To ignore the Dr and to keep feeding DS like I am?

[startrek90]

I have just got back from DS weighing in. He is 6 months old and according to the Dr is underwieght and needs more food.

I feed on demand atm. I thought my baby was getting enough. Some days he eats more and some days he eats less. On average his feeds go like this;

6am: 230ml milk
8am: 230ml milk and baby porridge
12 noon: Jar of baby food and 150ml milk
2:30pm: half jar baby food and 150ml milk
5pm: fruit pot and 150 ml milk
8pm: 230ml milk

he eats during the night if he wants and i give him more or less if he wants.

The dr said to force him to eat more and give him more solids but DS won't have it. Aside from the first and last feed I offer food everytime before I offer milk.

AIBU in ignoring the dr and continuing. I feel a bit crap now tbh.... I thought I was managing for once and now I feel rubbish....

If you want something simple and very filling then both bananas and avocados can be mushed up for babies. You could offer that in addition. It depends how underweight as to whether you need to feed up.

My niece was very tiny under five and so my sister (10 years back) was actually told to stuff her with kit kats and to tempt her with unhealthy foods. She was properly underweight so to a certain extent my sister did this. Interestingly said niece is now very chunky as a teenager and I often wonder how this has all played through to her being overweight.

I fed a lot of jars with ds2 as was hassled at the time. ds1 was fed entirely organic mush. Can't see much difference between them now as teenagers!

I would give the milk in between meal times. Like others have said, move onto proper food mashed or blitzed, and use jars for convenience so not every day. He needs to have more at tea time too. Try higher calorie food but proper food - so macaroni cheese for example.

Wow some people are being a bit mean here. The OP is asking for help not a telling off.

My baby is just a couple of weeks older than yours, OP and we are getting into the swing of food a little bit now, after a bumpy start

I was very daunted by it all, but have found it gets easier.

We have a very small galley narrow kitchen (nowhere for a family table etc) so what I do is carry the highchair to the kitchen door and sit the baby there (away from the oven and hobs) so I have time to make his food without him being upset he can't see me!

I give him something to nibble at as I cook (usually a piece of mild cheddar, a finger of toast, a strawberry or lump of banana). Sometimes he eats this, sometimes he mushes it into his hair or drops it over the side, but it keeps him entertained.

If I need to do something very quick and I have nothing in I will scramble one egg in a small frying pan with a bit of butter.

Otherwise what I do is keep something back from our evening meal and fiddle around with it for the baby the next day. I tend it make it into two portions, and give him half for lunch and half for dinner that evening.

So today he has had cauliflower and broccoli cheese for lunch because we had cauliflower and broccoli as vegetables last night with our sausages and mash. I took out a few bits of potato, brocc and cauli as I was serving up last night and put them in the fridge. Today I took them out, mashed them up a bit so they were soft enough to eat, sprinkled some cheddar on and popped it in the oven to warm it through and melt the cheese.

Yesterday he had pork with rice and broccoli, again I'd fished out bits from our food last night before adding our sauce/salt to it. I mashed this all up with a bit of water using my soup blending stick as I don't have a food processor, it worked fine.

Tonight for tea we are having pasta with chilli and chorizo, so I'll put some plain pasta aside for the baby before adding the sauce, and tomorrow I'll reheat it, with some frozen peas and a bit of trout ( I bought one fillet and cut it into six bits and put it in the freezer to use for the baby).

Hope this helps

Op..

You aren't doing a bad job... You say DH is underwight and you are spot on..Do you homecook meals? You can buy cheap blenders and blend what you are having, put into little pots but don't put gravy on. I used to give my DS lots of mashed fruit, Avocados are really good as really high in good fats.

If he is prem and just started eating he might not be ready for lumpy food.

Jarred food is not poison ..However it isn't ideal all the time..

OP first baby I went back to work at 6 months so most of his food was at nursery and I gave jars at home as I wasn't sure of myself.

Second baby through a combination of having less money and being more confident I did the baby led weaning thing. Really, really easy. Don't worry about blending. Just give small chunks of actual food - pasta spirals, florets of broccoli, carrot batons etc. If they can hold it and chew it, they'll be fine. The beauty is, you don't have to cook up batches of baby food, you just think about what you're having and give the baby some.

