Excl breastfeeding until 6mths...

[Ilovemyboy]

I am planning to excl bf my 15wk old DS until he is 6mth old.

He is a big boy (93rd centile or round about that mark), is on 3hourly daytime feeds and will do one block of 4 hours before he needs a feed in the night then is back to 3 hourly again. I have noticed he has started to feed for longer and is getting more frequent. Last time I had had him weighed, he had put on 1lb 3oz in 3 weeks (fab -I know!) but usually puts that on every 2 weeks.

Everything is fine at the moment as you can see but I can see slight changes happening. What does it have to get to before it is obvious that he needs weaning? Do I have to be feeding him every hour and be totally knackered?

Has anyone else managed to excl bf their big baby until they were 6mths? How was it towards the end?

Also, is every 4 weeks classed as a month of a baby's life? So at 16wks he will be 4 mths old and at 24wks he will be 6mths? That doesn't make sense to me as there aren't 28 days in every month.

[misdee]

i think you'll find he is currently having a growth spurt, so should settle back down to usual feedign patterns soon.

6months=26weeks old.

[Notyummy]

Fed my dd until 25 weeks, and she is on the 98th centile! Sometimes feeds got more frequent dueing the day, but found that expressing during the morning and giving a really big bottle full at 7ish in the evening really helped. This meant she got a really big feed at a time when your milk supply gets a bit lower, and you get a break....then I gave a dream feed at 11ish and i had built up plenty of milk for this. After that she typically slept until 7am from about 12 weeks onwards.

Sometime took me a two goes at expressing to get 8/9ozs of milk for the bottle. I used to express of one boob whilst giving her the morning feed, and then go back and do some more mid-morning.

[yellowrose]

A year has 52 weeks - so yes 6 months is 26 weeks. The best way to work it out is calculate 6 months as the exact day he was born on 6 months later.

Some people confuse an interest in adults eating food or constant bf, or putting hands in mouth, etc as readiness for solids. It is a bit more complicated than that. If you look at kellymom.com or La Leche League websites they have very good info. on baby readiness.

It is as I am sure you know recommended by all the major world health orgs. that a baby is excl. bf until 6 months. There are very good health reasons for this. No distinction is made between a skinny baby or big baby or twins. The recommendation applies to all babies.

I remember ds going through lots of growth spurts up until 6 months old. Sometimes he would feed hourly day and night and yet he was always a SMALL baby, between 9th and 25th centiles. They feed like this sometimes no matter what size they are.

[lori21]

My lo was on a huge growth spurt from 4 - 6 months. It is really important to recognise the need to feed more as a growth spurt and not readiness to wean. Aswell as the 6 months guidance I looked at thinks like sitting up by himself, being able to pick up things easily and putting them into his mouth. we did the baby led weaning approach and found this to be fantastic but every baby is an individual.