Can I give Kefir made from breastmilk to 4 weeks old baby?

[proxyma]

Hi, does anyone have an experience with Kefir made from breastmilk? As one month old baby cannot digest cow's milk I was thinking to make Kefir using my breastmilk. Is it safe to give to my LO? I dont see why it should be a problem but I cannot find any links online regarding this topic.:/

Why would you?

Sorry that sounds abrupt.. I'm struggling to understand why a tiny baby needs anything other than milk.

Why?

No, no need, breast milk is all baby needs.

New babies should only have milk up until 6 months old.
I don't know what kefir is, but I wouldn't be giving it to a tiny baby, apart from any health risks it's just not necessary.

Another puzzled person here. Why not just give them.....milk? By kefir, do you mean a yoghurt made from your breast milk?

Babies are meant to drink milk for the first 5-6 months until their guts are more developed.

Just give breastmilk. Why would you give something else?

BM is so much better health wise than kefir. Why do you feel the need to use it? Really I would think such a young gut wouldn't benifit from it. The BM will give all the gut flora baby needs.

I don't understand, why would you give a four week old EBF baby anything other than breast milk? I don't get why you would want to ferment the breast milk but adding Kefir culture to it.

Another puzzled poster here. Why do you think your baby needs kefir? A baby that young doesn't need anything more than milk and there is a very real chance they would choke on something like kefir.

No, your baby just needs breastmilk or formula at this age.

A baby under six months needs nothing but breastmilk. (Or artifical baby milk) Giving a baby anything else is literally putting their life at risk.

I was curious so did a bit of googling - I'd never heard of it. Personally, I think if you're completely healthy your baby needs nothing more than your milk.

Wikipedia says it can be done with any mammal milk & we're mammals, so i don't see why our milk wouldn't work. It's your decision, but I'd tread really carefully and speak to a hv or nhs dietician first just because you're messing around with milk it can easily go off or start growing bacteria you don't want. I'd suggest you've really got to know your food hygiene well to not create more problems than you may be trying to solve.

I tried to make kefir from breastmilk, this was for DD who had terrible reflux and colic and needed some probiotic help.

Anyway to cut a long story short breastmilk is quite difficult to culture. Having read up on it lots of mums seemed to have found it tricky to do. It's not as easy as cows and goats milk etc. Not sure why, any way after the first batch I didn't try again and I gave DD baby biotic which is a probiotic for babies which was a lot easier.

No idea what your talking about but...... I had to take antibiotics during the first few weeks of DS birth. I was told by my oesteopath to take a a specific probiotic at night, which in turn would pass through to the baby via my milk.

OP - I used to live in Central Asia, and was surprised at how often young babies and children were given kefir. In fact older babies and toddlers rarely drank fresh milk (once they had stopped breastfeeding), they were usually given kefir.

I am sure this is an historical hangover, in that kefir keeps longer out of a fridge and during soviet times, most people didn't have a fridge.

Is your background similar? Are you looking to make kefir as you can't buy it here? I think the simple answer is that it is unnecessary. Small babies only need breastmilk, if you can't bf then a proper formula is the best alternative.

(in the UK kefir is similar to buttermilk, in Holland it is called karne melk, it is like drinkable sourcream)