How long can you exclusively BF for?

[KiwiPanda]

I was chatting to my sister the other day about weaning - DD is 5 months and though I'm not planning to start until she's 6 I'm starting to think about it - and she was saying that as she had a nightmare with her DD (fell several centile bands when she started weaning, didn't take to it all etc) next time she's not going to start until the baby is 7/8 months.

So I was just wondering (idly, as I'm still planning to start at 6 months) - how long can you exclusively BF for? I had heard something about the baby's reserve of iron running out around 6 months but is this not true? At what point does BM NOT contain everything a growing baby needs??

Personally I think you can xbf for about 9 or 10 months (probably longer - until 1yr? - if the baby then has no problems eating straight away).
Nothing scientific to back that up though!

I'm guessing around 1... but can you imagine how much feeding you'd have to do with a 12mo ebf?

DD didn't really get going with food as nourishment until around 9mo or so- she was always a chubby healthy baby, ebf.

DS ate nothing suusbtantial until about 1, apart from his evening bowl of cereal.

Babies iron stores do not run out at 6 months - theres a recent study where they looked at ferritin in exclusively bf babies and showed no decline in levels over 6 months, and in some cases the levels increased at times - showing good iron absorption

With BLW, you just offer food from 6 months, and let them decide how much they will take, whilst still bfing on demand - this might be something your sister would want to consider

yes she said she's definitely do that next time - and it's actually what I'm planning to do as well. Better get over to the weaning forum!

I ebf dd to over 7 months so I wouldn't have to start weaning her on holiday.

After that I weaned very slowly and she ate little else for ages.

My ds is almost a year old and on the whole is not that bothered by food. We blw and some days he'll take lots, other days hardly anything. We started at about 7 months. In his case I think teething has a lot to answer for, when he is teething he mainly wants milk. I'm not worried and nor is our lovely new HV. Ds is incredibly active, far more so than dd ever was and by this stage she was on cows milk and 3 meals a day. I'm happy to keep feeding him, I gave up at 10 mo with dd as I just had too much going on to keep expressing, but this time I am a sahm and it is much easier. If ds was at nursery full time like dd was I have no doubt that he would eat more, purely because the milk wasn't on tap