Is this right? I should wean before 6 months?

[Catsu]

dd is 5 months, ebf, can't sit up, doesn't pick things up and put then in her mouth
All fine so I am waiting till she can put things in her mouth and sit up a bit better to wean her hopefully will coincide with her being 6 months and can do mostly blw

Somebody just linked to this on fb. Seems to say I should be weaning sooner than 6 months rather than waiting!!! Should I start with some purée now seeing as dd not able to do blw yet?

m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/14/six-months-breastfeeding-babies-scientists?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article

You can purée or use a net from 17 weeks but only fruit, veg and baby rice - no dairy or meat or wheat. BLW from 6 months as they can hold head up well so less chance of choking, can incorporate all food groups (I think).

Do what YOU feel is right for you and your DD

Oh, that. Well. Neither the NHS nor WHO have changed their recommendations about exclusively BF for 6 months. That should tell you all you need to know about the article

It sounds as though you are very in tune with your DD and you don't think that she is ready for solids- that's fine :) it's better to go at your baby's pace than to start giving her solids before either one of you is ready. I would only wean early on the advice or a paediatrician.

wean when your baby is ready. i was trying to get to 6months with ds2 but when he was 5 1/2months i had an adult sized rice cake in my hand and he was going mad flapping and kicking as i walked past so i gave it to him. he ate the whole thing himself. only a couple of weeks early, but an improvement on weaning ds1 too early at 4months (i thought he was ready so started and realised he had no interest at all).

NHS hasn't changed their advice at all. It's typical media reaction to science. It's the duty of scientists to push boundaries and challenge existing norms. It's also the duty of other scientists to question results of research papers. Just because a paper said something doesn't mean it's universal truth. The best example I can come up with is the neutrino and the speed of light. A group of scientists found it faster then the speed of light. They have managed to reproduce the experiment. But it's still universally accepted that speed of light is the fastest.

I would hope NHS have a panel of very knowledgeable scientists and medics who are up to date with research, and update their advice, be it drugs or guidelines, when it become accepted commonly as the best thing to do.

This is an updated version of the artical that was pubilished last year, they amended the headline.

Basicly it was a report in the British Medical Jernal, it was a reivew of old data that said basicly that maybe they need to reivew the data again and do more research. Both the NHS and the WHO have said you should still wean at 6months and there is no new data to suggest otherwise. Note 3 of the authers of the orginal study have done work in the past for the baby food industry, which kind of made the resutls a bit dodgy. Espicaly as the data they used was only a small portion of the data that the WHO orgiginaly used to come up with the 6 month recomendation in the first place.

In reality it was a bit of bad science and rubish reporting from the press which has confussed a lot of mum's.

The reason why I love, love, love Baby Led Weaning is that it doesn't matter what the latest badly-researched newspaper article says, a healthy baby with no developmental issues will wean when they are ready to wean instead of there being any guesswork involved.

The guidelines are confusing - I do agree with the bit in the article that says that just because some mums are misguided enough to wean before 4 months doesn't mean that other mums should be mislead on what is safe. Stupid misguided mums yes that's you stepdaughter will still give babies chocolate pudding at 6 weeks, and nothing the WHO, the BMJ or the NHS says will stop them doing that.

You are doing exactly the right thing waiting for your child to be developmentally ready for solids - the ability to put the food in the mouth themselves and sit up, etc.

It's not particularly new - the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN)'s Committee on Nutrition published a position paper in 2008 advising that complementary feeding (solid foods and liquids other than breastmilk or formula) should not be introduced before 17 weeks and not later than 26 weeks. See here www.espghan.med.up.pt/position_papers/con_28.pdf

I think you're right to wait until she can sit up well - it's one of the signs that the NHS lists to look out for www.nhs.uk/start4life/pages/no-rush-to-mush.aspx

"The paper acknowledges that three of the four authors "have performed consultancy work and/or received research funding from companies manufacturing infant formulas and baby foods within the past three years".

They had an agenda. The NHS, the DoH, The WHO, etc don't, they have the nation's/world's health as their concern.

I know who'd I trust.

pinkpeony Science is mostly incremental work. It doesn't make it not worthwhile for publishing in a scientific journal or conference. As long as it has something new of merit to say. That 'of merit' can be very hard for others to understand.

I'm not from a medical background. (Engineering and computer science actually). But there are a lot of similarities in all sciences, judging from what I've read in Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. I've worked as a post doc for 4 years, and I can be quite cynical about the publishing process, and what defines a contribution.

I dont think she's ready to start weaning tbh. I was planning to wait longer. I weaned my older dcs at 4 months and 5 months as that is when they seemed ready imo
Would like to wait but dint want to be doing the wrong thing if I should be encouraging her to eat sooner!

X posts! A lot of posts while I was typing
Will read now :)