BF beyond 6 months

[WestYorkshireGirl]

I am a new Mum with 14 week DD. HV already talking about weaning, but have known people exclusively breast feed beyond 6 months and would like to aim for a year. How does this work with weaning - do they not have any pureed food or solid food at all during this time? Is there any info out there on this? Thanks!

Nope, you just introduce solid food around 6m and carry on offering breast milk. Initially solid food is just a small extra part of your baby's diet and milk (either formula or breast milk) will continue to provide most of their calorie intake until they are one. Some children are enthusiastic gobblers, others take a bit longer to start dropping milk feeds in favour of solids.

Breastfed and formula fed babies can be weaned in exactly the same way. Loads of information about different when and how to introduce solid food can be found in the Weaning topic on this site.

Exactly as others have said - babies need solid food from around 6 months, but you can continue to breastfeed as well for as long as you want. My ds was feeding around 8 times a day before he started on solids, within a month that dropped to 6, at 8 months he stopped feeding in the night, and now at almost 9 months he has 3 meals and 4-5 breastfeeds a day. He took to food quite quickly though, others will drop feeds sooner or later and might need night feeds a bit longer too.

Well done WYG for getting to 14 weeks. Agree with the others, you can just bf for 6 months and then introduce food as well. It doesn't have to be purees though, you may find Baby Led Weaning easier.

Your local LLL may have a talk on weaning coming up and your local nct might run courses on weaning, at the very least they should have a local group where you can go and meet other Mums and talk to them about it.

You might also find this information useful NCT and Kellymom.

I was confused too with DC1 at first, I thought you introduced food at 6 months and just stopped bfing. However DS was keen on the food but much less keen on giving up his bf.

My top tip is if you are thinking of feeding past 6 months don't call it anything you wouldn't want them to shout out at the top of their voice in Tesco. We called it Lolo and all the old dears thougt they were just saying Hello. Confused the hell out of the DC at the time but at least they weren't shouting "I WANT BOOBY MILK NOW!!!!"

Thanks everyone and jilted that website is great! I was obviously confused about the term 'exclusive breastfeeding' as I thought that meant no food-just breast milk, but I see now it means not to give formula milk.

Oh god JJJ that's a very helpful tip. Ds is now 6 months and have no intention of stopping but I must make a mental note to stop calling it booby with immediate effect!