Introduced baby rice to a BF baby ( 20 weeks) - do I need to offer water?

[undomesticatedgoddess]

OK - I know I shouldn't be weaning him yet but he's been showing an interest in food for a while and to be honest I haven't got the guts to go down the BLW route (yet).

He is only having a small amount mixed with about 60-70ml of EBM once a day.

Do I need to give him water or will BF suffice? He is fed on cue and has unrestricted access to breast feeding.

What I meant by 'the way it has always been done' was seeing when the baby was ready and starting then.

The routine 'you must start weaning at 4 months' my mother did with me was not right either - nothing rigid ever is. Including 'you must wait till 6 months.' That is why a bit of flexibility and actually looking at your baby and seening what s/he wants rather than blindly following a protocol is much better.

I apologise if my original post came across as more definite than it was meant to be - that is why I clarified it later.

It's not just here...in RL I know a 3 month old on 3 meals a day...Why? My DH suggests it's competitiveness and wanting your kid to be advanced - seriously?

I think people are just too excited about feeding their babies other food that they can't wait to start. It kind of breaks up the monotony of life with a baby when things change. I certainly feel like that anyway.

But my DS is sitting up in his highchair at every meal eating his toys frantically. He is only 17 weeks so I am a bit confused as to whether I should give him more than breast milk.

Without 'outing' myself, I am pretty confident I would know if there was any suggestion the guidelines are going to change - this is definitely not on the cards at all.

Why would they change?

jimbobsmummy - you are now backtracking from your confident assertions which is good, and I would suggest the HV you worked with has misheard something. The guidelines have been in place for only 6 years (since May 2003) and it would be highly unlikely for them to change without considerable consultation and discussion....just as happened before 2003, when the official guidance changed from '4-6 mths' to '6 mths'. It was never '4 mths' though the '4-6 mths' guideline was widely misinterpreted as '4 mths' or even '16 weeks'.

There is already guidance that 'allows' for weaning as young as 17 weeks - not for the sake of the baby, as there is no evidence that babies (generally - individual exceptions may exist) benefit from solids any sooner than 26 weeks, but parents who for whatever reason decide to give solids sooner than this are advised that solids before 17 weeks is simply not a healthy option. All this is in the official NHS and DH leaflets and has been for some years.

Maybe the HV has heard discussion along these lines?

Actually the guidelines at the moment don't say "6 months and not a day earlier" do they? They say you should try to wait til 6 months but certainly no earlier than 17 weeks (i.e. it's put down as an absolute minimum).

That's the advice I received as a mum anyway.

For the record, my baby was very hungry and kept us awake a lot, there was no problem with waiting til 6 months to wean him, I firmly believe that having a few veggies would have made zero difference to the amount of sleep we all got! I think at that age BM fills them up a lot more anyway - mine didn't eat large amounts of solids til a couple of months into weaning.

hmm.. when do women in tribes start giving babies chewed foods? do they wait until 6 months? or is that an imposed number as a consequence of research? genuine question - has anyone here worked with ladies in their 'primal' state?

some of the health guidance says 4-6 months (though i accept it is in the interest of baby food manafacturers to have it thus) I also find some of the comparative studies (eg the one in kent where they found the single decidedly important factor was prolonged BF whilst introducing new foods for allergies rather than ebf.) have dubious results between ebf and bf. certainly the IQ studies point to BF as opposed to exclusive BF being the indicator. (there was a good one in Denmark in Jul 2007 but i can't find a link - it was on the BBC website but now lost..though again as you'd expect babies to be part-weaned by 9 mo which is where benefit peaks it is hard to analyse)

i find the evidence on sleep when it comes to EBF vs Solids plus BF somewhat unconvincing (as they tell you the total hours slept is the same: great - i don't care about the total hours slept - i care about the total length in the night)

anecdotally i found both my babies slept through with greater regularity after introducing baby rice. (noticeably so - even on a day-by day basis - if i wasn't arsed with the rice, the baby woke up) hardly a study, but that was my experience of it.