To reassure you though, not an ounce of jar food passed my second child's lips but I look at both of my children now and they have the same appetite and attitude to food. No difference at all.

We all wobble and doubt ourselves.

My dc loved milk and hated all mashed and puréed foods whether home made or jars.

At 6 months a child should only be beginning to be weaned. If purées don't suit, then don't use them. Give finger food to suck on. The baby will play with the food and explore it. Maybe he will eat it, maybe not. My dc started eating properly at 10-11 months, and I wish I had stressed less. They are in secondary school now and have no problems.

It's perfectly fine not to do baby led weaning and do purées instead especially with a premature baby, many of them gag often if solid food is introduced too early which can be frightening for you both.

Can you afford to buy a cheap blender? The stick blenders are often under £10 in supermarkets.

I good purée many babies like is mashed banana and Avacado, the Avacado will provide healthy fats for the baby. This one is ideal if you don't have a blender as both should be soft enough to mash with a fork.

Weetabix with his baby milk is another option for breakfast.

Yogurt is a good fat for your baby too. I would avoid the baby versions and just buy plain yogurt.

Switch the fruit pot with a full fat yoghurt.

Disagree with previous posters. My children all dropped down the centiles on the growth charts and they are all healthy, happy children. If baby is developing well and physical causes for slow weight gain have been ruled out, I'd keep going as you are. I ended up under so much pressure to supplement breastfeeding with formula - health visitor and gp were both wrong and paediatric Consultant backed me up on that when we eventually got there

Feeding babies is a minefield isn't it? Personally, I wouldn't ignore your GP but there are some things to think about.

Firstly, weight is a pretty meaningless number without height. Did your doctor measure him too? Is your lo meeting all of his milestones?

The nhs recommend moving to 3 meals a day between 8 and 9 months, as your lo is doing this at 6 months, it seems odd that your doctor would recommend more food not less, particularly given that there are very few solids that you can feed him which will be as calorie dense as his formula. Is he on first stage formula?

I'd also ditch the baby rice, it has very limited nutritional value and will take up valuable tummy space. As for the jars, I'm not judging as I did use them for a time with my DS, but you may want to read this article from the Guardian. Definitely worth thinking about if weight is an issue

Also, is there a reason that he can't chew? Even in the bad old days when we weaned at 4 months babies would have finger food by 6 months. If he really can't manage any finger food, you may need to speak to your HV.

With the nhs guidelines in mind, can I suggest a new routine? You could try it for a few day and see how you get on. That's if you want to of course

6am bottle
8am bottle
11am bottle
12 pm lunch - try banana-Cado from MN weaning recipes.
2.30 pm milk
5pm solids, try him with cheese on toast, an omelette, or if you prefer purees try the baby Dahl, again from MN weaning recipes.
7pm bottle
10pm bottle

This would give him more milk and therefore more calories and more nutritional food. Let us know how you get on

My first baby was 5 weeks early. Feeding and weight could become quite an obsession at times as you feel you are always playing catch up. We tried baby led weaning but DS1 ate to quickly so would choke, not gag. I used a lot of the recipes in the Annabel Carmel books and my own recipes but just made in batches, puréed and frozen. Meals at six months were porridge or weetabix for breakfast. Savoury course, fruit course and yogurt at lunch and tea time. The yogurts are particularly good for high calorie intake.
Just as an aside I combined breast feeding and formula feeding with him as he needed to gain weight and he was not gaining enough with breast milk. Formula milk also helped flush out his jaundice which is very common with early babies.
There are lots of arguments for and against baby led weaning or puréed diet but at the end of the day you do what's best for your baby and what you are happy with. Please don't feel guilty about formula of jar food and never let anyone make you feel like a bad mum.

hi OP - weaning premature babies is not as straightforward as those going to full term and if you're struggling I would probably suggest contacting an organisation such as Bliss, who can give you tailored advice. Are you still outpatients? If so you could request a dietician appointment with the hospital. My son was early and was a nightmare to wean, they have very different digestive systems due to having to take milk early, and often have problems. BLW was impossible and we used lots of purees. I was told that my son should be on three full meals by a HV when he would barely eat a spoonful. The specialist I saw said that up to a year food was about exploring and learning and it was fine if they get most nutrition from milk. Don't stress about it, it's very early days of weaning and it sounds as though you are doing great. I would try to be selective about the advice you get and where possible find people who understand premmies, even my GP wasn't as well informed as I would have expected. Good luck. My son is four now and eats well.

