Advice on weaning a 6 month old possibly allergic sleep fighter

[eddy26]

DD is now 6 months old and to date has been EBF. I would like to start weaning but am feeling stuck. I was thinking about baby led weaning but understand this is slower than spoon fed and so want to do a combination as I suspect she is hungry a lot in the night (she currently wakes every 1-2 hours though not every time is for food of course, though she will happily have some when offered) and I want to start to fill her up so I can get some sleep. However, for some reason it's nearly impossible for me to express and I am reluctant to give her formula at the moment (I offered her some formula (SMA) last month and she had an allergic reaction. I am not 100% sure what she reacted to but suspect it was the cow protein. We are now booked in for allergy testing in June).

So, re spoon fed weaning, do I need to start on baby rice? Does it need to be mixed with breast milk or can I use water? And if not baby rice, then what are the dairy free alternatives?

I am totally wiped out and really really would love her to sleep even four hours in a row just once or twice a week. Even this measly wish sounds like heaven right now. I think weaning might be the answer???

All advice welcome. Thank you!!

we did predominantly BLW with DS, but occasionally needed to shovel food into him if his hands weren't quick enough! porridge was a hit in the early days (can be made with water), and still is to some extent - but you could try baby rice mixed with fruit puree if you need to?

hope someone else has better advice!

oh, and DS has never slept, and is nearly 20 months weaning didn't make any difference!

eddy26 haven't got much advice for you apart from I have weaned 2DC, one with purees and one mainly BLW and the BLW is by far the easiest.

The other thing I would suggest is reposting in the Breast and Bottle Feeding Section as you may get a better response.

How often does she feed in the day? If she wasn't sleeping at night it might be worth feeding her at least every 2 hours and have you cut out dairy yourself?

Baby rice is pretty tasteless stuff, a lot of babies don't like it much, and, by 6 months, I think they're past the stage where it's much use. Try things like roughly mashed banana and cooked apple or butternut squash which are naturally soft, have a nice flavour and aren't uber-smooth. A mashed banana with the last milk feed in the evening used to put my DS to sleep for hours at a stretch!

Spoon-feeding is lots of fun and far quicker than waiting for them to catch on. DS progressed rapidly from me doing all the work, to him holding a spoon and waving it about at mealtimes, to me putting food on the spoon and him putting it in his mouth.

Thought you might like to take a look at this and this book is good too.

If he does have a dairy allergy have you looked at vegan weaning recipes? There is some info here and your library might have some vegan or dairy free cook books.

Oh and your Children's Centre, HV or NCT might do weaning courses or weaning talks.

or your local LLL