stupid question ....what does exclusively breatfed mean [blush]

[rockyroadahead]

I have heard this mentioned a lot on mn but does this mean bf and no ff or does it meant no expressed bottle feeding either ??

no formula. You can feed expressed breastmilk.

Can you say it's EBF once baby is on solids?

No, because then it's not exclusive.

That was in response to the question re solids...

Thanks. So if a baby only ever has BM but also solids say at 18mo, is there a term for that?

No solid food at all until 18 months? Or do you mean an 18 month old who was exclusively breastfed until say 6 months then given both solid food and breastmilk after that? An 18 month old wouldn't need formula anyway so I don't know why you need to say anything other than 'I still breastfeed him/her' if the subject comes up.

rocky, the term exclusive breastfeeding is only used up to the time a baby starts to have other foods/drinks. It means not having anything other than breastmilk, however it is 'delivered' ie direct or expressing and given in a bottle. Medicines are not included in this so a baby who also had (for example) Calpol would still be excl bf.

You can't say an 18 mth old on a normal diet of solids alongside breastfeeding is exclusively bf, 'cos he isn't :)

I just wondered if there was another term for it, mainly because I was searching for stats about how many people breastfeed without using formula beyond 6m but all I could find was stat on ebf... And obviously by 7 months most people aren't ebfing as they've started weaning.

If I was still bfing at 18 months or not I wouldn't need to give it a name as it's no one else's bleeding business! ;)