Forgot to answer your question about the blender, could you mash food with a fork?

You don't say where you live but IME doctors are not all made equally and this is more true in some countries than in others. Advice will reflect local practices and may not have much evidence base. There is nothing wrong with engaging your brain and seeking a second opinion before following medical advice.

If your baby is happy and healthy and fed on demand it's unlikely that there's anything wrong with him. Some babies take longer to adapt to chewing solids than others - my younger child got to about 8 months and a strapping 12kg before he was really ready to chew very much. There's nothing wrong with purees and jars either as long as you progressively introduce normal foods. In fact where I live (france) babies tend to eat purees longer than in the UK yet by the time they are 2-3 years old most toddlers are self-feeding normal adult meals and have a more adult and more varied diet than most British toddlers.

Teammck05 thats it exactly. DS eeds so quickly he chokes and its bloody frightening if I do say so. He plays with his food a lot (and anything he can hold he will put in his mouth whether I want him to or not :/) he just doesn't seem to handle 'bitty food' for those posters asking he is 64cm long.

I will try some suggestions here....I don't have a microwave or anything like that so heat everything on the stove. I am not in the UK so not NHS nor do we have a HV etc...

Is there anybody else in real life you could ask? I am concerned that lots of people are giving you advice over the Internet without seeing your baby. The problem here is that a doctor has told you that your baby is underweight, we have no way of knowing how he came to this opinion, or whether it is true.

My DS (not prem) also couldn't handle bitty food, eg lumps in a mashed up consistency. He was better with large pieces of food he could hold like crusty bread. He was late with chewing (but an early talker with good diction) and is still a fussy eater with a "thing" about textures.

Annabel Karmel has a website and some of her recipes are also on BBC website. Baby Organics also used to publish their recipes online. If you live abroad you will have access to fresh seasonal veg, most of which can be easily steamed and mashed and to which you can add pasta/rice/potato and whatever protein you are having.

I agree with what has been said above about weaning and feeding premature babies. They should generally start on solids earlier than full term babies, and you may have to make allowances/try different strategies because they and their tummies are not as well developed as full-termers. (My DD was 8 weeks premature so I have been there.) The main thing is that they are following their curve on the centile chart but it is worth having a read of specialist guidelines such as from BLISS. (Just google BLISS and you will find their website.)

I'm another one suggesting to use the Annabel Karmel Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. We still use some of the recipes now. Another book which I think is very good for guidance,reassurance and recipes is the River Cottage Baby and Toddler cookbook which covers both purees and baby led weaning and which has loads of recipes which all the family can eat. I am sure you know this already but Amazon (either the UK site or your local one) will send these to you at a reasonable cost and they are both really good investments in my experience.

I don't know if your baby is underweight but, looking at what you are giving him, I would say that he needs a wider variety of food and textures whatever the weight situation is and cooking at least some meals for him will help achieve this. However, his main food intake is still going to be from his milk until he is about one.

You shouldn't need any special equipment to cook food for him. I didn't have a microwave and cooked everything on a stove. However, a hand blender is very, very handy, and if you can freeze extra portions it can save you time.

Sugarplumkate macaroni cheese for a 6 month old? Premature actually 5 mo?? Seriously?????

I second what PP said you should find help in real life, with someone who can see your baby

Bunny my second was eating macaroni cheese at 6 months as we just gave her what we ate (and still do) so I don't see why that's an issue?!

OP I hope you're still with the thread and you haven't been scared off. Please ignore my comments about finger food, I was ignoring the fact that your baby was premature.

I agree with other posters, you perhaps need to speak to people who have experience of weaning premmie babies.

There's some info from Bliss here but I do hold on what I said on the solids having less calories than the milk and perhaps decreasing the solids and increasing the milk

Thank you all so much :) I have lots to look out for here. Thank you for the BLISS link. I neer knew that DS being premmie had an effect. I will be looking up your suggestions. I can'T freeze anything as I have no freezer (can'T afford one) can some food keep in the fridge?

Pretty sure mine ate macaroni cheese at 6 months old too, it was one of the only things she would eat for ages!