To think this baby should be on some solids by now

[tuttuttut]

A friend of mine has a 9.5 month old ds who is exclusively breastfed. He has not had anything else pass his lips yet. She is a brilliant mother (she is attachment parenting - probably not relevent though)

Please tell me if i'm wrong and i'll stop worrying but i really thought at this age babies need solids due to there iron levels depleting. Also i thought solids help with speech development because of the chewing?

Everytime i see her i casually ask if he's had any solids yet and she says "i don't think he's ready". He has no sn by the way.

I have suggested BLW as i thought this would suit them but still no. Is this not as 'bad' as mother's thinking their baby is ready at 4 months really?

if you TRUST your child, then you would offer solid food...if not, why not? and that is where it becomes reasonable to ask questions, as op did, and everyone is like, not your business, but then, this mom is possibly well informed, so, why does she not offer food, what is she scared off, and why is she scared aof that? there are questions to be asked, once a child is physically ready as in can take food other then milk, they should be offerec it and it should be the childs choice!

It's not neglect! Breastmilk is perfectly balanced for any human being to live on (not that you could get enough, but that's not the point). It is a very new thing to wean children so young, six months is still seen as young by a lot of the world.

The mother is giving a perfectly balanced diet and will give solids when she thinks her child is ready. As long as it's not getting to an age like a previous posters friend, then there is no problem. The child in question is not even a year old yet.

Please don't shout.

HM, but I might, think, why does she not even try solids..not about the child taking it...but why not offer and at a researched point where foood is digestable ( other then breastmilk)...

Breatmilk is indeed adequat...but bot even ofeerig, giving that chopice whilst they can choseis!

Babies need to develop their jaw muscles in preparation for speech. Chewing provides this mouth development and therefore it could potentially aqffect speech development. Milk is also not adequate usually at this age, you are correct about iron depletion and that is why the WHO suggests weaning at about 6mths.
It is also essential for hand eye co-ordination to develop, also fine motor skills are developed by picking up small pieces of food and putting them into the mouth. Delays like this can inhibit childrens abilities in other areas.

Its also more likely that a child so old will wean less easily because of the length of just having milk. I think they would accept new tastes and textures less readily.

Not sure about anyone elses child, but DS was chewing from the time he was 6 weeks old. Not just on my boob, but on everything he could get his hands on

Anyway - 3andnomore - if she dopesn't feel her child is ready for solids, why should she offer it ? if she is attachment parenting, then the likelyhood is the child is with her when she eats. if it was ready, it would be divebombing her plate.

Tori32 blweaned children have no speech developmental issues and many of them do not take food before 9 months.

My DS is one of these, we have no trouble with his eating now at 16 months but realistically he did not start properly ingesting food until 9 mths plus. Quite frankly i bitterly regret introducing food before that as those 2nd 6 months of his life were horrific for him with really bad eczema, triggered by particular foods. He didn't initiate it either, I did because I was desperate to appease my family and so bowed to pressure at 24 weeks.

Now, my DS has had teeth for quite some time but his eating has come along in leaps and bounds with the arrival of each new tooth, and i'm actually starting to wonder if the type of tooth they have is an indicator for the type of food that is suitable for them, ie molars for chewing leaves, canines for meat etc but that's probably a subject for another thread !

Iron does not deplete at 6 months as a couple of people have said above BM naturally has less iron in it because it a larger percentage of it is absorbed compared to formula.

DD was weaned just below 6 months but over 5 months DS I offered food to at just over 6 months and he was not in the slightest bit interested and he never even slobbered over our food until ust over 9 months and even then he was only half interested. He started himself in earnest at between 11 and 12 months by his first birthday he was eating eveything is sight. As it turns out he had some food allergies and I think his lack of interest in solid food was nature keeping him from the things that would cause him problems.

I know of several babies not weaned until later for various reasons and they have all been fine. I do think it is hard to know what is best though when there is so much conflicting advice going about.

Iron does not deplete at 6 months as a couple of people have said above BM naturally has less iron in it because it a larger percentage of it is absorbed compared to formula.

DD was weaned just below 6 months but over 5 months DS I offered food to at just over 6 months and he was not in the slightest bit interested and he never even slobbered over our food until ust over 9 months and even then he was only half interested. He started himself in earnest at between 11 and 12 months by his first birthday he was eating eveything is sight. As it turns out he had some food allergies and I think his lack of interest in solid food was nature keeping him from the things that would cause him problems.

