I know I am but I'm going to do it anyway!

[mytetherisending]

DD2 is now 6mths, has been bf on demand mostly and is fully weaned on 3 meals with desserts, juice from a cup and the occasional snack. She is still demanding night feeds which I feel she shouldn't need if she took good feeds at 10 and 230. Instead she faffs with these and wants milk during the night. I have now decided to quit breast feeding as she will not take bottles- so it is all bottles or none iyswim. I hope that being able to see how much she takes during the day and a gentle prod to take more will reduce night feeding. I have dusted off the GF book which I used with dd1 (and who has only had a handful of disturbed nights since 3mths!) in the hope that the routine will get me some modicum of sleep. I am knackered.

I know it is unreasonable to give up bf for the sake of my sleep, however, dd1 is constantly tired (2.9mths) and is behaving awfully because of it. The baby disturbs her sleep every night

I just needed to vent sorry! Grrr to all those people who say babies get their own pattern and start sleeping eventually- I can't wait til 'eventually' happens!

"I know it is unreasonable to give up bf for the sake of my sleep, however, dd1 is constantly tired (2.9mths) and is behaving awfully because of it. The baby disturbs her sleep every night "

YANBU!!!! Sleep sooooooo important.

Thanks dounutmum

kiddiz your DH has suffered with bowel cancer. However, I have been scrub nurse assisting with many cases and the recurring theme is actually poor diet generally. Usually lack of fibre/veg/fruit as is the same for IBS, Chrones disease and gallstones which is related to obesity in most cases (or high fat diet).

Bloss, if you BF the baby is exposed to wheat proteins through your milk.

Well my dh has a very healthy diet and always has had. When I met him I was amazed by the amount of fruit and veg his family ate with the exception of his dad who does have and always has had a terrible diet and smoked for years and has no bowel problems what so ever..terrible chest though! His family were not well off when he was a kid and his mum used to fill them up with loads of veg because she couldn't afford meat. His dad got all the meat. He's always had a low fat diet too as I am always on a diet and don't buy high fat things!!!Ironically since his surgery he can no longer eat high fibre foods because they go straight through causing loads of pain
The main problem is that neither you nor I know what caused my dh's cancer but I'm sure if his mum knew what some surveys suggest now she certainly wouldn't have weaned him at six weeks.

I agree kiddiz and your DH being weaned at 6wks is extreme. I wasn't weaning dd2 at 6wks, she was 13wks on baby rice at one meal until 16/17wks then some fruit at one meal instead of rice, all very gradual. She didn't have 3 meals until about 5mths.

Tori, have you asked your patients when they were weaned? Can they remember?

This is a long post, apologies, but it had to be because this is a complicated subject and reducing it to soundbites is a travesty.

I am really, really uncomfortable with the sweeping statements on this thread.

Early life nutrition is clearly very complex and so is allergy, and the risks of feeding one way or another are hard to research and poorly understood.

In the UK where WHO advice is government policy, the percentage of children who follow the guidelines and are exclusively breastfed to 6 months or later is around 1%. The rise in allergies has been happening for a couple of decades.

The huge rise in allergy has been extensively investigated as you would imagine and it still largely remains a puzzle. But you can't attribute it to something that only a tiny percentage of the population is doing.

As far as the evidence goes - and it's very scanty - there's reasonably strong evidence that allergy risk is increased if you wean before about 3-4 months. Weaning age doesn't seem to have an effect on allergy risk after that. (American Academy of Pediatrics review).

The question of which age is best to introduce a baby to particular proteins in order to minimise the risk of allergy is very interesting, but nothing is known for sure, except that breastfeeding at the time of introducing the food appears to have a protective effect. All the rest is speculation.

The opinion quoted below, that the recommended weaning age will be reduced to 4 months, is very far from mainstream. (Doesn't make it wrong - but most people in the field believe the evidence points differently).

What is believed to be far more likely as far as I can see from what I've read, is that ideal weaning age will turn out to be a very individual thing, a balancing act for each child between different kinds of risk.

Sadly for those of us with little childen, we're light years away from being able to balance the risks for an individual child. Population data is all we have, and it's imperfect. But it's better than nothing, and "nothing" is what our parents had. We should be grateful that we at least have a few pointers.

Why is all this important? There's very strong evidence from various sources that early life nutrition has a "programming" effect on metabolism, and this can have a lifelong effect on risk of various conditions such as heart disease.

So, frustratingly, all we know is that what we feed our children could be terribly important - yet we don't know beyond a few basic facts, how we should be feeding our children.

However, one thing is very clear from thousands of studies, and more are appearing every month: whether a baby is breastfed or not, and for how long, can potentially have a profound effect on their health through life.

