Cow and Gate- no wonder...

[againandagain]

....people are still weaning early and seem to think that its a choice to wait untill 6 months as opposed to actual guidelines. I just copied and pasted this from the COW AND GATE website!

Telltale weaning signs

After a full milk feed your baby cries or demands more

Your baby finds it harder to wait until the next feed, and becomes irritable or chews their hands

Where they've previously slept through the night, they now wake up for a feed.

Daytime sleep becomes more erratic too - not
settling down or waking up early from naps

Your baby looks fascinated when you eat, and perhaps tries to reach for food you're holding

Oh just do BLW from whatever age you like (preferably after 17 weeks though I don't know any babies who could have managed it, sitting up, at that age) and if they are not ready, they won't be able to do it.

Yes cow and gate are being irresponsible by stating these things as being signs of needing to be weaned. They also put "From 4 months" on their packaging - they are not exactly innocent

NHS Birth to 5 - section on weaning

This shows that C&G are contradicting current advice on their website.

I think MIL thinks it's a new fashion not something based on research.

I think like a lot of things (e.g. bf vs ff) the problem is the way things are presented in extremes.

Weaning before 6 months will not definitely cause every baby harm but waiting is definitely safer and most babies are fine on milk till 6 months, hence the recommendation.

Formula is not poison, butbreastfeeding does provide benefits and it is therefore recommended that you feed babies on people milk wherever possible.

You can apply it to bf too - it's not always really hard or really easy, neither of those viewpoints is helpful.

Sorry, rambling again, hope that made sense!

Complete sense!
Good post.

Am quite proud to have made sense, 4 month old has been poorly with the cold, not had much sleep the last couple of nights...

I don't particularly like Cow and Gate and probably wouldn't take weaning advice from a food company. Hopefully most people would do a bit more reading on it than that!

However, the guideline of six months is just that, a guideline. My DS started on solids at 18 weeks after much discussion between DH and myself and advice from our HV. DS was showing all the typical signs and is a much much happier baby. The HV said if he wasn't ready it would be quite clear as he would reject the food.

Babies are all ready at different times and as long as the decision is made based on the needs of the individual baby and advice is taken from HV or whoever is appropriate then I don't see a problem.

If my baby reaches for the dirt in a pot plant and tries to put it in his mouth, should I take that as a sign he is ready to eat soil?

if your child is lucky, they'll have about 80 years of eating solid food, why the obsession about starting them as early as possible? Its been proven that a baby under 6 months lacks the capability to digest solid food. And baby rice or fruit purees has a lot less calories than milk, so you're actually not helping with hunger anyway.

Whatever though, your kid, who cares when you feed them?

i weaned my dc at 4 and 5 months respectively, as they were constantly hungry and milk wasn't filling them up for long (both came close to 9 lbs at birth). a friends' dd started weaning at 8 months as she felt bf was adequate enough. there is a big age gap between my dc and i found advice has changed beyond recognision in the past few years. i would say follow your instinct and use guidelines as they were intended, not as a set of rules to live by.

That's because it's not about sitting unaided, my DS didn't sit unaided until 9 months and always preferred kneeling as well - it's about being able to sit up with support and not slump over, ie able to sit in a high chair rather than a bouncy chair. If you are doing BLW you have to have them sitting up straight and not reclined or they are likely to choke.

Sitting up is not necessarily a relevant sign: many babies don't sit up until 8 months and are still considered within normal range. Their coordination may still be excellent. My dd was scoffing bouef bourgignon before she was able to sit without support. She was hypotonic, but also had a very long back in proportion to her nether regions (never seen a child so like a dachshund), so would probably have found it difficult to sit in any case.

There is no dobut Cow & Gate are contradicting current advice and that they shouldn't be doing it. However, I don't think it's a case of evilly concocting misinformation; more of keeping repeating what was standard advice 10 years ago, because it happens to suit them.

sorry, missed your post, Bertie. Good point about the different meaning of sitting up.

In my case, weaning early (slowly between 4 and 6 months) did help my dd, as hypotonia meant breastfeeding was very hard work for her. I still breastfed until nearly a year, but having the backup of solid food meant she was less tired and more alert.

Cory "Sitting up is not necessarily a relevant sign: many babies don't sit up until 8 months and are still considered within normal range. Their coordination may still be excellent. My dd was scoffing bouef bourgignon before she was able to sit without support. She was hypotonic, but also had a very long back in proportion to her nether regions (never seen a child so like a dachshund), so would probably have found it difficult to sit in any case."

My DD2 is exactly the same, sooo long in the body! She was weaned well before she could sit up straight.

I think alot of people get their knickers in a twist about this for no real reason. Every baby is different!
DS1 (a strapping 6ft nearly 18yr old now) was born at 38 wks, nearly 9lb and mega hungry! Weaning advice back then was 4months.
I left hospital after 3 days, he was on sma gold, they advised me to switch to white (hungry formula) as he was already taking 6-7oz every 2-3 hours!By 12wks the HV advised me to give him some rice as he was always hungry. By 6m he was on 3 meals a day & having a whole weetabix for breakfast. He's now fit and healthy, very bright, no allergies, a bit lazy, but hey, he's a teenage boy. In short, early weaning did him no harm.
I'll admit he was the exception rather than the rule, but some babies need it, and it doesn't help when everyone whitters on about must leave weaning till 6 months. Every baby is different! BTW DD1 (now 15) didn't need weaning till almost 6 months and I was berated for "starving" her back then.
My HV recently admitted that there has been no real evidence lately that changing the recommended weaning age a few years back has made any significant change to childrens health.
let's cut each other some slack and do what's best for our individual babies.

