To think weening should be done ASAP

[Ryoko]

I plan to start Weening him when he is 4 months old if he will except baby rice or porridge at that age.

IMO weening as soon as they are able is natures way, thats what all other animals do it sounds unlikely to me that our ape-ish ancestors sat there giving milk alone for over 6 months so I feel that weening at 4 months is probably better for kids.

For some reason people go bonkers about waiting til 6 months.

NICE guidelines say the best thing for a baby is to be exclusively breastfed for 6m. Most people don't don this, but bottlefeed, which is not necessarily better. And because their babies get hungry they give them that stage 2 hungry milk, which is definitely no better than giving solids.

My hv said that they discovered that in parts of the world where weaning was delayed til 6months there were fewer allergies. BUT these also happened to be mainly the developing world, so lack of allergies is probably due to a better immune system.

Clearly weaning at 4 months does no harm to most babies (as we all survived to adulthood and were weaned at 3 or 4 months as that was the advice 20-30 years ago). Also, my dd was premature and we were advised to wean earlier than 6 months as it is important for them to have the extra calories.

You need to watch your own baby to decide what they need. I think it's quite cruel when people insist on hanging on til 6 months while poor starving baby chews his arm off. But if your baby is doing ok then you can wait.

I personally prefer to wean earlier so you can do it slowly and they can learn to take food from a spoon in their own time rather than needing to do it for nutrition. By 7 months babies are supposed to be on 3 meals a day, and this seems like a lot of work to do with them in 1 month.

But be prepared that it seems to be one of the rules of mumsnet that you never wean a baby before 6 months, hence the angry mob with pitchforks.

'by 7 months babies are supposed to be on 3 meals a day' says who?

EAP, we know when each part of the tooth mineralises when it is forming in the jaw, so we can tell the weaning age from the enamel bands in the adult dentition.

erm, but adults don't have the same teeth?

and how can the chemical changes cause by introduction of foods to a mouth full of bare gums get through to the jaw which is under the tissues (what's the process?)

More calories in watered down puréed vegetables than in BM .
When I need to loose weight I must avoid those calorie laden vegetables then.

For anybody out there that has yet to wean their baby and is reading this, do your own research from more a reliable source. Then make up your own mind based on the facts you have read. The majority of this thread is the biggest load of shit I have ever read.

My DD held her head up when she was born and rolled over on the next day for the HV (you should have seen her face). This was back in 1999 and she was not at all interested in any forms of food that I offered her until at least 6 months. She also didn't speak until about 15 months. My point is that just because a child does something early does not mean that they are ready to do everything early.

Adult teeth start forming as soon as the milk teeth below come through IIRC. Adult tooth development usually begins around the time of birth especially the molars which come through around 6 years. Calcification doesn't begin until shortly before erruption but the tooth itself does start to form.

It's interesting that when my DS was in hospital at 9 months, they thought he would survive perfectly well on formula for a week. No food necessary.

Where does that three meals a day at 7 months come from?

EAP. you are what you eat. Your bones and teeth often remain after you have died and they indicate the diet you had, because they form from the food you eat. Bones do not show weaning age because bones are constantly renewed over your life, but teeth do not. Adult teeth are forming in the gums during infancy and childhood. If you look at the dental xray of an 8 year old, you may be able to see the 3rd molar (wisdom tooth) bud forming, even though that tooth may not cut through the gum for another 10 or 15 years.

Different isotopes indicate different things (where in the world you have lived for example). The level of nitrogen isotopes are determined by trophic level. It is rather like mercury in fish. The higher up the food chain something is the higher the mercury level is. Nitrogen levels are higher in animals higher up the food chain as the nitrogen is retained in their bodies from what they eat. So a sheep has a lower level, the human eats a number of sheep and gets a higher nitrogen level, the baby eats the mother (breastfeeding) and gets a higher nitrogen level than the mother. When the baby starts eating solids from lower down the foodchain, their nitrogen level drops. So the part of each tooth that forms before weaning has a higher nitrogen level than the parts formed after weaning.

The weaning process can be worked out from collagen in the teeth and the introduction of water rather than milk can be worked out by looking at oxygen isotopes from the enamel.

Ryoko - please do not base any of your parenting decisions on your frankly appalling "knowledge" of human evolution.

A number of points;

(1) By 'ape-like ancestors' one would assume that you are refering to the the Australopithecines. This is the point at which hominins adopted bipedal locomotion, though they retained a number of ape-like traits (hence the ape-like ancestor tag)

(2) The morphology of the Australopithecines is vastly different to that of anatomically modern humans, and as such you cannot make any sensible comparison re; digestive systems in relation to weaning.

(3) Continuing on the above point, the cranial morphology and dentition of Australopithecines (broadly speaking) points to a diet high in plant matter, not soft fruits. Their skulls were shaped such as to allow for the attachment of huge jaw muscles for chewing.

(4) The Australopithecines may well have used rudimentary tools (which have left little/no trace), but the first record of stone tools dates from the appearance of Homo, and is generally attributed to them.

It is ludicrous to base any parenting decisions upon some half baked idea of what you believe that your 'ape-like ancestors' may or may not have done over two million years ago

no, but its bloody interesting stuff.

I always find history about women /children fascinating because so little of womens lives has been deemed important enough to be written about prior to a very short time ago (given the expense of writing materials, general illiteracy of the population etc). Still more if you go prehistori where the evidence is scant, based on a few good examples of well-preserved corpses, and a whole bunch of guess work.

thanks MIlly R for an explication of this - teeth really are a bit great, aren't they?
Mine must tell a woeful tale (Fine until booze swilling adulthood.)!

Now time to grit my teeth for ninety mibutes!

I'm just about to sit down to a three course meal made by my 6 month old. If I hadn't weaned him at 3 days old he'd still be expecting me to feed him now!

I wonder, could "weening" maybe be a new phenomen altogether? Probably involving pish?

LOL at bigfish

Puzzled at the idea that babies need to be on 3 meals a day at 7 mths , imgonnaliveforever.

I can see if you think this, then you'd do the maths backwards and think starting weaning at 6mths might leave you with very little time.

Fortunately, babies really don't need 3 meals a day by 7 mths - who told you this???

And either you have misunderstood your HV or she has told you something incorrect - the 6 mth guidance has nothing to do with allergies here or elsewhere. It's to do with good nutrition, and the evidence is that babies don't need solids before this age and that there is no nutritional benefit in giving them. For most babies, there is prob no harm in giving solids sooner than this (though not befor 4 mths) and a few babies do seem to actively want to have solids a little before 6 mths and to cope with swallowing ok. But as a general rule, 6 mths is about right, with the common sense tip of following your baby's lead....ie watch the baby not the calendar

SPB - yes, afaik weaning at 17 weeks is standard advice for bad reflux. Certainly with ds1 not only were we advised to do it when he went on meds, but we were given very detailed guidance on how to do it (both to identify potential problem foods and to avoid interfering with bf - our paed gastro was ultra pro-bf).

good - hopefully they won't have long left then

I know a lot of parents who have started weaning at 4-6 months because baby was hungry or waking more during the nigfht for a feed. A growth spurt happens around that time so they naturally want more to eat. Pureed carrot is not going to give them more calories and I would like to see the specific research that proves a few mouthfuls of puree actually contains more calories then the same amount of bm or formula. If these parents just upped the breastfeeds then they wouldn't need to introduce 'solids' at such a young age.

I BLW my dc3 at 6 months and she was drinking just as much bm as before, maybe more. It tokk her a good 3 months before she ate to satisfy hunger but in all that time she never lost weight