Page 3 | Does holding off solids until 6 months mean constant feeding?

Original poster

rickman · 14/03/2005 09:37

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OP posts:

mears · 14/03/2005 11:27

I remember it well Rickman and I still do it now. Because my eldest is now 18yrs, he goes to bed later. I do insisit he is gone by 11 o'clock though because he is still at school. I would then sit and flick the telly and watch rubbish, just so that I felt I had time on my own. However, for the past few nights I have gone to be at 11o'clock as well and really enjoyed sleeping

When the kids were younger I remember just longing for some peace and quiet and i never went to bed early. I think if I did it all again , I would make sure that I had alternate early nighhts at least. It is so worth it.

Keep going with the feeding, you will manage I am sure. You are not starving your baby as long as you are happy to feed on demand. Make sure though that you have a bit of control over that demand sometimes

I was so chuffed with myself when I did it, it actually gave me an energy boost

WellieMum · 14/03/2005 21:12

Hi Rickman
You sound amazing! I've found it tough coping with constantly-feeding dd and I don't have another 3 to look after!

We've just made it to 6 months with no solids and it's a good feeling - had a rough time with painful bfeeding and I never thought I'd get this far. I hope I don't sound smug - I'm not - just grateful.

Anyway, from my vast experience (5 days of solids ) I can say that I really agree with others who've said that a) it's much more work than bfeeding and yet b) it's that much easier than early weaning because they're developmentally further forward.

Like Mears, I'm skipping the baby rice - I think people who compare it to wallpaper paste are being kind - started with puree carrot with EBM mixed in. dd literally learned to eat off a spoon during the course of the first feed: at the beginning, she was pushing her tongue at the spoon, and by the end she was gulping it down like a pro.

Had to double the quantity of food straight away as she was enjoying it so much, and yesterday I gave her fairly lumpy mashed banana with EBM and she wolfed it down like a pro.

Steak and chips by the weekend no doubt!

dd is still feeding frequently (ok, I wouldn't expect the solids to have made a difference yet) but definitely in the last 3 weeks there's been an improvement and she's naturally spacing her feeds a little more which has been very liberating. Not anything I was doing as far as I know - just her getting older. Hope this happens for you too.

Anyway, a bit of a self indulgent ramble here, but just wanted to report a very positive experience with 6 month weaning, and to wish you luck however you decide to do things.

Maisiemog · 15/03/2005 01:03

I was wondering the fact that so many people say their babies have gone down the percentiles at four month, is there any connection between the higher levels of activity at this age and the drop in weight?

HUNKERMUNKER · 15/03/2005 01:07

Partly that, and partly the charts are tosh IMO

NotQuiteCockney · 15/03/2005 07:31

Maisiemog - they don't drop in weight, they just don't gain as fast as the chart says they should. If you look on the chart, you can see that the rate of gain is meant to go down as they get older, but when it goes down, and by how much, varies from baby to baby.

CarolinaMoon · 15/03/2005 10:47

speaking as one of those mums who can't keep their baby away from the scales, it does seem a bit odd to compare my exclusively bf'd baby with the 60s babies the charts are based on - in those days most babies would have been on solids for months by his age, not to mention all the rusks, guinness etc that went into some babies' bottles back then...

tiktok · 15/03/2005 10:56

Carolina, there is a lot wrong with the way the scales and the charts are used, but it's just not true the scales are based on bottle fed babies of the 60s....this is a big myth. UK charts are based on recent data sets and the babies are a mixture. After about six months, the research indicates they stop being accurate enough to help anyone make any clinic decision, but before then, they're useful enough if they are used properly. Breastfed babies tend to gain slightly more quickly than formula fed babies, and then tend to plateau at about three months, but the difference is pretty small.

Polina · 15/03/2005 19:25

What is the correct way to use them, Tiktok? I am really interested in this as we had SO much grief and so did my sister with her three, as the growth patterns didn't fit with the chart. Our local paediatrics consultant said that the charts were going to be reviewed as the data set was too old (not back to 60s though!) and that they weren't really much use until after the first four months, so would love to have some data to throw around!!

tiktok · 15/03/2005 19:34

I think they should be used to inform the whole picture, Polina, not as the sole piece of information about a baby's health and development. If you have a happy, healthy, appropriately-developing baby who feeds well and is growing, the precise point on the chart is not terribly important.

