weaning

[smerchant]

My baby will be 4 months on 28th and i am planning to start weaning him as he is already 7.8 Kg in weight. I wanted to wait till 6 months but looks like he needs food as after 7 ounces of milk he is still hungry. He is both bf and ff.He is feeding every 3 hours except night when he sleeps for 8 hours without feed. Milk he is taking is equivalent to a 6 months old baby so i think there is no room to increase his milk intake. His HV says i should wait till 6 months but i have not got good advise from her in past so not sure is she is right this time. Please let me know what you all think.

It's too early.
There are more calories in milk than there will be in puress anyway so it makes no sense.In this case your HV is right.
It's also a real faff messing about with food.

The way food gets them to sleep longer is by sinkint to the bottom of thier poor little stomachs like wallpaper glue.

I'd try upping his milk intake instead - the amounts on the side of a formula tin are very rough estimates. My DD2 always had more than it said on the side of the tin. She just sort of found her own level and stayed there.

Feed him more milk.

Your HV is right

I've just checked DD2's red book and she was 7.77kg at 4 months and I didn't start weaning her until 5 1/2 months (when she took my toast off my plate )

DS had a growth spurt about 4.5 mo, he was having 9oz bottles every 3 hours then started needing more so I was refilling his bottle mid-feed, which was a faff. So I added an extra feed to his schedule, so in the afternoon he was 2.30, 5.15, 6.15, and having 7-8oz each time. Just try offering him a feed more often, don't necessarily wait until he decides he's starving.

DS did fine on extra feeds during his growth spurt, then reduced it slightly after a couple of weeks but we kept the extra feed in anyway. He's 7mo now, doing baby led weaning with lots of milk as well.

ok, looks like HV is right this time. I have read somewhere that weaning can be started when babies are 6 months or 7.5 Kg in weight. Not sure where i read it but since all of you think its too early so i think i will wait.

thanks.

It's been a long time - about 30 years! - since weight was considered to be a guide to weaning age in the UK.

(I collect old baby books including old Bounty books - I think it really is as far back as that . More recent books talk about age).

weaning CAN be started earlier, smerchant, but it's not so good for them.

I don't get DD weighed very often but she was 8.1 kilos at 19 weeks so probably a similair size to your ds at 4 months. My hv told me to try going up to 9 oz bottles and then hungry baby milk to get as close to 6 months as I could. The milk intake can even out. DD was on 7 oz bottles from about 18 weeks but is still on 7oz bottles most of the time now. In all honesty it's only this week that she has seemed to need something more than milk. DD has been having some finger food since about 22 wo but is only really starting to ingest any now at 25 wo. I just gave her finger food a bit earlier than I'd planned to because she was so interested in food and I figured with finger food she was in control of how much non-milk food she was taking in, rather than me spoon-feeding her purees. If you're unsure about introducing solids then I would say try more milk feeds, then try hungry baby milk in the ffs (although I imagine the bfs would better adapt to his appetite so many replace a ff with a bf if possible) before going to solids.