To be a bit shocked that people are still weaning their babies really early?

[bumbleymummy]

I'm not talking about within a few weeks of 6 months and I know that some babies with reflux are weaned a bit earlier under the guidance of a paediatrician - I'm talking 3 week olds being given bottles of baby rice/rusks because they're big/hungry/whatever. I just can't believe that some people still think this is ok and will argue about how milk just wasn't enough for their baby at that age

I think the fact that there is insufficient research contributes to a lot of the "weaning by instinct" that goes on. Personally I do think parents should judge, within parameters defined by medical research, when to wean.

I think 6 months is given as an aim to try to 'catch' the parents likely to feed their children largely processed food, wean them on chocolate, wean at 4 weeks as that's what their mother did etc. What this 6 month target actually does is makes parents who will probably slave away cooking lovely home cooked stuff and try to find out all the advice agonise about weaning at 5 and a half months.

What is needed is proper research into problems caused by weaning after 3 months. (As I understand it there is already evidence that shows problems when weaning before that time.) When I was researching when to wean dd I came across this study which I found interesting. I will probably be past the weaning stage by the time the results come out, but it's good to see this happening.

Enquiring About Tolerance

As I say I'm no expert dietician! But the guidelines for cf are fairly stringent and evidence based so there must be a valid reason behind supplementing the diet.

I'll have a look later

Feeding little and often as babies need is difficult - particularly if BFing. Giving them something solid to sit in their stomachs will probably keep them quiet for longer even though they are probably taking in fewer calories. Weaning early will probably make for a superficially more "content" baby which is why mothers, grandmothers etc. probably still advise it but it might come at a hell of a cost.

As is usually the case with parenting the easy option is probably not the best one.

How the hell people even get solids into a tiny baby beats me. Watching babies slumped sideways with mush dribbling down their faces can't be very nice.

Some folk are stupid, sadly it's as simple as that.

I don't see a problem with weaning at 5 months if your baby is showing signs of needing to be moved onto more solid foods but at 1 month old or something like that is ridiculous.

My DD is nearly 17 weeks old and in a few weeks if her reflux hasn't improved, we may try some porridge but will ask doctor first as we don't want to rock the boat, so she'll be around 18 weeks.

But at the end of the day imagining her eating solids even now feels weird. I was weaned at around 4 1/2 months or at least started the process with mashed up baby apple, rusk in milk etc.

I think there is guidelines for a reason but a week or so either way I doubt would cause major problems unless you already have underlying genetic chances of developing these problems.

Still, why you'd give a 4 week old a banana, or a 2 week old rice is beyond me and seems the most ludicrous and dangerous thing in the world.

Baby books don't always have the same advice as medical recommendation, though. My mum reckons all of this "official guidelines" etc is a modern thing anyway. Back in the 80s/90s when she was having babies she said there wasn't any official line, obviously you would seek advice from health professionals, GP, health visitor, nurse running baby clinic etc (as well as your own mum, other mum friends etc) but even today they give vastly different information from each other - I can't imagine it was that different then, which is why you get all of this confusion about what "advice" was at such and such a time. The Back To Sleep campaign was one of the biggest campaigns ever about parenting advice in general - other than that I don't think that "guidelines" have ever been specifically pushed. It's just now that we have the internet it's easy to check what the "official" line is and places like mumsnet are obsessed with the evidence based guidelines etc!

I know someone who weaned at 2.5 months, just a few years ago. Seems bizarre to me.

I don't want to wean her, but don't fancy her on heavy duty medication for reflux either, poor thing.

I just don't see putting food into a babies mouth who doesn't like it too much as very nice, it actually makes me a little upset.

DH has always been prone to constipation and now has IBS. He was given solids from a very young (under 1 month old) age. Apparently he then had sugar in his bottle to make him "go" there does seem to be a lot of people in their 40's to 50's in a similar position. Is it coincidence or not? Could the increase in processed foods also play a part? I was pressured to give ds2 formula (despite having chosen and got on well with BF) and solids but resisted until he was really ready at 5.5 months. My DMs friend advises her adult DD against "all these modern fads" and I have to bite my tongue until it hurts when I'm around her and she's talking about it.

Annabelle,, don't really understand your obsession to be honest.

at least 2 posters here had babies in the 80s and are trying to share what was accepted at that time because they were actually mothers at the time.

you remind me of Hermionie in Harry Potter. .. '

but but the book says'

you are wrong or were you a young mum in the 80s??

It is correct that official advice prior to 1994 was to start weaning at 12-16 weeks.

I even have cp files from back then having weaning in care plans and it was considered to be very bad parenting if you didnt.

One that sticks to mind is a mum who did what we now call BLW wanting to start at 6 months having her child removed as that was considered to be neglect and so dangerous is was classed as abuse.

But I do also remember slightly later in the mid 90's (won't admit its because I have a model made from ikky powdered baby food boxes in my loft) the jars and boxes of what we now call first stage used to have suitable from 4-6 months on the labels.

