Wyetry deserve the respect of allowing herself to feel an amount of pride for the way she has raised her own child.
I make this argument because in some ways I feel the same. I remember having been criticised for breast feeding from the one other young mum I knew at the time. And, I remember the embarrassment I felt when I had to explain REPEATEDLY that I was feeding my child baby milk (by which I meant human baby milk) to the woman who was charged with issuing milk tokens to mothers on SS benefits at the time- who didn't seem to understand my protests that the government free milk was intended for me, as I was producing the milk for the baby I'd given birth to.
Basically Arctic, please be compassionate, recognise that where it is that you feel offence, other people might feel like they are just gaining the confidence to request recognition. And that, them claiming recognition for their actions isn't a diss against others who do things differently, it really is, a claim for a well-deserved recognition.
Im proud that ive breastfed all of mine for at least some amount of time. Im proud of it because i wanted to do it, and i did, and its not always an easy thing to do.
Im also proud of giving birth without pain relief. I was very pleased with myself. it was a personal challenge and i felt wonderful afterwards.
Its got absolutely nothing to do with what other people do or dont manage. A lot of people wouldnt evemn want to try, and thats up to them.
Same as if someone ran a marathon. if they were proud of themselves, its not meant as an insult to those who didnt do it
What happens if you try to wean them too early?
Studies show weaning too early could cause them health problems when they're older - allergies, autoimmune diseases, heart problems, digestive disorders and so on. What they can't agree on is how early 'too early' is. Some say any time after 4 months is fine, others say you should wait til 6 months. Milk (breast or formula) should be the main part of their diet for most of the first year, but crucially for the first 6 months, and if they are started on solids too early they might be bulking up on them, and thus drinking less milk, and the milk is way more nutritious and calorific than a bit of whizzed up carrot.
The other problem you have with breastfeeding (assume this is not applicable to bottlefeeding because there isn't a supply issue) is that babies have growth spurts where they want to feed ALL the time, but what they are doing is building up your supply, and if you supplement with solids, they won't feed as often, won't build the supply up to where they need it, and consequently won't have enough milk for their needs going forward.
All that said, obviously it's not a black and white issue, hence the hoo haa!
Sorry wyetry. I think I might possibly have got the wrong end of the stick...
I was feeling smug because i started letting her eat solids before 6 months and now they've said its ok - so even though i went against the official guidance at the time i listened to my baby and not the health visitors (I had a food snatcher from 3 months as well).
I was thinking about you today when my baby was sitting in the back of the car going chips chips chips - arrghghgh