New Who advice on BF!!

[madhattershouse]

I found this article [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/14/six-months-breastfeeding-babies-scientists
here].
Am a little ..what do you think. Talk about changing your mind!

here

Well the article states what Justine thinks about it.

Interesting but not really convincing.

Advice is always changing though, whenever new studies suggest refining the current thinking. It doesn't say anything that shocking - just adjusting due to new findings on allergies etc. When I had DD1 and DS I was told to avoid peanuts during pregnancy and with DD2 told the opposite was now the case due to further studies on allergies. I weaned mine when they started grabbing my lunch and taking their eye off the milk. About 5 months. Like most advice it can't be taken too much too heart.

This is being reported on BBC News as "Health Experts say...."

This is kind of off-topic, but the article keeps on talking about 'managing to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months' and it being hard work not to introduce solids. I don't think it can be just me who found exclusive breastfeeding the easy bit and weaning difficult and stressful, with a baby who didn't seem that enthusiastic about solid food until about 10 months.

Yup, much easier to just take boobs out and not worry about food

Mary Fewtrell appears to have done / been doing work for Nestle.

I wonder if she declared her conflict of interest to the Beeb who is using her as an 'expert' this morning on Breakfast.

Should point out that this is not new WHO advice as your title suggests-it's contradicting it.

Careful tho madhatter - WHO are not changing their advice. WHO & the UK advice remains the same.
This is just some report which may be challenging that advice.

TBH the repeated changes in policy just undermine the dogmatic views of certain HV/other groups who make womens lives miserable trying to force them to stick to a policy when baby and gut instinct is suggesting a different policy

What repeated changes in policy though Railway? The policy has been in place since 2003, & I don't know of any changes. Or do you mean before that?

Wht struck me was that much of what they were talking about- introduction of gluten, nuts, iron rich food was stuff to do with what you feed them when you wean. I wonder if some of the problems are more because people start weaning at 6 months but still wean slowly with baby rice, fruit and veg puree as they would have done weaning at 4 months when actually, at 6 months your baby can be merrily chomping away and meat, gluten and nuts (just not whole) withing a few days of introducing food. I don't know. Of course follow up studies will take time. There must be a lot of people out there very concerned that people are just going to see this as a green light to ignore guidelines, as if we didn't have enough people weaning stupidly early as it is (and I'm not talking about those weaning a bit early, i mean the threads that cause a riot ont he bounty boards).

These aren't new findings. They accord with the current recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as of the European Food Standards Authority. Your mothers and grandmothers probably introduced solid food before 6 months, and the common sense advice of paediatricians up until about 10 years ago would also have been to introduce solid food from about 4 months. Most babies get hungry before 6 months.

It's not about the baby food industry. You don't have to feed your child commercial baby food. Just ordinary, fresh, healthy food. But I suppose it's far simpler to advise exclusive breastfeeding for as long as possible before introducing jars of food than to educate mothers on healthy and hygienic food preparation techniques.

here

My access is playing up and I can't get to the full article. I am concerned what it says.

FWIW I don't think 6 months is a magic marker - I think readiness is. By readiness I mean head control, loss of tongue reflex etc etc that happens towards 6 months, sooner for many.

You can't just say that correlationally babies who are weaned later have more problems as it could be because they had problems they were being weaned later or trying to delay solids.

Just because cealiac disease has risen in the last 10 years does not mean it it linked to later solids.

Surely any new information (even if it does contradict previous advice) should be welcome as long as it can be backed by proper scientific study?

It is frustrating to follow guidelines only to find out they may not be correct but surely it is better to be wrong than in denial.

It's not new 'advice'.

It's not new research.

It's not from WHO.

It's a series of questions the authors (all highly qualified experts - we can take them seriously) raise, that they say have not been adequately answered in a UK context, and which they suggest may be answered by looking at research done since the WHO recommendations of 2001 (whose systematic review found no evidence of harm, as a public health policy, of excl bf to 6 mths).

Confusing for mothers, especially if we get posts like the OP here, saying it's a change of mind.

It's not.

Maybe UK guidance will change but it cannot change without the extensive research this paper calls for.

Coeliac disease has not risen in the last 10 years, its detection has. And Coeliacs is not a gluten allergy it is a disease caused by an allergy to gluten - gluten allery is a different thing entirely.

And thank goodness, this seems a victory for common sense, the WHO guidlines are for the world including developing countries, that is why the advice is so general.

Right.

It says mothers should give their babies fresh food for iron.

Because 4 month-old baby will happily eat enough steak everyday

But there probably is iron in jars and formula, isn't there?

I'm not convinced to be honest.

And it is NOT a WHO advice. OP, you should have read the article first.

Don't know whether I can post full text of this article, probably will infringe copyright.

The take home message for me basically is that for some babies weaning before 6 months is appropriate and weaning before 4 months is definitely risky. It goes on to say that mothers should respond to their babies cues as to when to wean.

This is hardly new information and as usual the media have managed to twist it to try and say that breastfeeding isn't as good as you thought so na, na, na, na . The article does say that the evidence of the benefits of BF over FF are clear and not in dispute.

However as a caveat I would like to post the paragraph on competing interests and make of that what you will!

Competing interests: All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare that no external funding was received in connection with the preparation of this manuscript; MF, AL, and DCW have performed consultancy work and/or received research funding from companies manufacturing infant formulas and baby foods within the past 3 years

"winnybella", my baby is six months and has been quite happy to eat all kinds of meat (pureed, obviously) from about 21 weeks. His face literally lit up when he first tasted pureed chicken casserole. Legumes, green leafies and dried apricots also have iron. Baby cereals are mostly fortified with iron, but many ordinary non-baby cereals are too. Unrefined cereals suitable for babies (eg very finely ground brown rice) are also high in iron.

It isn't new advice yet but there may be something in the BMJ article and only time will tell if it is adapted as official guidance by the DH. Equally it may be rubbish but I think further study is warranted.

However I think it is shameful the way the media has jumped on this and completely misinterpreted the article and is using it as an opportunity to bash breastfeeding.

The Wright Stuff is currently displaying the following banner "Does Breast Feeding give gives allergies". This is wholly missing the point of the BMJ article. The article doesn't suggest that mothers shouldn't breast feed past 4 months or that breast-feeding is in anyway harmful. I can see why some posters are rightly concerned at how the study will be interpreted.

Sorry banner should read "Does Breast Fedding Give Allergies", I'm so annoyed I can't even type it :)

I give up, you know what I mean.