Who has breastfed exclusively for 6 months?

[Spod]

I was wondering, with the current advice being that breastfed babies should not start solids till 6 months....yet plenty of people tell me that they start weaning at 4 months. My HV told me yesterday that very few people manage to exclusively breastfeed. I am constantly being told that I should start my dd on solids now (reasons to include 'shes such a big baby' and 'she'll sleep longer at night' but i really want to wait till 6 months. What experiences have you all had... if you started at 6 months or earlier, what were you reasons, how did it go and what did you feed for the first few weeks?

ds started solid food at 25 weeks when he grabbed a chip. He didn't "really" have food until about 7 months, when we got back from an overseas trip (he was much more portable whilst bf)and then he ate pumpkin, sweetpotato, pear puree.

Sleep happened much later and seemed unrelated to the amount of food he was eating. I always say "if she/he has got this big on breast milk why do you think she/he needs anything else yet?"

I watched a 5 1/2 month old push out most of her dinner with her tongue and wondered why her mother bothered. It was so much easier to start later because they are so ready for it and catch up all the other babies really quickly.

My ds is now 1 and we have not had any problems with eating - except running out of food!

I did with dd1 who was exclusively breastfed till 7.5 months - a big, bonny baby who went straight onto finger foods. I waited so long because she had bad eczema and I was worried about aggravating it.
Dd2 I started on solids at 5 months (she has Down's syndrome and I was paranoid about her oral motor skills as she'd also been tube fed for a few months) but had to back off after a week as she was getting terribly constipated, her gut evidently wasn't mature enough. We started again at 6.5 months. She is a much neater & better eater than dd1 so waiting didn't do her any harm, either. I will wait until 6 months again with ds. To me it just feels 'wrong' to give solids to a little baby who can't even sit up unassisted and still has a tongue thrust, plus I wouldn't want to put him through the kind of digestive problems dd2 had.

I too managed to wait for 5 1/2 months... and didn't do the 6 months because of silly pressure.
My kids slept through the night way before that too so this was not an insentive.

My kids are fab eaters - will eat anything DD loves mustard and horseradish! They speak very well for their respective age (my HV said I was risking speech problems by waiting......!!!!!) - however they may have inherited my skills there

My DS is 5 1/2 months and is exclusively breast fed. He isn't sleeping through the night but then neither of my mother two did until 8 months. He doesn't seem especially hungry so I intend to wait.

I weaned my son at 4 1/2 months. His choice, not mine-he was grabbing food off my plate and putting it in his mouth so we just thought...he might as well have food he can actually eat. Wasn't helped by the fact he was falling off the growth curves.

I was absolutely determined to b/f to 6 months. In the end we tried him on apple, thinking we'd give him a few tastes to satisfy his curiousity and he ate a whole pot at one sitting.

What we did in the end was give him solids but watched very closely that he was taking the same amount of breast-milk, and that the amount of breastmilk was increasing a bit. It did really upset me to wean him. I was really worried about allergies but he seems fine.

My HV was bloody useless,she told me to wean at the first hint of a dip in weight and had no information at all about exclusive b/f to 6 months.

If I hadn't had a baby who was taking food from my plate and putting it in his mouth then I absolutely would not have weaned. It took me 2 weeks to make up my mind. I certainly would not automatically do the same with the next (if there is one).

Did anyone else read that apparently a new study (done at a hospital in Munich and Imperial College) has shown that weaning at 6 months doesn't reduce the incidence of excema, asthma or other allergies. I haven't read the original (googled but couldn't find it) just a very brief, simplified summary on the news bit of a (much crappier than mumsnet) parenting site. Has anyone else read the research in full or seen more about it?
I waited till 6 months to start solids with ds and he wasn't really interested in anything but very milky baby rice mixed with fruit or sweet veg for another month or so though he did like finger food. Even though I don't think ds was anywhere near ready for solids at 4 months this didn't stop mil acting as though I was starving him. I really hope that the trend for weaning at 6 months doesn't change back because quoting the research was the only ammunition I had against her 'boundless experience'. Also, if I have another I have no desire to begin pureeing and getting freezer burn from ice cube trays for 2 months longer than necessary

