anyone used gina ford book successfully for weaning? advice needed

[alibo]

Will be starting to wean ds soon, after managing to get him to take a better quantity of formula for his age,5.5 months. He is definatly not a "hungry baby", and I noticed once or twice in CLBB and gf weaning book that it advises after baby rice at 11am feed for 3 days, "transfer to 6pm feed for a hungry baby". It seems within a few days you go from no solids to solids twice a day; which seems very quick for a "non hungry baby", or baby who is very tired by 6pm like my ds. Has anyone just fed solids at 11am for longer, and if so when did you start to give rice at 6pm feed. Have mentioned this on previous thread when asking for advice on ds small bottle feeds. Anyone out there followed the gf plan with sucess, please advise!!

I did use it and swear by it, don't worry about having solids twice a day as during the first days a portion of solids it's likely to be the size of a spoon. The idea of the first month of weaning is to get the baby used to new textures and flavours but will still be getting most nutrients from milk, which if I remember correctly he must have before the solids so, not much risk of overfeeding as he will stop if he is full.

PS I believe she suggests to feed the rice at 6 for hungry babies as that may help them to go to sleep with a full stomach.

Thanks Chandra for advise. A few people I have spoken to think that fruit and baby rice is too heavy to go to bed on for a lot of babies, did you find this?

No, he had no problem at all, but I believe it's again about the quantities he's been fed, of course, every child is different so I may try to see if it works and if you find it's not good for you baby just avoid it, but I think he will be OK.

I tried to follow the book rigourously to have a chance to see if he was reacting to any ingredient (he has eczema, asthma and hay feever) and didn't have a problem (out of finding out hat he hates bananas and gets a slight skin reaction to tomato). In DS case having the rice was better as suffering from reflux it helped him to keep the milk in.

I followed this book roughly for about 4 weeks before feeling confident enough to go off and do my own thing. I had one immediate problem with her routines which were that dd hated baby rice with a passion...so the first week of giving her nothing but baby rice was a real no-no....

Managed to be flexible and just reordered things slightly but kept to some key principles of just giving her new stuff at lunchtime rather than in the evening in case there was a reaction.

Also didn't like her idea of milk in the evening, then food and then bed - when all we'd even done previously was bath, bottle, bed....so I altered this abit to suit us more and gave her food at 5:00pm, bath at 6:45pm, milk at 7:15 pm and bed at 7:30. It worked really well.

Main thing is not to go too quickly for the first month, don't get worried when they don't seem to like anything - it takes a while for them to get the idea...and ultimately, trust your instincts.....

Have two ds's my first I did not follow GF but my second 20 weeks i have followed her for 3 weeks but instead of changing every 3 days I did it every 7 days. This was because he was a colicky sicky baby and I wanted to take it slow with him. He is a big baby too, but hasn't suffered from my slower approach as he knows nothing else. Now 3 weeks has passed, I will do my own thing. It was fine for him but also for ds the way I weaned him worked well too and I began giving him solids at 14 weeks at 11 and then I introduced breakfast first instead of a feed at 6p.m. It is horses for courses.

hi
i followed gf weaning from 20wks. as i started later than she suggested i did slightly fewer days on each thing for the first few weeks. ds now one yr and he'll eat pretty much everything. i found the recipes brilliant too although only did one's i could freeze. re the 6pm thing, i did similar to handbagaddiction, didn't want him to get food everywhere after he was lovely and clean from a bath!! as long as i had enough of a gap between food and milk he still took his milk. gf's big thing in the early days of weaning is to ensure they still get enough milk and that the food doesn't fill them up too much. as chandra said, the first month or so is all about getting them used to textures and flavours. hope it works out. x

I am doing gf & have been for 3 weeks.I did the same as handbagaddiction with evening feeds as my ds is always too tired and just wants his bott bott at 6.45pm.he definitely doesnt want any new exciting things.
He is a touchy baby so the baby whisperer says.
Im getting on really well with gf.

I would certainly recommend GF weaning having followed it from the start of my sons weaning.He has never refused anything offered at all and slept like a dream so no hunger pangs.I am about to embark onto nine month recipes and hopefully they will be just as successful.
I didn't do GF for my first and she ended up fussing so much and refusing food the difference is amazing.

Thanks for replies folks, have started ds this weekend, baby rice for three days went ok, now on pear for 3 days. ds was 6 months at weekend, (but 3 weeks prem), and with starting at this point, and the book being based on 4-5mths, then 5-6 etc etc, still feel unsure whether to still follow the book or spend less than 3 days with each new food?? hv said not to do just fruit and veg for 8 weeks, as he will need meat/protein sooner. Has anyone still followed gf weaning, but speeded things along if starting weaning later, or has anyone just followed book as is??

alibo, I had a quick glance at the GF weaning bit and started with the 11am feed but after this I've just done my own thing. DS is 7mths and having savoury & pudding at 11am and veg at 4.30pm. Still can't get him interested in breakfast He has a bath at 6pm, bottle at 6.30pm and bed sometime around 7pm.
I introduced protein at 6.5mths and he's been fine.
We've also only just dropped the milk feed at 11am - I let DS take the lead with this.

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