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?

yes but a bfed baby uses all those muscles anyway

i also know an LO who at 4 still really struggles to enunciate words and he was wweaned traditionally - purees and finger foods. His parents are the only ones who can unde

I haven't read all these posts but just to show how things change over the years, my father, born 1914, was not weaned until he was 18 months, when he stole a piece of toast from the breakfast table and gobbled it down. His blue-stocking mother then thought that perhaps he was ready to wean. He continued to gobble food from then on, and never had any trouble chewing.

When dd1 was born 4 months was the accepted time but 3 months wasn't particularly frowned on, although by the time I had my 4th it was 6 months. So I tend to not be too judgemental over any sort of weaning.

I think Stealth is mixing up two stories. The child in the OP is BF and less than 1, there is another child on the thread who is living on cows milk and refusing solids at three.

Molecule, I'm glad you said that. Cmot was posting extracts from old parenting manuals she has and it's amazing how much the weaning age has dropped, we're now so used to it having just come up, our parents saying they weaned at 3 weeks that we don't realise how young 6 months really is.

I think your friend can offer food to her DC at the high chair, best way to tell if her DC is ready or not.
nothing wrong with BFing for as long as she wants to but I really think offering some fruit and yoghurt wouldn't do any harm just now. Just my opinion of course.

I think she should at least offer the food. If she is not doing that then she won't know when he is ready.

Just as a piece of anecdotal evidence, my BIL and his wife adopted a DS at 2 whose mother had not given him solids at all - he was fed on milk and cola, usually given to him by his 3 yo sister by all accounts. Anyway, he is a gorgeous little boy but their main problems with him have been getting him to eat - it has taken them a long time to get him to eat normal lumpy food. He has no appetite and it was not uncommon for them to coax him to eat, give him slightly too much and then for it to all come back again.

He was also very slow to speak and had to have therapy although some of that would have been due to the fact that nobody really spoke to him to begin with. He was taken into care at 12 mths but it was already very difficult to get him to feed.

I do think there is a danger, if you leave it until a child is nearer a year than 6 mths that you are risking problems with speech and eating. However, short of giving the child food yourself and then letting the mother see him gobble it up (not a reasonable option I know) I don't see what you can do.

I take it he is a PFB? I am wondering if maybe she has a huge amount invested in bringing up this child and she is trying to keep him all to herself.

God things have changed a bit haven't they? My DS is 8 years old and I weaned him at 4 months. Not a morsal passed his lips until he was 4 mnoths old and I started with a few teaspoons of baby rice. I am amazed that they now recommend 6 months! My DS had 8 teech by the time he was 3 and a half months old so he was ready for chewing. Still choked now and then and chucked up everywhere though!

Sorry that should be "he had TEETH" I really must read my entries before posting them!

Niecie, I think you are being naive comparing a nine month old baby who still mostly lives on breaskmilk to a child who is two years old and has been taken into care because the only person who fed him was a three year old who fed him cola.

You can find all kinds on stuff on google to support a opinion. In the past children have been weaned as late as a year or 6 weeks. Yet the majority of children survived,

I once went to a talk by the doctor who read this book.

www.llli.org/NB/NBMarApr06p76.html

He was far more laid back about weaning and his talk made a lot of sense.

Ie. Although there is very little iron in breastmilk the iron is 100% absorbed. Formula may have more iron but most of it is excreted. Also doctors tend ere on the side of caution. Most western babies are well nourished and so are their mothers, their iron store can often last longer than six months.

Niecie, there's no evidence of a link between chewing and speech development.

link to thread discussing this

There are a number of potential reasons why that poor child had speech difficulties, but late weaning isn't likely to be one of them.

ok. I have been away to find the relevant links.
Between these links it says

1. Babies iron levels deplete after 6mths without being weaned.
2. chewing during eating helps develop facial muscles and helps in speech development.
3. Weaning should be pretty much completed by 1yr.
4. Eating with the family is an ideal time to communicate with your baby, so also aids speech development.

see these. www.babyfeedingmatters.co.uk/weaning.php www.vhi.ie/hfiles/hf-089.jsp www.babychatter.com/weanyourbaby.html www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/070830WeaningYourChild.pdf

Hope these clarify things

I love all this Weaning Law thing , my Ds was probably on 3 meals a day my 4mths, but then he was the size of an average 3 month old when He was born, not chubby, just like a perfectly proprtion 3 mth old.

Centuries of feeding babies lots of ways to do it. Some better than others.

skribble I couldn't agree more. My dd2 is 16wks and has been having solids at tea time for 3wks. I have just started her on purees as opposed to babyrice/cereal.
I think there are obvious problems with weaning only starting at 9.5mths though More from a speech and language perspective than nutritionally iyswim.

What is the problem with starting at 9 months though? My DS never started until then he just wasn't interested. Should I have forced him so as not to delay his speech. I think there are a whole host of problems that can arise from weaning too early so I take my chances personally when I weighed up a seech delay (unproven link I may add) and the possibility od dietry problems for life I knew which I would prefer. Incidentally ds does have speech problems which are in no way connected to his late weaning they are connected to hearing loss.