Hello!, first ever message, bit nervous...am weaning ds (started at 17 weeks - he was waking up every 1 1/2 hours and it was killing us, also had doubled birth weight, also nearly bit my finger off when i offered him some baby rice on it) all going really well (sleeping from 7 til 7 most nights with a 10pm breastfeed) apart from seems to posset up veggies: seems fine with baby rice and takes everything with gusto but any veggies seem to appear on his babygro after lunch...he is still primarily on breastmilk with one formula feed a day...some of the vegges is going thro (appears in nappy ) have been doing little teaspoon of veg different one every three days - okay, hands up, am following gina ford for weaning...be gentle with me as am guilt racked enough as it is and have read far far too many books...should i stop giving him food? have i weaned him to early, i posted this on another thread (weaning no-nos but seems appropriate to this one too) any suggestions gratefully received x

I think this is the article Croak was talking about.

hoxtonchick you are ON it...makes for reassuring reading...they change the guidelines every five minutes and lots of the time i think is based on politics rather than evidence...

I was looking at it at work the other day sophable, knew it would come in useful sometime!

Thanks Hoxtonchick (your name reminds me of lovely nights out when I was at uni) that was amazingly fast. Seems like its 1.0 to the mil - doh! Think you're right sophable, guidelines change so quickly that you've just got to use your judgement when it comes to your own baby.
Everything that I've read recently seems to suggest that some of the benefits of breastfeeding have been overstated, although that doesn't stop it being lovely if it goes well and I think it would be a shame if people decided not to try bf for the reason that it doesn't prevent every ailment under the sun. On the other hand anything that reduces a bit of parental guilt is fine by me.

Hi! This is my first post. My daughter is almost 8 months old and is biting me very hard to the point that I jump and am nervous about BF her now. She will not take formula or breastmilk out of a bottle, only a little bit of water. I have heard of women getting their nipples actually bitten off by their babies and I am terrified! I have tried pushing her nose in my boob, sticking my finger in her mouth, even scolding her which makes me feel awful. Nothing works, she only laughs and does it again. I am thinking about weaning cold turkey if she draws blood. I feel very devistated about this whole thing because I am ready to nurse her until she is 1 - 1 1/2. Has anyone else had this problem?

I never heard of nipples being bitten off...Does anyone else suspect that's a huge myth?

A hungry baby will not bite you -- I mean, why waste time playing when she's really hungry? So that would be my strategy, take her off and don't let her have breast (or anything) again until you know she's really hungry. Must be others on MNet with better insights, too, though.

samizmommy - they'd have to have an awful lot of teeth to bite it right off, sounds a bit of an urban myth to me. Having said that dd did nip and my reaction was so sudden and sharp (it really did hurt) that it put her off the last feed of the day for ages . After that if she started to do it I'd finish the feed - decided she wasn't really hungry. Managed to bfeed until about 13 months before dd lost interest.

Best advice I can offer is not to make an issue and she'll soon stop. Because you react she'll make it into a game whereas depriving her of the "toy" will avoid that whilst getting the message across.

i've currently got very bruised nipples but they're still attached.

I weaned ds at 5mths.he was ready and as he was 13days late i felt it wasn't like a switch gets flipped at 26weeks anyhow. he had been 2nd centile and was taking a nose dive off the graph.

he is now putting weight on and i felt so relieved to have made it to six months b/f because the pressure was really on to switch to formula.(which we had topped him up on. see other threads!!)

i was really careful to give ds fruit and veg and leave the protein til 6mths.i did find that EVERYONE seemed to have started weaning before me. in the end we "went" when we were ready and we are very happy with our decision.

I once read that weaning between 4-6 months increased the chances of been less faddy as they get older, any later and they are slower on the uptake. But all my dds were picky at some point particularly the middle one. Can someone remind me why you can't combine breast and bottle. I did with the last 2 from 3 to 6 mths, was I wrong?