But the research shows that actually, every baby is pretty much the same! Its not about whether they are hungry, or sitting up, or reaching for food, its about whether they actually have started producing enough of the proper digestive enzymes to correctly break down and absorb solid food, which in human infants doesn't happen until around 6 months old.

If you don't like the current guidelines, ignore them, but that doesn't mean the science behind the guidelines is wrong.

pooexplosions, I keep reading that "fact", but can't find the science to back it up. The nearest I have found is a netmums post which says "The actual results of the research and so the reasoning behind the recomendations have always said babies will be ready for weaning between 4 and 6 months BUT (huge but . . .) there is an actual physical change in their digestive system which makes it capable of digesting solid foods. Before this change has taken place solid foods can not easily or safely be digested and so if solids are given before it happens then the baby is open to problems (many of which appear only much later in life not in baby hood). This physical change occurs at some point after 4 months but before 6 months - and there is no way of telling when it happens in any baby. "

Have you a link to something more scientific?

Seems to me that the guidelines say leave it till six months because then you know for certain it's OK, but it's perfectly possible for it to be Ok from four months. I'd be interested to know the proportions of children who are ready at four, five and six months, if that information is available anywhere.

pooexplosions It's only been in the last few years that all this 'research' about digestive enzymes has come to light.
For decades mums have been weaning at 4m or even earlier. So where are all these grown ups with later life issues, do we really know what these issues are???
My HV is now quite about all this new research, she like many mums of older children knows that every baby is different.
3 out of 4 of my babies have been born on and stayed at about the 97th percentile, they were hungry early weaners. 1 out of my 4 was born on at stayed at about the 13th percentile, she didn't need weaning till about 6m, and as I've already said, 15 yrs ago I was berated for 'starving' my child.

againandagain Also no food that you would give a baby is more calorific than milk. So surely what should be done is up milk intake untill the above three steps can be acheived.
Please correct me if im wrong.
No you are not wrong, but in DS1's case he was literally full of liquid all the time, you could hear it slooshing around, it wasn't about the calories, it was about the feeling of being full.

Well, actually, milk + sugar would be more calorific... milk + anything, really.

five Lots of adults have digestive issues, IBS, allergies, Crohn's Disease, colitis... not to mention the amount of advertising for products to help relieve trapped wind, diarrhoea and constipation, we take these things as normal but nobody really knows what the root cause is, temporary effects from dietary habits excepted of course.

Of course all babies are different, the new research says this. It just says that it is safer to wait until 6 months to be sure.

Five, there are things that are more calorific than milk and they are butter and cream.

Bertie, a lot of the problems that you talk about are problems which are going to be hereditary. If there is no history of allergy in the family there is unlikely to be one in your baby.

I think the thing about waiting to 6 months is because the top part of the sphincter closes after 17 weeks and it can make a baby sick if you wean them before then.

I do feel guidelines are fixated on a number and that number is not right for every baby.

My own DS (as some of you know) is an example of htis as he had terrible reflux. He would regularly throw up whole feeds and then started developing a food aversion. It was a nightmare. The only way we were able to get him to keep his feeds down was with a bit of baby rice.

YANBU to think it is cynical of C&G to quote the "signs" on their website which babies reach earlier, and omit the "signs" which babies reach later.

Having said that DD2 just ate a whole banana mashed up with milk and she cannot sit, kneel, roll, or do anything much at all.

She is over 6 months though...

I am aware all babies are different.
Ali- I dont know many people that say "ooh, im going to wean my baby onto butter and cream as he needs more calories". All normal first weaning foods have less calories than milk.

Also we have all been told that it is safer to wait untill 6 months. This advice is coming from sources that would reap no finacial benefits by advising you to wait to wean your child.

Often the research is carried out by people more educated in this field than the average parent. Why would you ignore their advice? You wouldnt use a car seat that was not recomended safe?

five - I thought there was some data to support the view rhat there had been an explosion in adults with digestive issues such as Chron's and ulcerative colitis since the trend towards earlier weaning kicked in at some point in the last century. Not sure of the source, but I have to say, I wouldn't have risked it with DD. I just gave her more and more milk (over 400ml in a feed at one point!) if she was still hungry.

That is partly because I was lazy though and milk feeding is soooo much easier that solids! The memory of the mess of BLW still makes me shudder...

five your Hv is about the newest research? Well that plus your own sample of your own children means it must be all wrong then? What on earth would the average HV know about the latest research on infant biology? Mine told me only last year that formula was nutritionally superior to breast milk.

Why are people so distrustful of new information designed to help their children? If theres a chance that later weaning would prevent them having problems in later life, why wouldn't you do it? Maybe I'm just a bit more cautious is this regard, but theres no way I would wean before 6 months as we have a strong family history of bowel cancers, IBS and crohns disease. If theres even a small chance that later weaning will help them, I'm for it.

I second what pooexplosions said. Why would you take the risk?