to wean dd at 21 weeks?

[pregnantpause]

I really think my dd is ready to be weaned. she is ebf, and is a big baby. In the last week she has started feeding every hour/two. waking in the night. watching dd1 eat with much interest etc.
I really think its time BUT when i spoke to hv this mnorning she said 'i should wait until 26 weeks 'for the sake of her health'.
AIBU to think sod it my baby, my way and wean her anyway?surely it wont damage her?

Ah, I just read this thread wondering if seeker would be here ...

I'm afraid that I agree with seeker; I'm not sure how all of this 'You know your baby' nonsense translates into a mother actually knowing when her young baby's gut is sealed and therefore ready for food other than milk.

Chronic malnutrition is damaging, but is there any suggestion that weaning at 6 months causes malnutrition?

Yes of course chronic malnutirtion is harmful to babies- no shit sherlock!

But hwere does it say that continuing to milk feed until 26 weeks will cause chronic malnutrition?

I do think part of the reason the guidelines are now 6 months is because when they were 4-6 months depending on the baby, HVs interpreted that as "you must wean at 16 weeks", and if HVs were saying 16 weeks lots of parents thought 12, 13, 14 weeks would be fine.

Now the guideline is 6 months, most people do at least wait til 17 weeks.

also sitting up is not necessary a sign of being ready to wean

BDA postition paper

advice for signs to watch for

"In practice the developmental signs that suggest that an infant is ready to accept solid foods are:
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Putting toys and other objects in the mouth
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Chewing fists
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Watching others with interest when they are eating
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Seeming hungry between milk feeds or demanding feeds more often even though larger milk feeds have been offered
These developmental signs are generally seen between 4 and 6 months and this seems to be the best time to start solids because from this age infants learn to accept new tastes and textures relatively quickly (Harris 2000).
Waking at night: Around 4 to 6 months infants may be sleeping less, and may begin to wake again during the night. However night-time waking and crying are not necessarily signs of hunger at this age."

Oh ffs - it's not to do with motor development. It is to do with gut development. Which, the last time I looked, you can;t jusdge form the outside. However well "you know your baby". However much you beleive "your baby your rules" and however much you think guidelines are there to be broken.

I think the sitting up thing is more about lessening the risk of choking, as people tend to put young babies in reclining chairs or they slump - and therefore can't gag food back up.

Actually I still don't know how well I know my babies. And they're 10 and 8 now

(They are weaned, though. Really quite good at feeding themselves.)

Have you read the ESPGHAN paper i linked to Seeker it says

"(9?11). The available data suggest that both renal
function and gastrointestinal function are sufficiently
mature to metabolise nutrients from complementary
foods by the age of 4 months (12). With respect to
gastrointestinal function, it is known that exposure
to solids and the transition from a high-fat to a
high-carbohydrate diet is associated with hormonal
responses (eg, insulin, adrenal hormones) that result
in adaptation of digestive functions to the nature of the
ingested foods, by increasing the maturation rate of
some enzymatic functions and/or activities (13,14).
Thus, to a large degree gastrointestinal maturation is
driven by the foods ingested."

Please stick to the facts.
Weaning after 17 weeks has not been shown to increase health risks.
The sealed gut theory has not yet been proven,and there is very little evidence for it.
I agree that if a baby can chew on a bit of fruit or veg it is unlikely to do them harm, this makes sense to me on an evolutionary level. It is also a lot less hassle to wait until then, as they pick it up much quicker and can be eating what the family eats within weeks.

Weired MI to think that you and I had a discussion about mashing with forks when our dd's were around 6 months old. How the time has flown!!!

Thank god that's behind us!

I wonder if some of the risks of weaning between 17-26 weeks are actually risks of introducing anything but breastmilk, including formula?

I'm not saying milk leaves most babies nutritionally deficient, quite the opposite. Breast milk is uniquely tailored to babies nutritional needs including trace element and calorie needs (providing the mother is well nourished).