Added to this, weighing is done so badly in too many places. The only accurate way is to weigh the baby naked on electronic scales and to do it over time, so you are not looking at weights that are too close together in time.

Polina · 15/03/2005 19:39

Thanks, Tiktok - that will help me a lot. I spent many a fruitless hour trying to explain to the HV that his lack of weight gain one week was owing to the fact that he had pooped his entire body weight out in one horrific nappy just before weighing.... I think our local hv's are rather keen on the charts as ds was a very happy and contented baby making all his milestones but it took him a while to settle down in weight, so we ended up in hospital with him having a barrage of tests so my opinion on the charts can be a bit squiggle eyed to say the least!

WellieMum · 15/03/2005 19:52

I think there's another problem which is being reviewed, which is that most charts show the average weights of babies at a given age, but don't reflect the way an individual baby grows. (is this correct, Tiktok??)

Certainly with dd I can see her growing in spurts rather than continuously. In the early days they were insisting on weighing her very frequently on those hook scales and her weight was all over the place. I put my foot down about this eventually as I could see she was well and growing out of her clothes. She's just been weighed for the first time in a while and now with all the bumps smoothed out you can see that she's been growing nicely along "her" centile.

CarolinaMoon · 15/03/2005 19:53

tiktok, i have just looked at the small print in ds's red book and you are of course right. not sure why i am so keen to believe these urban myths or whatever they are, esp as i have a perfectly happy, contented little baby.

tiktok · 15/03/2005 19:59

WM - the way the charts are worked out, they give a picture of a population's growth, not of a gazillion individual babies all weighed every week. So their relevance to any one individual baby is limited - but that's not to say they are useless at all. They can certainly be useful, if they are interpreted in context.

No baby should be weighed on a spring balance with a hook and hammock unless you are doing it for fun or for interest - they are simply not accurate enough to be used for any other reason.

If anyone's baby is being weighed in this way, and decisions about supplementing or intervening in the feeding are being taken on the basis of the results, you should insist on a proper weight.

WellieMum · 15/03/2005 21:12

Tiktok, I hate those spring balances. Hate hate hate. I wish I'd made more of a fuss now, but I was so upset about all the concern over dd's weight and suggestions that I needed to "improve my milk" that I wasn't as assertive as I should have been.

Amazing how clearly you can see with hindsight!

jane313 · 17/03/2005 12:10

Its odd how desperate people are to start weaning. Even when they haven't got those signs that are a myth anyway. I talked to to a mother of a 3 month old who was maoning about not being able to start and told to hold off to 16 wks. I told her my experience of regretting starting early as it didn't help him sleep through the night or increase his weight gain and probably gave him excema. She said that they needed the vitmains and iron from food! and when I talked about gov advice, WHO etc she just said she had heard very mixed reports. Her daughter was sleeping through the night anyway. I gave up then (I was being very nice and not telling her what to do at all) but I am now in an annoyed mood. I'm sure if someone had told me those facts (ie fruit is less calorific that any sort of milk) when my son was that age I would have been interested, even if I didn't agree.

vkone · 17/03/2005 15:55

I must say I wanted to go for 6 months with my boy and nearly made it. At 5 1/2 months, he grabbed a pizza crust from my plate whilst I was chatting to my Mum and shoved it in his mouth and ate it. I entrepreted this as a desire for solids .

I'd just suggest being patient but do include him in mealtimes in someway (maybe using a bumbo or baby rocker) and he'll let you know when he wants to start.

Polina · 17/03/2005 18:36

It is a really difficult subject though - I wasn't desperate to start weaning him as I loved feeding him but I was desperate for him to put on weight better; regardless of the calorie intake neither he nor his three cousins ever gained the requisite amoutn of weight on milk, but put on weight nicely when the solids were introduced (over three different sets of recommended weaning times as well, so it wasn't just a kink at a particular time). Perhaps it's to do with their digestion? I dunno. But I found that at 15 weeks every instinct was screaming at me to introduce rice; I waited until nearly five months on hvs advice by which time infant was direly underweight and then he put on 15oz in the first week on solids. It's hard to know what to do for the best. Please don't throw things at me for not saying the right things!