I know of several babies not weaned until later for various reasons and they have all been fine. I do think it is hard to know what is best though when there is so much conflicting advice going about.

puffy. I didn't intend to say that BLW babies have speech problems, just that if they don't chew things such as raw veg and more chewy things/ swallow lumps it can affect speech if you leave it late. How well does your LO speak at 16mths?
BTW my dd1 was weaned traditionally at 17wks, by 8mths she had all her meals chopped on her tray, by which I mean she didn't just sit playing with it- I mean she ate the majority of it. She spoke early.

Right tori, let's see your evidence that chewing foods early helps babies to speak early. You seem very sure of this.

tori - DS speaks quite well actually, certainly I have noticed no difference in any of the other babies in his age range. Not that I'm bothered, he's developing fine in my eyes - tell me what he should be saying at 16 months and I'll tell you if we're keeping up with the jones' !!

and actually his 'girlfriend' is 6 weeks younger than him, she really only started eating from about 11-12 months and was streets ahead of our entire group saying 'daddy' and 'tractor' really clearly very early on despite not eating.

incidentally they both sign too

think people need to relax generally about weaning...i listened to the whole 'don't wean until after 6 months' thing and felt like anything before that was practically child abuse. My DD had other ideas though...at 4.5 months she was grabbing cutlery, chewing plates and fake chewing. I mentioned it to my HV and she said to go with my instinct so i introduced some baby rice with breastmilk and banana and she never looked back. They have the tongue thrust instinct if they're not ready anyway.

I think weaning these days is almost competitive like the longer the child goes without food, the better your breastmilk mist be...it's a bit snobby.

My ds was eating like a horse at 6/7 months!

They're all different, and that's the only 'fact' any of us need to know.

There's no way my kid would have been happy with just milk, formula or breast, at 9.5 months old.

It would seem that tutt's friend's baby is.

Vive la difference!

DS2 didn't start on solids until past a year (not for the want of trying!), due to him having severe reflux and being sick everytime we fed him. He just had bm. When the reflux stopped, we weaned him gradually, and it was a long process, but at 2 years old, he now eats normally. He's developmentally fine, and has always been a big baby (99.9 centile), whatver he's eaten (or hasn't eaten!)

I though fine motor skills were developed from picking stuff off the floor? My DD certainly learned hers that way. Also, I don't get how feeding purees can help with the chewing reflex? Surely a blw baby will have more of a chewing reflex than a child spponfed purees? I was told by my DD's paed that this theory re chewing was pure bunkum and sadly oft spouted by HCPs who were given bad training.

A friend of mine couldn't get her DD to touch any solid food at all until she was 11mo. She is now almost 3, was an early talker (and bilingual to boot) and never had the usual pronunciation problems that small children often had - eg. she was able to roll her rrrs prefectly from 15mo. Also, she has certainly suffered no brain damage from not ingesting iron rich foods, on the contrary, she's very bright and starting to teach herself to read atm. Food wise, she is the child who will try strange things and devours things like wild boar paté and seaweed (her parents are foodies, can you tell?).

Yes, but isn't this baby living on cow's milk only (not formula)
At less than 10 months, is that not extremely worrying?

lol at rolling her rrrrs at 15mo!
Ds is 14 months, can say "mamaaaaaaaaaaa" "dadd-eh", "CASH" (crash) and "elegant" (yesterday but he was trying to say elephant!)

Oh, did I miss something? Is the baby on cow's milk? I thought he was exbf.

Yeah, mine could say too-too and miaow-miaow at that age. She still can't pronounce her rs and sc sounds cause much hawking up of catarrh.

i think the OP said thatno, i think i made it up, sorry

i'm talking absolute cr*p - just reread the op
that must have been someoner else

I think there was a post about a 3yo only drinking cow's milk, though, maybe you got it mixed up with that? That's a bit more serious imo.

I think it's strange that no-one else on this thread has considered that some babies 6-12 months struggle with eating food (ie not puree) because they have problems with co-ordinating their jaw/tongue/muschles hence they have speech problems. I don't think it's necessarily the case that the not having food causes the speech problem IYSWIM

Reading all these posts shows there's such a range I wonder if it really matters at all??

People forget that the human baby is quite a robust beastie and depending on food availability in the past has managed to hang in there!

we should stress less!