Stopping breastfeeding should never be a casual decision - it's possibly the most important health-related decision you'll ever make for your child.

Oh, one more thing - if it turns out that children at risk of allergy need to encounter certain allergens earlier than 6 months, it is never going to take the form of shovelling in baby rice and pureed pear.

Most likely option: a strong emphasis on exclusive breastfeeding as a way of presenting both allergens and protective immune factors to the baby at the same time.

Another likely option: giving the baby tiny amounts of specific allergens (eg peanuts) in a carefully controlled programme.

"Hungry babies" will have nothing to do with it. "Baby food" whether jars or finest home-pureed will have nothing to do with it. "Sleeping through" will have nothing to do with it.

For your excellent and thorough post you have been awarded ...

PMSL combustiblelemon

< goes off to spray self all over with gold paint >

(I am actually going by the way, not ignoring tthe thread!)

No I personally didn't but the consultant was doing a study relating to causes of cancer of the bowel and it was one of the questions he asked. Lots were not weaned earlier than 4mths and no pattern emerged of early weaning being relevant, although obviously the study was biased to his specific patients.

Welliemum that was very well put. Although I doubt that any mother would not do what is right for her children. For me it is the wellbeing of both mychildren that has led me to this decision. Lack of sleep is affecting my dd1 so much that she is becoming rundown, aggressive and unhappy. Obviously if I only had dd2 to consider I would continue to bf whenever, however, I can't let dd1 suffer anymore.

For me I have made the right choice and have balanced the nutritional benefits of bf with the health of my other child. Since introducing ff 3 days ago dd2 is still waking but for shorter times each night. She is having structured daytime sleeps and has become more settled generally as a result. This has meant that DH could feed dd2 and I could spend more time with dd1,especially at bedtime when she missed me being able to put her to bed because it coincides with dd2s feed. In the last 2 days we have seen a marked improvement in her behaviour and attitude towards her sister. She now regularly says 'I love her, she's sweet!'

I could never have prioritised the short-term sleep needs of my older child over the long-term nutritional needs of my younger, but you've made the decision now.

"Although I doubt that any mother would not do what is right for her children." - yes, they do, frequently. Largely because people tell them it doesn't matter and not to feel guilty.

Wellie, fantastic post. Thank you for your email

Different priorities then, I believe in the greatest good for greatest number, so take other members of the family into account when making decisions.
FF and weaning early are hardly ground breaking. I would suggest a huge proportion of us were indeed ff and although some may have had health issues they can't necessarily be blamed on not bf for longer than 6mths or weaning at 13wks. There are too many variables to consider.
Adult diet
What was used to wean.
Childhood diet.
Alcohol/smoking
Quantity of food eaten at a time.
Lives near a power station
uses a mobile telephone
exposure to x-rays
constipation problems in early life/adulthood
Eating disorders
So many things can predispose people to bowel disorders that it is impossible to say that x causes y.

I agree 6 weeks is extreme but it wasn't considered so 40 yrs ago, it was what was recommended at that time. I'm not critising you for your decision I just don't agree with it. My ds2, in particular, was extremely difficult to settle, a big baby (17lbs at 11 weeks)and always wanting feeding, but if I'd had the information available now I would have happily waited a few more weeks to wean him. That's how I feel and I do wish I could turn the clocks back especially in light of dh's illness. I'm glad I did follow the guidelines and wean at 4 months unlike many of my friends with babies at the time who weaned much earlier as though it was some sort of race. Hopefully I haven't done them any harm

"I sincerely hope the trend of late weaning is reversed because I also firmly believe that there are more allergic children now than ever before."

This statement alone shows up how little you actually know about infant feeding, food allergies and weaning, with regard to trends and effects. The weaning guidlines were changed in 2003, only 5 years ago, up til then the recommended weaning age was 16 weeks. Most people tend to start a week or so before the guidline age, and even now it is not unusual for babies to be given baby rice or rusks at 12 weeks, even though the guidlines state not to. It takes years for new guidlines to filter down and become common practice, amongst the healthcare professionals (HV's etc) as well as the population as a whole (mums). Most women will do what thier mum/sister/friend did, rather than what the HV officially recommends, and even so, many HV's are still giving weaning advice to women with babies as young as 12-13 weeks. The increas in food allergies/intolerances in recent years (and we are talking decades here, not the last 5 yeards) is definately not because babies are being exclusively breastfed until 6 months and then weaned with great care and attention to allergens and long term health. The reality is that the majority of babies are on formula by the time they are 6 weeks old, given baby rice by the time they are about 16 weeks old and fed on jars of age inappropriate foods (gluten from 4 months and so on) long before they are 6 months old.

