To ask what age you weaned your children?

[buncakes]

I have a DS, 19 weeks and am a FTM. I am conflicted about when to wean. NHS says 6 months. But my family and friends think I'm mad for waiting and they think he needs food now. He is FF and does cry for milk a lot more than he used to and I find it hard to fill him. I am not sure if weaning would help this - everything I've read online says no but everyone I know says yes.

Would be interested to hear experiences and opinions. I just want to do what's best for my baby.

4 months for my first and only out of desperation as he had something wrong with his esophagus and constantly brought up entire bottles of milk, breast and formula, and failed to gain weight or thrive. As a first time and young mum, the attitudes of health visitors was to look at me and what I was doing wrong instead of accepting my baby was ill.

Doctors attitude was to prescribe bloody Gaviscon over and over again and seeing as it wasn't anything to do with acid reflux it didn't work. I figured out baby rice was better than medication for a four-month-old. It woked and he gained weight but honestly, unless there is a very VERY good reason do not do this. They struggle to eat and can easily choke. They can;t sit up or bring up food easily that gets stuck.

6 months for second baby and 7.5 months for third.Third baby was not interested in food at all at 6 months and it took until past 7 months before she was bothered at all!

Both mine were 5 months. It's literally just a taste of food, it doesn't replace milk feeds.

DD1 wasn't particularly interested when I tried her on that hideous pap that is baby rice. She enjoyed everything else though.

Both were sitting unaided and enthusiastic. Heck, DD2 was pulling up to standing at 5 months and crawling swiping food off toddlers at 6 months, she was definitely ready .

My Ds was/ is huge. By 19/ 20 weeks he was hungry constantly and by bed time I was pretty much dried up and he cried and cried (refused bottle). I started giving him food once a day, happy content ds and happy Mummy. You will know when it's right to introduce food.

My first two were weaned at 4 months with purée.
My third was 5.5 months on purée.
My fourth and fifth a week before they were 6 month both were blw and it was so much easier than purée as they picked up the food themselves and ate what they wanted.
Yes it was messy but they were ready unlike my first two,
I was told to wean them at four months as they were ready in hindsight they weren't.

What I don't understand about the argument not to wean hungry babies is that yes milk has more calories than a bit of puréed food, but surely the food is harder to digest so it does keep baby fuller for longer? I could drink litres of milk per day and yes it would keep me alive but I would still be hungry if I didn't have my dinner even if it was only a bowl of vegetable soup it would still fill me more than milk.

First 2 at 3 months as per guide lines then.

Second 2 at 4 months, all my babies were huge and they needed food.

My grandchildren one was 4 months the other 6.

You will know wen he's ready.

I've heard a couple of people say baby rice is bad. Can anyone tell me why please?

Next to no nutritional value.

DS (almost 4) was weaned at 20 weeks due to a milk intolerance- apparently "early" weaning can help strengthen the gut against intolerances - it worked and he was able to handle milk before his 1st birthday. We will be doing the same with DD. Interestingly the paediatrician advised that a large part of the advice around the 6m weaning age is as others have said that people generally start earlier and if they said 4 months then people would start at 2-3 months and by 6m old their baby's would be eating all sorts of crap that they can't handle due to then having been "eating" for around 3-4 months by this point. At the end of day you need to go what you're comfortable with but clearly a number of drs that many of us have dealt with seem to disagree with the guidance published by their employer!

Streetface there's nothing wrong with baby rice as a first food. It doesn't have any nutritional value but it is mixed with milk, which does, and you're using maybe half a teaspoon of the stuff for a few days to introduce a new texture.

Ah ok thanks! I was thinking it was harmful or something. I didn't realise it didn't have any nutrition. It's not the same as rice but a ground up version then? (Sorry if I'm being a bit thick)

Baby rice can also be very constipating.

Ds - 6 months - had loads of allergies.
Dd - was advised to do it at 4 months - due to the history of allergies and latest advice but I actually did it at about 4 and a half 5 months, largely as she didn't seem ready - she was a week early. If she'd been a big hungry boy it prob would have been fine.
But anyway she doesn't have any allergies

The guidelines have always been guidelines. They have always said "around" or "about" and then encouraged you to looked for actual signs in your individual baby. Not their weight (if they're "huge" then surely they got that way on milk alone which tells you an awful lot in itself), not watching you eat (mine watched me drive and use knives) and not waking up more at night (usually developmental and research shows weaning doesn't help). Can they sit up with support? Pick up food and put it in their mouths, chew and swallow? Have they lost their tongue thrust reflex? Most of these signs appear around 6 months ish. Perhaps a wee bit before.