my first baby - rice from 12 weeks. though used formula plus rice - big mistake, terrible constipation even though washed down with plenty of BM. She took it from the spoon fine sat against me. I cuddled her upright for a bit to make sure it went down ok.

second - rice first time @6 weeks. went back on this as too much hassle to prepare rice (all with ebm) then reasserted at 5 months. gave all meals to 6 mo with ebm - went much better though i spend more time squeezing my tits than even DH would dream of doing. Again, i feed him with his back to me so i can support him. EBm seems a much better mixer. No Need for Water!

be very careful to sterilise spoon & bowl (i used boiling water) every time. Personally i think it is unwise to be strongly against solids when many mums will try to mix bottle with boob instead (with risk of boob rejection etc) or even go totally to formula when they find baby is feeding non-stop/waking so often.

frankly @20 weeks is not early at all compared to the majority of mums in the UK (not that what the majority do should be any model for our own behaviour, but just saying.)

What is 'quite silly'? I specify when what I have said is speculation/opinion and you can feel free to ignore that if you wish. But don't write off everything, if you disagree with some.

There is a terrible tendency on these type of threads to just quote the latest guidelines as if it was gospel and anyone who suggests doing otherwise gets shot down .It really irritates me! Guidelines are just guidelines and you actually need to take account of the individual. And in any case they change as new evidence comes available.

There is also a tendency to not read posts properly and to put meanings in them that aren't there! Please read what is actually said not what you think was said.

tiktok, thanks for that - it wasn't ever meant to be a 'confident assertion', I was just saying what I had been told, but then realised as soon as I posted it I needed to be clearer that it was only something I had been told. Maybe she was getting confused, or misheard something I don't know. Maybe she was just getting clarification of something she had been advising worng previously. I'll ask her more on tuesday.

The curent guidelines as you state them do seem to allow for flexibility, which is good, but most health visitors (certainly the ones I work with) seem to interpret them as 'no food at all before 6 months'. This always struck me as wrong. And most people ignore that advice anyway!

i find it odd that weaning is such a charged subject whereas if someone came on here and said 'i'm going over to formula now' no-one would have come out straight and said 'don't' - am i the only one that thinks this? same on other forums though...

i certainly didn't wean* to fulfil any parenting milestone - more that those days spend with her/him feeding more than they had ever done before were not great.

a bad word as it implies the aim is to stop breastfeeding - it was not* my aim at all, nor did it result in that. i gave feeds between boobs (IYSWIM) to ensure that there was no feeding association against BF.
this worked ok in my case.

I didn't say anywhere that breastfeeding should stop with weaning did I? Maybe weaning is the wrong word, we should say 'intoduction of solids' instead to make that clear.

I myself suffer allergies, and have discussed the whole allergy thing with a couple of immunologists who are proessional colleagues. Both of whom are of the opinion that waiting to introduce allegens may actually make things worse (esp peanuts, and especially the advice to avoid them if pregnant for example) and that early exposure to small amounts of allergens may in fact be beneficial. Now again, this is not stating anything as fact, but it makes me think that the whole allergy thing is actually very unclear.

And the chewing food thing wasn't me!

Not sure about your 'chewing food' thing. Where did you get that information?but I very much doubt that tribal women sit there pre-chewing the food of their young as a habbit. Apart from anything else it would remove the nutrition wouldn't it?

hum, i have seen this in peron in Borneo (though had no idea of age of baby, especially as local kids are much smaller than UK ones) - think about it - no baby rice in the jungle. They eat a kind of tree, the pulp is fleshy and mothers part-chew it for babies and feed from their mouth - toddlers get partially chewed stuff, infants thoroughly chewed. The enzymes in the mothers saliva help to break down the food for baby (this is Continuum Concept stuff, isn't it? haven't read the book but others that have have said they weaned by giving chewed pap). Also the bible speaks of 'chewing pap' for babies. I'll admit i couldn't bring myself to do it, even believing it was how it done for time immemorial.

i am also aware of the american weaning study that the WHO based its allergy advice on - it only involved kids that were likely to develop allergies by genetic predisposition, and some of the children had still not been introduced to those foods even after 6 mo (so possibly this study only showed that children with a predisposition for allergies developed them sooner if exposed to them sooner...something perhaps they didn't need a study to work out??) I got into this discussion on another forum and another lady said her allergy consulant had said weaning time didn't matter, what was important was to bf as long as poss.

interesting discussion

good night!

