OK ... so did you REALLY get to 6 months without solids??

[Ghosty]

Just a little survey really ...
DD is coming up to 4 months old now and I would be very rich if I had a $ for every person who has said to me in the last week, "You'll be thinking about solids soon then?"
I have not spoken to one person in real life who has made it to 6 months of exclusive milk (breast or bottle) ... In fact most people I know started solids between 3 and 4 months (me included with DS 4 years ago) ...
I am not in any rush to wean DD yet but I wanted to know ...
When did Mumsnetters introduce solids to their babies?

I'll start -
DS ... 13.5 weeks (shock, horror, gasp!!)
DD ... nothing yet ... she will be 16 weeks on Tuesday ...

My DD is 12 weeks old and the health visitor has advised me today to give her a teaspoon of baby rice with her last bottle of the day, as she is started waking in the night absolutely starving. Am going to start tonight. DS was 4 months though.

Ps
dd never increased night feeds, but ds was always a boob hound from birth, I night fed him until he was 14 mtsh when enough was bloody enough! Solids never reduced his breastmilk one iota... just gave him more of his legendary energy to avoid any kind of a sleep...

dd1 (9 years ago) 16 weeks as then recommended. Waste of time, really, lots of faffing around and didn't get the hang of it for a while;

ds (5 years ago) also 16 weeks, took to it from the first spoonful of mashed banana. He was a fat little 10 pounder at birth and bfed like a hungry crocodile. By the time he was four months I was half a stone below my prepreg. weight and could barely stand.

dd2 now 5 months, and no solids yet. She does sleep through the night (with a late feed at 10.30pm) and is generally contented, so no plans to introduce solids unless things change.

pmsl at idea of breastfeeding a croc!!!
corker!

How I would have loved to wait until 6 months! I tried with both, even my with eldest back when the 6-month recommendation was not "official." I made it to just about 4.75 months in both cases. I feel no guilt about not having made it to the 6 month mark, for I have no doubt in my mind that both children were ready for solids by 5 months. They acted perpetually hungry, looking for milk all day and all night--until I brought out the solids. They gobbled them down and suddenly slept. Some people will insist that this is pure coincidence, but I know my children and am pretty sure that in their cases it was not. (I can't speak for anyone else's children, of course.) My children continue to be obsessed with food, and both continue to be on the higher end of the centiles. Neither is overweight (my son is tall and almost skeletal), but both children have tended to eat far more than their peers, even back when they were in the stage of puree cubes and eating 6 cubes at a time at 6 or 7 months. I've learned that guildelines simply cannot be universally applied.

ds 17 1/2 weeks. i know it's probably a coincidence, but he went from breastfeeding every 1 1/2 to 2hrs to going thro from 10 til 7! didn't have the tongue reflex, everything went straight down, he'd doubled his birthweight weeks before, was cutting his first tooth and able to sit steadily in baby chair. when i first offerred him babyrice he nearly bit the finger it was on off...

dh's family have a history of allergies so i've probably done the wrong thing...mea culpa...

my 1st dd started solids at 7.5 months and went straight onto finger foods - great! No messing about with spoons and purees, she was a huge fat baby but obviously thriving on bm... ds is 6 months old now and not on solids. I did try a little bit but he's got reflux and it made it much worse. None of the solids ever passed through his gut, he just puked them up - does that count?
He weighs 21lbs by the way so no worries about lack of nutrition there, either.

About 7 months in the end, due to ds being ill at 6 months. Straight to finger foods, no pureed anything, wish I'd done it with dd it was so much easier.

I wondered if WHO recommend 6 months more because of sterilisation issues in developing countries and the lack of clean water? I had a quick look at their website but couldn't face trawling through the linked medical paper. I still don't know the official reason for 6 months and my hv said they had not actually been asked to recommend it even though ts government advice! They also recommend breastfeeding for 2 years and not many women do that.

I wanted to hold out for as long as possible but my son started waking in the night at 15 weeks after sleeping through for the previous month and his weight started to dip too. So I started a wekk early on HVs advice. He also had acid reflux, not that it helped for that but it was meant too. He was a very big baby (10lbs 9oz) and very active. He took to them instantly and now at nearly a year he eats everything in sight.

6 months no problems. DD was virtually sleeping through without feeding from 5 months. SOooo much easier and less hassle then pureeing etc.