I had my two children in the 1970s. The advice for both of them was to start 'introducing solid food' at 16 weeks OR 12lbs, whichever came first - so a lot of my contemporaries who had large babies started weaning them quite young, because they had reached the (then) recommended 12lbs mark.

Another thing that changed in the 3 years between my two was that DC1 was refused the (recently introduced) MMR jab because there is a history of epilepsy in the family; when I had DC2 three years later I was told, 'Oh, it's fine, no problem' but was so worried by the - definite - advice that the doctor had given me 3 years earlier that I refused it 'just to be on the safe side'.

Advice does change all the time - you can only do your best for your children by listening to what is being recommended when they are babies, and then making your own decisions.

The MMR in the 70s? I didnt think that was introduced until the end of the 80s

I think it goes without saying that some parents will always do stupid things, regardless of advice.

What I really find interesting is how some parents avidly stick to whatever they are told by health professions and then think its their business to disapprove and criticises people who don't.

I know people who are so scared of weaning prior to 6 months , their baby ends up desperartly trying to sustain itself by feeding so frequently that the mums end up exhausted, babies are desperate to feel full!

Worth remembering that the advice is different for ex prems, 5-8 months chronological age, regardless of corrected age.
We had to go for it at 6 months (just shy of 3months corrected) in bouncy chair due to bottle refusing and me back at work. Mostly porridge or puree to thicken breast milk as only way to get any milk down at all.

I think if anything's clear it's that the information isn't clearly expressed. Even today. The guideline has been 6 months for 10 years now and still the jars say 4 months on them for example. I know why this is, but I don't expect everybody to know it.

The guidelines re weaning actually DON'T change all the time, they change rarely and the changes aren't vast, but the information available outside of them seems to directly contradict them.

I was born in 1980, my brother in 1978 and my Mum said that as a HCP herself, she knew the guidelines were 16 weeks and she stuck to them but her friends were bombarded with all sorts of literature with contradictory advice.

My pfb is 23 this year, and he had baby rice (from a spoon, not in his bottle) from 6 weeks old, on the advice of my HV.
I was in pieces with what I now know was pnd, and quite frankly, I still have some PTSD from his birth and the early months are little more than a blue, and the only reason we are both still alive is that he was such a placid baby and slept a lot...
Not sure what my point is but it was most definitely the HV who advised me to give him the baby rice, and several other baby foods - she brought me a load od packets of dried stuff to mix with his milk - rice, porrige, pudding and so on and told me to "give him as much as he will eat" starting with once a day a working up.
By the time he was six months old he was having 2 weetabix for breakfast, a quarter pound margarine tub of "dinner ding" frozen blended veg/stew and about a third of a box of powdered baby food every day alongside 5 or 6 8oz bottles of formula.
My 2nd child otoh, wouldn't have a spoon in his mouth until he was well over 6 months old and refused everything but milk.
:D

Its not unhelpful Pom.

It highlights how daft some HV's were and still can be by advocating the use of a product with much the same nutritional qualities as loo roll.

My DS was formula fed from 2 weeks as I could not produce enough milk and he was losing weight. At 12 weeks he was drinking 9 oz bottles every 15-30 minutes (hungry baby milk at that), he was also sitting and grabbing at food. So I weaned him (13 weeks). He is now 9. It was something I had to do. Each case is different, feeding a baby rice in a bottle is wrong - but maybe some babies just have different needs when it comes to food.

Think I should just stick to MN. Seems that 6 weeks is the average for starting to put rice/rusks in a bottle around here. All these big, hungry babies (some of which are smaller than my own btw!) that just can't survive on milk alone after a few weeks

Can we start a commune somewhere please?!

Advice varied country by country, some places still saying 4 months, so fair enough then, but yes, mad to give solids before then.

as someone with lifelong IBS, I could cheerfully punch the "never did my kids any harm" crowd right in the face, tbh. 20 years plus of pain, embarrassment and hassle, because you know best. And these problems may not manifest till your kids are twenties or older. But hey, you know your bubs best, right Hun?

I weaned DS at 4mo (he's 10mo now) I was advised by every medical professional to. He had terrible reflux and couldn't keep any milk down. I loved his food from the moment we fed him.

And a poster said about bigger babies not needing more food on page one, but that's not true is it? Babies (and adults) should consume a certain amount of calories based on their weight - ie x calories for every y lbs. And while milk may be more calorific, as an adult i know i feel less full after drinking a pint of full fat milk compared to eating a piece of toast - solid food does feel different in your stomach.

I would have loved to not weaned till 6mo, but ds really needed it. I think before 3 months is too early tho unless some medical condition.

alconleigh do you think I would have weaned my son if I didn't need too? I am sorry for your IBS but your bitterness does not add anything to the discussion where mothers are explaining their reasons. I was advised by a doctor as the volume of milk my son was consuming was not healthy either.

I am saying that parents don't know the cost of their decision yet. And if it's digestive problems in an adult child, they won't have to live with it anyway. Not sure how too much milk could harm a baby, when it's what they've evolved to digest, but am not a doctor.

All my babies were big but never did the rice in the bottles lol! Advice then was to start weaning from 4 months but did have a friend who use to our sugar in the babies bottles :(