"That aside, chewing food helps to develop facial muscles and tongue control needed for speech development. The later babies start to chew the later this happens and potentially could cause delay in speech development. My dd1 had approx 300 words at 18mths compared with other children who had a normal amount and who of which none where weaned before 6mths."

You can convince yourself that weaning at 13 weeks is ok if you like, but the thruth is, that until a baby is able to sit up unaided, can can pick up food and put it in thier mouth, bite bits off and chew them and swallow them, they are not ready for anything other than milk. The best way to develop the facial muscles used in chewing (and speech) is breastfeeding, you don't have to give babies mush to "practice" chewing on, as they don't chew mush, they suck it off the spoon and swallow it. Cavemen didn't have little blenders and packets of dried powdered rice, our ancesters didn't feed thier babies food until they were able to feed themselves. And this would have been at about 6 months of age.

Cavemen grunted and didn't speak Also, early weaning has been happening for at least 100yrs because people used a mortar and pestle to crush food. The increase in allergies and bowel disorders does not tally with this Also, like I have already pointed out the studies and so called research is completely fallible and most is not based on large enough samples to draw conclusions except in the subject group.

I have also said before that I feel it is better to introduce babies to mush that they won't choke on until they know how to move food around in their mouth and chew, rather than starting on finger foods where they bite too much off, accidentally swallow because they aren't used to lumps and choke. Also it has to be more stressing on a babies gut to go from milk directly to lumpy solids when all it has been used to digesting is fluid.

breast feeding does not activate all the facial muscle groups and doesn't teach the baby tongue control.

The tongue is the integral tool to breastfeeding. It moves to regulate flow and effect sucking. It's why tongue tied babies struggle to b/feed.

Where are you getting your information from? Nestle's nutrition website?

Oh, and WHO guidelines are based on a compilation of evidence from I think 16,000 peer reviewed studies. That's as big as you'll get really.

Anyway, a few extra words developed a bit earlier at 18 months balanced with few extra IQ points for life.....I know which I'd choose

"I have also said before that I feel it is better to introduce babies to mush that they won't choke on until they know how to move food around in their mouth and chew, rather than starting on finger foods where they bite too much off, accidentally swallow because they aren't used to lumps and choke."

"Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have developed the ability to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. The ability to pick up very small things develops later still. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get small pieces of food into his mouth. Spoon feeding, by contrast, encourages the baby to suck the food straight to the back of his mouth, potentially making choking more likely."

"Parents may be concerned that their baby will choke{on finger foods. But although anyone, in theory, can choke on anything, nature gives babies a natural prevention against choking by teaching it to chew before it can swallow. The risk factors are if a baby is not sat up straight, and if suction is introduced, such as the action involved in sucking {mush} off a spoon."}

"Also it has to be more stressing on a babies gut to go from milk directly to lumpy solids when all it has been used to digesting is fluid."

A baby that is spoon fed mush will be given far more food than they would eat if left to feed themselves. The quantity of food (as well as the age at which it is given) is what stresses the gut, not the consistancy, as a baby that is weaned when it has developed the ability to chew will not be swallowing unchewed lumps, but chewed mushy food.

Anyother cock and bull theories you'd like me to pick holes in?

VVV 16,000 peer reviewed studies might at best equate to 1 million people studied. There are 7 million people in London alone, 60 or so million in the UK. If this research was applied to just the uk it would mean it took account of .6% of the population as a whole. to make my point clearer, that is not a big enough percentage to convince me that the whole world should wait until 6mths to start solids or that weaning at 13wks causes harm. If you take into account the millions of people worldwide it would equate to less than 0.001% of the population studied. Its like saying that everyone who walks under a tree during a thunderstorm will be hit with lightening- untrue and unlikely but it could happen.

Interesting article, however, again from a small study. My babies do finger feed from the minute they can hold objects which in dd1s case was 5mths and dd2 5mths. I transfer from feeding all meals with a spoon gradually to them feeding themselves. DD1 could feed herself everything on her tray without it going mainly on the floor by 8mths.

Oh and as for IQ I could write a book on the fallibilities of that test so won't even go there.

Obviously weaning early has not affected my dd1s intelligence as she has been labelled by the HV as exceptionally bright in all areas. Speech, co-ordination, understanding etc. Since my dd1 has turned out so well and eats everything except curry (which funnily we didn't introduce until after 1yr) I see no reason to change things with dd2.

Oh and dd1 was ff from 6wks so ner! BF blatantly didn't damage her intelligence!