I believe the world average age for breastfeeing is nearer 4 years old so lots of mums do it but not in this country which has very low rates of breastfeeding. I was told by the health trust woman in my area that they dont push the 6 months advice because so many women wont manage it. It is government recommendations in this country as well.
the six month thing is not because of sterilisation but the baby not being ready - stomach lining, no teeth , choking reflex etc etc,

Five months for dd1 (annoyed the health visitor, hurrah) and six months (maybe minus a week) for dd2 (she was exclusively b/fed, dd1 was mixed fed from about 12 weeks).

But hercules, that figure of 4 years isn't anything to do with introducing solids, surely?There can't be many children who survive on breastmilk alone until the age of 4.

No tanum nothing to do with introducing solids. More put in response to a comment about few women breastfeeding to 2 years.

Oops, sorry, I see that now

I think the 4y breastfeeding figures come mainly form underdeveloped countries where they would have little other to give to their children...

Dd was weaned just before 4 months on advice of HV (due to low birth gain)and she loved it immediately, re. choling reflex, she was given a spoonful of pureed fruit a day from 3 months (recommended by a pead, wouldn't do it now)and she learnt very quickly, and she was having finger food at 6 months, I find it difficult to believe that the 6month recommendation is linked to choking.......And I'm definitely sure it depends on the individual babies.

With teh second one, I'll try and wait longer, but I'll also see how it goes and how it works for him/her.

I dont think that there are that many countries where the only available food is breastmilk.

No1: 6 months - could have waited till 8 months as she wasn't at all interested (not quite 7lb at birth)

No2: 5.5 months - definitely interested, didn't spit a bit out and wolfed it down asap. Was chewing toast within the month (over 9lb at birth)

Both exclusively bf before then and yes they probably did feed a lot more often than routine led babies but I tend to think it's only a year out of my life and just grit my teeth and get on with it (whilst cursing under my breath a lot )

Was determined to get them both to 6 mo cos of the whole allergy protection thing (which is the reason they recommend it Jane313 by the way)

16 weeks and he eats anything I make. Was sleeping through already but watching me eat lots and trying to eat what I was eating!! (Still does , little piglet!)

BR

The figure comes from the whole world as there are plent of cultures where extended breastfeeding is acceptable unlike this country where I recently read on the bbc website that only a third of mothers attempt breastfeeding.
Dh was brought up in a underdeveloped country and bf till 4 and not because they had no other food but because that was perfectly normal and acceptable.

Just out of interest my girls are 3 and 5 and I thought the advice when they were young was 4 months. Has it changed to 6 months recently?? My first was older - around 7 months, but that equated to 4 months as she was prem. The 2nd was exactly 16 weeks!!

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babies start producing certain enzymes in their gut at around 6 months that younger ones simply don't have. This means that they don't fully access the nutrition that is in the solids and also that they might get some mild inflammation of the gut, which might may well not be noticable but could set them up for allergies as it allows proteins that should stay in the gut to pass over into the bloodstream.
There is no sound medical reason for starting before 6 months - pureed vegetables have less calories and nutrients than breastmilk or formula. I think it is, to a large extent, a marketing ploy.... 2 months extra for the baby food manufacturers.

Excl bf to six months has been official UK advice for over a year now. Reason is that there is evidence this maximises the bens of bf, and that solids earlier than this tend to replace breastmilk, which means an overall reduction in calories (which is why it never makes any sense to advise solids for poor weight gain if the mum is happy to breastfeed more). This advice also applies to formula fed babies though the evidence it is 'better' is not really there - research only shows that for formula fed babies, there is no disadvantage, nutritionally, in waiting to six months.

However, these guidelines may not apply to all individual babies. You can check what the official govt advisers (SACN) say by doing a web search - they say mothers need information to optimise their babies' nutrition if they choose not to bf excl to 6 mths, but that mothers should know that anything other than breastmilk before 4 mths (which they define as 17 weeks) is too early for everyone.

The bens of excl bf to 6 mths apply to babies all over the world, not just in developing countries.

The age at which it is thought acceptable to give solids changes with cultures and family preferences. It's only really recently that there has been good evidence that about 6 mths is the right age for most. Many other countries in the developed world (such as Scandinavia) have routinely bf excl to about 6 mths for ages and ages....and that is the majority of mothers.

Here in the UK, only about two thirds (not a third, Herc) start bf, and many stop completely long before 6 mths. But there are growing numbers of mothers who bf (alongside solids) for much, much longer.....you just don't see it very often.

ds1 baby rice at 3 months (I know )
dd no solids until 5 months (fruit puree)
ds2, only breast milk until 6 months but had no problem starting him on solids, despite all the well meant advice from my mum and MIL!