But some fast growing babies may be straining the limits. Large brains are a huge drain on resources. Brain development is very sensitive to supply problems, either nutritionally or oxygen supply or waste problems like toxin buildup or blood acidosis.

Obviously, obese children also run health risks. There needs to be a balance between the two - we should not starve or overfeed. All i'm saying is that a baby with a faster than average growth rate will have higher than average calorie demands and may require earlier weaning.

Quenelle There are more calories in food than milk for the same volume (depending on the food - cucumber lower than milk lower than dripping) but to begin with babies get 100% calories from milk and transition to 90%+ from food by the age of 2 or 3. At some stage it becomes impossible to meet all calorie requirements through BM alone - at the extreme this is at adulthood. So the hungrier the baby the earlier the transition is required IMO. Personally I'd like a range from 16 to 26 weeks being advised, but as others have said, parents are more likely to interpret that as "16 weeks is best" or "26 weeks is best" depending on the prevailing winds.

I'm a strong believer in instincts for child rearing - you "just know" your baby's gut is ready for food because not so long ago if your instinct was wrong the baby would be more likely to die and the DNA for bad instincts is selected against and slowly disappears.

I really do not believe in this theory of gut sympathy. Or maybe I am just brutally insensitive, of course...how on earth can you know, from your baby's behaviour, her/his digestive abilities?

Mind you, I can't see why anyone would want the faff of weaning before it's absolutely necessary.

The people who instinctively know their 8 week olds need rusks in their bottle don't strike me as the peak of natural selection to be honest.

YANBU at all - seems like it's the fashion to wean really late now but when mine were babies the recommended time was 12 weeks, which I did with my older one and no obesity/allergies as yet! My younger one wasn't ready that early and quite happy with just milk for ages. I think you know when your child is ready to wean.

Just an observation but it's always the really chavvy stupid mums that wean their kids at ridiculous ages like 2 months, saying things like "He just COULDN'T wait" when what they mean is, they couldn't wait. Flame me, it's still true.

motherinferior people do it because they think it'll make the baby sleep through the night.

there is one big clue to digestive ability though - the contents of the nappy. Trying a little bit of one food at 17 weeks and determining from the reaction and gut output whether the baby coped well with it or not - that's sensible IMHO.

Advice is based on a mixture of evidence and current fashionable thinking. Its a very good thing for parents to be given evidence based advice, but these are still conclusions based on the average of may babies. Each individual baby will be somewhere on a distribution curve around that average, and so the advice should be tailored to each baby's individual situation.

Good grief.

OP, my baby is a little bit older than yours (24 weeks) and I've started giving him food this week. I listened to everybody and got really confused and guilty over all the contradictory advice- it seems that whatever you do, somebody will try and make you feel bad about it and be absolutely adamant that they are correct. And only them.

Yes, I even went as far as reading some of the articles which have been quoted from, which only left me more confused as, to be honest, the advice does change. And if people were adamant they were correct when they told my DH's granny to feed her son blancmange at 10 days old (seriously!), to telling my mum to start my brother on weetabix at 9 weeks, who's to say that telling us to wait until 26 weeks is correct now? Maybe we will be told in ten years time that we've done the wrong thing?

For the past six weeks, he has been feeding at least every two hours including throughout the night. Nope, the 'sleep regression' was not temporary and yes he is definitely feeding rather than snacking. Since I started him on food, however, he has slept better and been generally happier during the day.

If I was to give any advice at all, from a mum in a fairly similar situation, it's stuff everybody else and do exactly what you want. You'll know soon enough if there are any problems.

Good luck!

up to you! the guidelines are 4-6 months - and you are well within that range.

from my own POV, if feeding is beoming more of a PITA than a pleasure, it's time to wean... and i did wean a 10 week old on EBM and baby rice without trouble. (she did have trouble using formula & baby rice, shocking constipation.)

next to the benefits of BF (widely proven and statistically significant) the benefits of EBF (fewer studies, less significance) in the first world beyond 17 weeks are not well proven.