From a virgin gut point of view is baby rice or formula better?

[nannyl]

Baby is now 4m old and has never had anything other than breast milk.

she still wakes at least twice, sometimes 3+ times a night, and even an 8oz bottle of expressed milk at 7pm does not get her through until midinight, and sometimes not even until 11pm either.

I am thinking about, at perhaps 5m ish either giving her a bottle of formula (to see if she sleeps longer, i know she might not) OR starting baby rice with breast milk.

she still has a virgin gut, so is any of these better or worse? Or are they both as bad as each other?

It's the cows' milk proteins in formula that are the culprit, according to that theory.

So rice would be better - choose one with no added ingredients, just the ground rice or rice flour.

However, there are a few issues you need to consider:

• the extra 'food value' in baby rice is very small....something like 7 calories per teaspoon. Digesting these will prob not keep her sleeping any longer than the four-five hours she does already
• four-five hours of sleep is what you might expect from a baby of this age (and somewhat older, too)
• it is age-and-development appropriate to need a bf to get back to sleep again after waking
• it's a bit of a faff messing about with spoons and dishes and rice unless you have to

I don't think a couple of spoons of baby rice at 5 mths are going to do babies any harm, but I think as a 'solution' to a 'problem' it's not much cop :)

Waking twice a night at this age is normal. Have you thought about cosleeping and feeding lying down so that you don't have to rouse from sleep to feed her? That might make life a bit easier. You're just coming into classic growthspurt territory - I found the 16-20 weeks were definitely the worst, but we kept going and now they are a distant memory.

As tiktok has already pointed out, there are hardly any calories in baby rice. It's given as a 'first food' because there aren't a lot of people who are allergic to it, but in terms of nutrition you might as well feed soggy cardboard.

thanks for that

will do babyrice first and i expect it will make no difference at all

If giving your baby a 8oz bottle won't make her 'sleep through' it doesn't sound like hunger is driving her waking so feeding baby rice won't do anything (it might give her tummy ache though).

Finding ways to cope with the wakings may be your best bet - co-sleeping, daytime napping, going to bed early a few nights a week, getting Dad to give baby a cuddle to see if he can settle her without milk......