To introduce baby to peanuts before starting solids proper?

[Wholeboxoftissues]

My baby is 4.5 months, I want to do BLW and not start solids till 6 months. But I've seen that there's research that the earlier you introduce peanuts, the less chance of allergies, ideally at 4 months. Yesterday I was eating peanut butter on toast while playing with him, and there was a teeny smidge of peanut butter on my thumb, so I thought I'll wipe this on his lip. So I did and he really liked it and I've now introduced peanut. But I really don't want to start solids properly yet. Is this a reasonable thing to do semi regularly until we start solids, to give him regular exposure? Or is it weird?

Weird.

You should wait until baby is around 6m and showing signs of readiness for weaning. It's really not that far off.

My daughter has a nut allergy. Our allergist Dr did say that it is important to get the allergen into the gut sooner than later as we think she was exposed through her excema/broken skin which is one school of thought about why we have allergies. She just said when we start to wean our next child to start with nuts as well as fruit and veg and not to wait. I think a little bit of peanut butter now and again is fine after 4 months. Our allergist did say you need to give a new food 3 days in a row to ensure they don't have an allergic reaction starting with a small bit and gradually building up.

I'm planning to do this with my second. My first had allergies when she started solids at 6 months because they are exposed already through the skin. She grew out of them all with careful exposure during the first year.

We saw a paediatrician specialising in allergies and this was the advice we were given as there is a genetic tendency towards allergies in our family. She said the earlier the better and recommended a small dab/taste from 4 months.

Well I'll tell you something OP my specialist thinks my peanut allergy came from over exposure to them as a child. I didn't develop the allergy until my teens so it's not something to take advice on from the internet.

We have done exactly this. I've got a biology degree so read a lot of papers on it 😂 I'm obviously not an expert! My husband and I have severe allergies and our baby has a milk allergy already. We started introducing allergens at 4 months. Just one per week and in tiny amounts at first. He's been fine with wheat and peanuts but has reacted to egg and possibly sesame. If you want to message me I'm happy to talk about it!

Seems the rest of commenters who have seen specialists disagree.

My understanding was that this is important to introduce earlier if your child has eczema or other reasons to believe your child is at risk of allergies but not really needed otherwise. But research is still sort of mixed as it's newish advice.

Yes v normal. In Israel babies are given a puffy peanut snack called Bamba (it’s available here too even on Tesco) from about 4/5 months old and have shown lower rates of peanut allergy than British children.

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02782-8

And as pp have stated, studies currently suggest that first exposure through skin is more likely to cause allergies than exposure through the gut.

The nature article is paywalled so try this one www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/feeding-babies-foods-with-peanuts-appears-to-prevent-allergies

I exposed my son each at 4 months

Not just peanuts, you should introduce all major allergens now, and keep giving them regularly. That's what the research says, and what is advised in my country.

With my oldest I followed the NHS advice of waiting until 6 months and the child health clinic nurse was very surprised and said that really isn't recommended. That child had so many allergies and in retrospect I think that might have been avoided. My youngest was weaned according to research and has no allergies despite having a higher predisposition due to his dad's nut allergy.

Sorry to hijack but could anyone please point me in the direction of reliable research and advice on this please?

Our DC is 4 months and me and DH have heard about this but I'd really need to see the evidence first and I don't know where to look for it.

Our other two children were weaned around 6 months. DC1 has a shellfish allergy. DC2 initially had peanut and egg allergies but thankfully outgrew them both by around 18 months old. All 3 of our children have eczema, as do I, and DC1 and 2 both have hayfever, as do both me and DH, so we have a strong family history of atopy but not severe food allergies.

The LEAP study and EAT study are two of the main ones and there's a great podcast by the scientist Gideon Lack on it x

Id wait until 6.

The advice has swung since DS14 was a baby. Then it was to wean from 6m. Both my babies literally took matters into their own hands and started grabbing and eating our food from 23 weeks and they were ravenous for something more than milk. The older weaning advice before that was all about phasing in different food types very gradually and jars were still marketed from 4, 6, 9 months in different phases. Those phases of advice did not reduce rates of food allergies.

DS1 had CMPA and egg allergy with soya intolerance. The first obvious reaction was from baby porridge with immediate reddening of the skin turning to swelling. He already had eczema- with hindsight that was triggered by attempting formula in an effort to follow the advice and delay weaning until 6m and hope that would ease the demands for breast feeding every 90 minutes.

The changes in newer advice make sense. We know more about gut bacteria and the immune system needing stimulating to avoid it developing inflamatory conditions, and advice from the 90s-2010s did not improve allergy rates.

I was told by a specialist to introduce everything by 6 months - nuts, eggs, gluten etc

@BooToYouHalloween we started our youngest on bambas as one of his first food on recommendations from my eldests immunologist and no allergies so far touch wood! OP these are a great baby option as they are just like the puffed crisps people buy from Ella

I didn't over think it too much. No history of any allergies in the family so I didn't plan any introduction. They mostly arrived what we were eating so probably had peanut butter around 7 months, might have been earlier, might have been later.

I’d do it, OP. It used to be normal to give all sorts at 4 months, or even earlier. I did with mine (as advice was then) - no allergies. Also remember my somewhat older sister in early 70s, giving some sort of baby cereal to her ravenously hungry 2 month old. He’s now 50, perfectly healthy, never remotely overweight.

But the advice to start weaning from 6m rather than 4m is because overall fewer children develop allergies. Your 1 child not developing allergies is not data.

@Wholeboxoftissues please look at NHS guidance, see a paediatric dietician if you are concerned about specific allergy. Don't just wing it based on strangers on an Internet forum

I'd offer baby tastes of all sorts of things from 4 months. you don't want to start spooning baby rice into baby at 4 months, but it can help to offer a variety of things to taste.

The most recent expert advice is that earlier weaning than 6 months reduces allergies rather than increasing them, especially as regards peanuts.

As we are probably all aware, though, ‘expert’ advice does change from time to time. Just for starters, when I had my first baby, we were firmly told to lay them to sleep on their tummies. Roll on 10 or 15 years, however….

Then there was eggs, we were told to limit our consumption, and butter, dangerous stuff! - eat spread full of man-made ingredients instead….

I think at every stage of weaning it is imperative you are aware not just of known allergens,but also how "reaction" can present and what to do should this occur.

I don't understand that - exposure early through skin = bad, exposure early through eating = ideal? It matches up with what poster above you said, I just don't get it!