All the above of course assumes a baby developing typically with no additional needs.

Instinct tells you nothing. Maybe that they're hungry. Not WHAT they're hungry for. Their actions show what they're able to digest. Instinct is used in place of "do what you want" in these cases. Or what your well meaning relative is pushing for. Or a poorly trained hv.

Never before 17 weeks without medical advice and watch your baby and be led by them and their external cues.

I weaned at 27 and 26 weeks respectively. The 26 week child was ready at 24 weeks but ended up with pneumonia so we had to delay weaning until he was recovered.

As last poster & others said - the signs are sitting up unaided & able to chew & swallow. Otherwise there's a bigger risk of choking.

Interestingly WHO latest research suggests weaning a little before 6 mo may be beneficial as babies develop ability to chew preparing them to eat meat around 6 mo when they begin to need more iron than milk alone provides. Sucking on meat & getting juices is fine for this; don't expect them to be swallowing great chunks!

Do your research & either nod & smile at relations or tell them the thinking behind what you're doing as you feel at the time!

I would say though whatever you do can't stop your child being fussy later - we ebf, blw, all the things you're meant to do & dd now can spot a veg at 20 paces & refuse to eat it ;)

I weaned at 16 weeks for my now 12 year old DS and 20 weeks for younger DD. DS was 10lb 7oz at birth so by 16 weeks I was struggling to fill him. I weaned him on baby rice, he lapped it up. Was much more settled then.
I was weaned at about 10 weeks, never had any problems!

I weaned DS at about 4.5 months, out of desperation as he wasn't gaining weight and slipping down the centiles. I was 23 and didn't have a clue what I was doing though. I started on baby porridge and then when he was 6 months introduced soft veg.

Ds1 was 17 weeks and Ds2 was 21 weeks.

Ds3 is now 19 weeks and we're starting tomorrow. He's mixed fed ATM - majority breast but with one 7oz bottle of formula at bedtime. But over the last week he's become increasingly whingy/unsatisfied after a bf and his bottle. We've regressed to almost what it was like at the start of bf, him cluster feeding in the evenings and only going max 2 hours between feeds. All the other signs are there too - especially taking an interest in food, he watches every bite you eat whilst drooling and licking his lips.

Last night I was sat on the sofa eating with him in front of me...a bowl of chips, with my fingers. He was watching as usual...I leant forward to wipe his mouth with his bib as he was dribbling and he opened his mouth wide then absolutely screamed when I pulled my hand back...I definitely think he thought he was getting something, poor bugger, and he was not impressed!

Baby rice had it's place IMO.

It's ideal for the first few days to get them used to a different texture and something more solid than liquid...easy to gradually increase the thickness of it too.

Can't see the point of it past the first few days though.

My rough plan is 4 days of baby rice, getting thicker, then another few days of baby rice mixed with puréed fruit or veg. Then just the fruit and veg and the remaining (probably still nearly full) box of baby rice goes in the bin.

Something to bear in mind is that if you start start later, weaning goes faster. We started DD at 5.5 months but stopped almost immediately as she was on antibiotics and it was clear her stomach wasn't coping. We started again 2 weeks later and she picked it up so much faster, we really didn't loose anything by pausing.

I don't see anything enjoyable at all about spending 2 months feeding puree so left it as long as possible and went straight for baby led weaning and giving them buts of what we were having with both. I've had 2 big (75th and 91st) centile active babies that have been fine on just milk until 5.5 or 6 months. I've never understood why giving them the sort of food I'd eat if I was trying to diet (vegetables and fruit diluted with water) is supposed to fill them up better than full fat milk anyway.

When I had my first, the advice was to wean at 3 months, so I did on the hvs advice. The subsequent 3 also were weaned at that age because I had done so with the first.

I think the main concern with baby rice is it contains at least some arsenic www.madeformums.com/news-and-gossip/arsenic-and-toxins-found-in-baby-rice-food--what-you-need-to-know/13211.html . If you are planning on giving quite a bit of baby rice, e.g. every day, it might be something to research a bit more.

DC 1 blw when 6 & half months she did & does love food
DC2 blw 8 months but barely ate anything until he was 11 months he is still not interested in food unless it's cake
DC3 blw 7 months i put her off as long as possible because the mess is less fun the third time when her brother handed her a carrot. She loves food.

(All bf if it makes a difference.)

Thing is most food babies fill their tummy with (veg) is much lower calories by volume (& much harder work) than milk so i cant see how earlier food helps really. Likely to mean food plus nearly the same milk for a long while i suspect.

5 months after he literally grabbed food from me and ate it.

6 months for both of mine