If you read the british dental association link it clearly states that iron depletion starts occurring after a child is 6mths and that bf or formula do not provide enough. If a child becomes anaemic it can cause severe lethargy/ shortness of breath and in turn can result in a delay in developing other skills, due to not having enough oxygen (the haemoglobin part of red blood cells carry oxygen), due to less cells to carry it, the child would potentially not have enough energy (as oxygen is required to convert food to useable energy), to do basic things such as sit up for a reasonable period/ learn to walk etc.
I am not saying you should force a child, but the op clearly states that her friends baby has not even been offered things to try.
sorry about your ds, obviously yours is a separate issue entirely.

well ds1, ds2 and ds3 didnt have solids till 9mths and it took ds2 until he was 18mths before he was properly interested in solids and having three meals a day but they all spoke fine, they all spoke very clearly from a young age and were always well ahead of 'targets' for language developement, ds1 and ds2 are at school part time now and their huge vocabulalry and is always being praised by the teachers, so late weaning didnt affect their speech at all.

oh and they were all BIG babies, ds4 is also huge, wearing 9-12mth clothes as he is so long and big, (last time i bothered to get him weighed he was 18lb) and he isnt yet 4mths old, but i am not starting him on solids yet, will wait to 6mths and see if he is interested, if not i will wait til later like i did with his brothers.

As an aside, i have asthma, eczma and hayfever and am quite allergy prone, NONE of the boys have any problems like i do, and i wonder if their reluctance to start solids was a way of them protecting themselves against allergies?

Personally I'm amazed that she gets away with just BF. My DS is 8 months and still bf, but also on three meals a day. He'd be starving otherwise - he already gets frantic if I leave it too long between a feed and a meal.

Reallytired - I wasn't comparing a 2 yo with a 9 mth old. I was comparing a 12 mth old with a 9mth old. He was taken into care at 12mths and it was already a problem for him. He was fostered for the following year, as I said.

With regards to his speech development and the lack of food I did say that their was more than one reason for the speech delay. However, his doctors felt that part of the reason was poor maxio facial muscle development. Not for me to question of course - they are the doctors, not me.

Of course if a child doesn't want to eat then you can't forcefeed him but as I said in my last post, the problem would be if the mother hasn't even offered food.

Tori, your links are links to people's opinions, whereas I've linked to original research. Can you see the difference?

These same opinions are everywhere. I could find you hundreds of similar ones. Why are they similar? because they're actually just the same opinion, copied over and over again.

The original research, done by people who actually got together a cohort of babies and attached electrodes to them to measure how they chewed, shows that chewing and speaking are different processes.

Other original research, done by measuring iron metabolism in cohorts of babies, has shown that iron in breast milk in fact is enough for the vast majority of babies and is what's more, is much more easily bioavailable that way. The logical conclusion from that is that if a bf baby becomes anaemic, you need to treat the mother's iron levels not the baby's.

(By the way the dramatic symptoms of anaemia that you describe don't occur at the levels typically found in breast fed babies - even the ones at the bottom of the scale.)

Just 2 examples there, but my point is that even when lots of people believe something, that still doesn't make it true. You can't use other people's personal opinions to prove a point. The only way to get at the truth is to study actual babies or read the results of those who have done so.

The bottom line is that the original research is saying very different things about early infant nutrition to the traditional beliefs you express. Worryingly different in fact. You really need to be cautious about what you're saying.

Niecie, a lot of doctors believe that speech development derives from chewing. That still doesn't make it true.

A child with maxillofacial development problems certainly might have difficulty both with chewing and with speech. What the research shows is that the speech problems wouldn't have been caused by the lack of chewing - instead, the two problems would have evolved from the same basic cause.

Multifactorial of course - emotionally neglected children commonly don't speak, even if there're no physical problems.

Would be interesting to know what her friend means when she says "i don't think he's ready".

a) food offerered to child but child refuses and friend believes he's not ready for food - Your friend could do with some support?

b) food not offered - Your friend could do with some support?

It's not a case of YANBU/YABU, you are just concerned about the child.

Oh, and where children are concerned, I believe it's all of our business to look out for little ones.

Actually, good point, Limara, we don't really know what's going on and although the wider issues are interesting, I feel really uncomfortable speculating on the internet about someone else's child.

Is there any chance, tuttuttut, that your friend would come on here and join the discussion? Not at all because she should defend her actions, but because there's lots of discussion on MN about weaning early and weaning late, and her perspective would be interesting.

welliemum the british dental association material is all derived from research, as is all advice given out by medical associations.

BTW here is another research well referenced article by an Australian Peadiatric Gastroenterologist.
www.mja.com.au/public/issues/174_04_190201/couper/couper.html

The points made in this article in relation to late weaning are

1. Infants are inherantly susceptible to iron deficiency.
2. Breast milk is low in iron

3.children need to start consuming iron rich foods from 6mths

1. Being iron deficient can affect the infants appetite and restricts the range of foods they will accept- potentially being the cause for a child showing no interest in food after 6mths

5.Iron deficiency can cause developmental delays if left untreated.

One of Tori32 links said something very sensible.

"It is not a scientific exercise based on precise rules and weaning should be guided by the individual infant. "

If you look at the baby, is it happy? Is it alert? If so then the infant is fine.

I have never met a breastfed baby who was aenemic. I think that the issue of iron running out is a bit of a red herring. I remembering seeing it in some advertising weaning leaflet from SMA given to me by the health visitor.

Western babies are well nourished during pregnancy. Unless your child was born premature or the mother was straving during pregnancy I don't think its an issue.

My son first took food at 28 weeks. He hardly ate a scrap before a year. There is no evidence of it affecting his intellect at the age of six.