am i terrible for letting 4mo taste a tiny bit of our food

[hazeldog]

i know he cant have an actual feed of solid food but he is so interested in what we are having and really enjoys the taste. reading the article on MN about signs of readiness; sitting up, putting things in his mouth, not pushing out with his tongue..well he can do all those things.. im literally talking about a taste on my fingertip of mash or yoghurt or a single spaghetti hoop. he really goes for our food and is quite ahead of his milestones. im inclined to think that given all these outward signs if the gut can be sealed at 4 months then his probably is.
are we terrible parents?

OK ok, that was imprecise of me - however the evidence points that introducing gluten between 4 and 6 months whilst breastfeeding carries a lower risk of coeliac than waiting until after 6 months.

Actually the conclusion was:

"SACN and COT do not consider the evidence sufficient to support EFSA’s conclusion on the introduction of gluten into the infant diet not later than 6 completed months of age with the aim of reducing the risk of subsequent development of coeliac disease and T1DM."

Therefore the recommendation remains the same - around 26 weeks.

"I cant stand people who say, "well ten years ago it was ok, so there is no harm" "our ancestors figured it out without guidelines"

Really? You can't stand people because they don't agree with you on weaning?

How commendably doctrinaire of you.

even if that were true about coeliac widow, what about the other conditions that may be linked to early weaning?

there's been an increase over the years in chrohn's and ulcerative colitis and ebf for longer might help protect against it.

there's a lot of might and may in this topic, but to me it's not worth the slight risk vs no benefit to weaning early.

It's not about disagreeing, or about being slavish to guidelines. It's about weighing it up based on current available information. not anecdotes

Nobody's suggesting weaning under 16 week here, is anyone?

To answer your question, no you are not terrible.

But, I cannot see what benefit there would be to giving a 4 month old baby tastes of processed foods. They are full of rubbish and will be of no benefit to your baby.

Not 'imprecise' of you, widow.....misleading, selective, and wrong.

Hi Hazel :)

Can't believe he's 4 months already, that's flown by.

Anyway, you've been given a lot of info on this thread so I will just say that the evidence we have at the moment shows that it's best to wait until 6 months to introduce solids and there is no evidence to show that it will harm a baby to wait until this age. What you do with this information is entirely up to you.

This is pretty cool though- if you're breastfeeding then what you eat will flavour your breastmilk, so he will be getting all sorts of different tastes already. See if he likes garlic

Also if you haven't read Baby Led Weaning then I highly recommend it, it's very interesting and great for lazy parents like me that don't want to be bothered with making purees.

Hi eaurouge :) had deserted this thread as bun fight was developing. Just saw you had commented so came back lol. Yeah I can't believe it either where did the time go!. I'm well into the idea of baby led weaning will deffo be doing it. He seems to like booby milk of all flavours. I am now holding his dad back a bit from getting into giving him a bit of every dinner but I'm not going to turn it into a big deal as he is only a few weeks away from weanable age so I doubt the odd tiny taste will hurt when he is physically trying to throw himself into our dinner or sticking his hand in and sucking it.