Well starlight, not necessarily if they are hungery still despite having milk, and showing sligns of being interested in food and holding their heads up like my SIL son was at 4 months than its fine totally I think, my SIL noticed that he was a lot better when she put him on solids.

I think that once has to look eat each individual baby, not one size fits all thoery.

Wow this has kicked off since I asked for clarification and went to bed last nigth .

Firstly I dont see why they would bother changing the guidelines as sadly very few people follow them. I think it is up to a whole 3% of mums who exclusively breastfeed for 6 months now.

Secondly - there is evidence and not just relevant to this country. I can list some references again if you like - but whenever I do it suddenly goes quiet.

Thirdly, surely there would have been some evidence and discussion for this change within health and academic circles. There certainly hasnt been an influx of papers showing the benefit of 4 months.

Fourthly, why would they bother changing them back? There is no deficit to waiting until this age - surely the mums who feel baby is ready will just do it anyway.

As an aside why on earth does a bigger baby need weaning sooner? My DD was 21 pounds at 4 months and I exclusively breastfed her until 6 months. Why would fruit and veg reduce hunger rather than (obviously very given her size) full fat milk?

If you have hard evidence it is changing please come back and show us. Otherwise it is not fair to tell people it is changing. People could read that advice and decide they are now going to be the 'rules' and do so.

jimbobsmummy - anyone who looks at guidelines as 'gospel' is, in fact, ignoring the guidelines In fact, I'd suggest if the HVs you work with are saying 'no food until 6 mths' for everyone with no flexibility then it's them you need to be asking to do some reading, not people on this thread.

The guidelines allow for individuality. They are less an 'instruction' to individual mothers than a public health statement that mothers should be enabled and supported to breastfeed exclusively until six months, with 'individual dietary needs being accommodated'...that is not the exact wording, but that's the intention, so I paraphrase.

The Cochrane review on which UK guidelines are based did not say much about allergies as they could not find sufficient 'quality' trials to draw any conclusions. It's well-known that the allergy research is unclear and complicated, anyway.

There is some interesting qualitative research on early weaning (you could check out a fairly old paper - published 2001 but talking to mothers earlier than that, of course) - called 'Rattling the Plate'. It is on the web). Mothers introduce solids earlier than guidance for all sorts of reasons, and one of the faults (IMO) of the 2003 guidance is that hardly any attention was paid to supporting HCPs in putting this guidance into practice with their clients.

There is no evidence that babies, on the whole, get any benefit out of solids before about six months and there is some evidence of risk of illness, even in developed countries. Babies who have anything but breastmilk or formula before 17 weeks are at measurable increased risk of ill health.

As an evidence-based public health policy goes, we have it right, I think....but training and support around enacting it is poor.

i have no issue at all with parents looking at their babies and judging if their baby needs something more than milk at 20 weeks or 23 weeks or 28 weeks

however, parents should know the right signs to look for

and a lot still think that night waking, being a bigger baby and wanting more milk are signs .

they're not

the NHS weaning leaflet is quite clear about this

no solids should be introduced before 17 weeks that is also quite categorical. but that does not mean that at 17 + 1, you can or should give your baby solids UNLESS they are showing signs. the odd baby will be, most won't

Well my SIL was constantly giving milk constantly and her son was still hungry, rumbly tummy and showing interest in food, at that age he was able to hold his head up, and no tounge thrust surely ready for weaning i would think. He was certainly happy after she intorduced solids so its all good, he is now a happy and healthy 2.8month old.