I breastfed for 8 months and exclusively for 7 and 1/2 months. She was just not interested and only looked on my boobies as food. I think I mad eit all too traumatic as she was only ever breast fed so she did not even have expressed milk in bottles. wish my hv had warned me to get her used to a bottle as i when i finally tried at 5 months she was not having any of it!!! took a long time and lots of tears, i think that was part of her late weaning as any other experience of other food take had been traumatic! next baby will have expressed milk earlier. one advantage of late weaning was all the money i saved and it was less hassle too. she has never been underweight either. some countries dont start until 8 months!

Thanks for the reassurance. I was a little scared about losing a boob. I still want one more little one and would like to bf that one too. My daughter has taken 2 oz of formula twice which is big progress for us considering she HATES the bottle. I have to hold her fighting hand with my own and give her the bottle with the other, then she will latch on for a little while. I dont force it back in her mouth because I dont want the bottle to be a traumatic experience for her. She is still biting me but not as much. I want to wean her down to only bf at night and morning and hope to have her totally weaned by 1 year (she is 7 1/2) now. I know I will miss it very much as its the only think still connecting her body to mine but I would like to have 1 whole year off before I start over again with another pregnancy and baby. She is going to be very hard to wean because she is a very stubborn little baby! She has definitely learned how to use her psycho baby temper! She has actually sucked off some of the color of my nipple, its while around the outer edge of the nipple. Looks like a little crop circle.hhahaaa!

Samizmommy, there is a thread somewhere about biting, the advice is (against all normal instincts when you've been bitten)to push the baby into your boob so they cant breath and then they let go. Then say no fimly and take them off. I did feed both DS and DD when they had teeth and found that this advice did work after the first couple of times. GOod luch

I mean good luck - all fingers and thumbs today

I will definitely try that. She has eased up a little bit on how hard she is biting. She was biting real hard. She only has her 2 bottom teeth, less than half way in. I think she will be cutting her top teeth soon...i'm hoping she will take her time. We will definitely ahve to try that way out when she starts biting and the top and bottom teeth meet. EEK! In everyone's experience, do the top teeth take a little longer to come in or do they pop right in after the bottoms? She is so much happier during this little break from teething. She was a little blizzard when her 2 bottom ones were coming in. Its like she was a totally different baby. Of course she is learning her temper besides that but it tripled the stink baby when she was teething. As silly as it is, I still get all mushy and choked up when she is asleep. She looks like my little bitty new baby so sweet and sleepy. She will be 8 months this month and its so hard to believe. I think that is why im having a hard time with the weaning thing to. I go back and fourth with my feelings. I would like to wean her for a number of reasons by the time she is 1 year but I also get emotional because its the last thing that connects her physically to my body. Kinda like the same emotion I felt when her umbilical cord fell off. Sheesh, im a real mush! I guess she has to be independent at some point and i'm really feeling the pressure of my family. They think I will bf her until she is in college :P

Those of you who've made it to 6 months - what happened to your babies sleeping patterns in months 4 and 5? I've read on other threads that some people have experienced increased night wakings which have then settled - how long did they take to settle down again? Or did some of you find that they didn't settle until established on solids?
Ds2 is 18 weeks and has just started to wake earlier in the night, back to 2 night feeds rather than one. I'm wondering how long to go with it (I haven't the energy to do it for very long!)and wondered what other people's experience was. I'm actually NOT aiming for six months exclusive bf but if he is likely to settle down soon then I won't leap for the baby rice just yet!

I've just stared dd opn solids at 6 months and found that for the last few weeks she has fed for much shorter periods of times as she is so efficient at feeding and so are my boobs. I dont think solids help them sleep more at night- why would they? Carrots have less calories than milk!
Plus i've avoided the whole wall paper puree crap.

hercules, you haven't answered my question (!) - did your dd change her night feeding habits at 4-5 months and did they improve before you started solids?
Solids most definitely improved ds1's sleep (once he was well established on them) - he didn't get hungry in the night any more. I know other people have different experiences of solids and sleep, but thats mine