4 month old ready to wean?

[Egypt]

just thought i'd paste my message from our maybabies board onto here for the perusal of the wiser of you (mears, etc...). Is she really ready to wean?

omg! just been to see hv and she says dd is hungry...............solids here we come. i feel so sad. she has been waking loads lately and not done a 7 hour stretch for a while. grumpy in day, wanting to feed lots but ends up just fussing and crying more than usual. lots of dirty nappies (dont know how this is related). spose it was obvious really, but i was in denial. she is only 17 weeks. i dont class her as 4 months until 28 sept. but hv did at 16 wks, so i spose i can start! well, not got much choice really, dd is ravenous. aparently. been and bought some baby rice and tommee tippee bowls and spoons. scary. will start her at lunchtime with just a spoonful of rice. but want to try it today, so when she wakes i think i will. just to see the reaction on her little face, bless. have a hunch it won't be easy.

please someone tell me i'm ok to wean!! i feel that 6month guilt thing. she is 15lb 6oz. and has put on 10oz in the last week on just my milk alone, which gave me the impression that she was doing fine. but she was feeding much more often, admitedly. and a horror at night.

btw, she took the whole teaspoon and seemed to really enjoy it. she is also usually climbing the walls at this time of eve, but tonight is actually very settled. could this be why?

egypt, this is a v personal decision, but imo it's a little early to wean. i exclusively bfed dd2 till 6 months, dd1 till about 5.5mths. and neither of them started sleeping better once they were on solids!

Sorry but most hvs seem to talk out of their **rse when it comes to weaning.

It isnt necessary to give solids before 6 months plus the gut is not developed enough. How much they weigh is nothing to do with their gut development.

Eygpt - you'll get lots of differing opinions on this thread but I think you sound happy that a decision has been made and even though people on here do disagree with health visitors it is very hard to fly in the face of the professionals. I personnally have gone along with what mine have said as they are the ones who have seen me and ds from the beginning and if you can't trust your hv and gp who can you trust? Having said that I've also had excellent advice on here too

But vic- they're arent all up to date. I know far more about bf than my hv and if i followed her advice i'd have to go against what i know. They are not automatically right.

The 6 month recommendations has come from the who. Not all health workers are aware of it.

Really they don't know the current WHO guidelines? Blimey, that's really shocking

Mine had never heard of it despite it being the guidelines for the last 10 years or so. She thought i was barmy.

Such a tough thing, and a lot of people have been posting about this lately. We did go the 6 months. It was tough and I had plenty of people trying to convince me that he would sleep better, etc. after going on solids. When we finally did go on solids it didn't make a bit of difference. IMHO if she is gaining weight properly, then she may just be experiencing a growth spurt right now and is really fine to stay on BM. We are still working hard to find someone who will give measles as a single vacc, so I can sympathise with going against the advise of a medical professional. They all seem to think I'm daft about the vaccs thing.

mentioned the who recommendations to her and she said that it was to protect third world children from gastric probs and no need to follow the guidelines! also said a load of bks that if we held out until 6 months, babies would need to be feeding for 18 out of 24 hours to fill themselves enough. now i know that is total trash. but at the same time i just feel that my dd is so hungry. tbh i was shocked to hear her say she was ready for solids. maybe it is a spurt, but i just feel the need to do something more for her.

Egypt just got the new copy of Ready Steady Baby from midwife the other day. It states:
"It has been agreed, both worldwide and in the UK, that breast milk provides all the nourishment that MOST babies need until they are about 6 months old. Some babies may need other foods before this, but these should not be introduced before four months at the very earliest."
HTH - you know your baby best.

It's really hard, Egypt... I meant to hold out until 6 months with my babies but only got to 16-17 weeks, too. I regret it esp. with DD because she started having constipation problems from then on, and I feel like I unnecessarily rushed the end of her babyhood. With DS I did solids under pressure from HV and I wanted him to sleep more... well, he didn't sleep more.

But both babies loved solids right from the get-go, and I always flash back to the La Leche League advice about "Watch the Baby, not the Calender" when it comes to starting solids.

So good luck, whatever you do next. I do regret it with DD, even though she has always been superkeen on her food, wish I had waited longer.

thanks all. think i may see how she goes for the next few days on a teaspoon. suspect she might just be having an off week, and if she improves, lay it off again for a while. we'll see. she didnt sleep any better last night anyway. definitely got worse in the night, for about a week now......

Egypt - what makes you think she is ravenous? Is it because she is chewing her hands and watching you eat? Babies put things in their mouths to feel them - it is called the oral phase. It does not mean they are hungry. They also start to watch intently everything that you do.
If you think she is hungry, breastfeed her.
The WHO guidelines apply to ALL babies. One of the main reasons to delay solids is to allow the gut to mature which helps prevent illness in later life such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis etc.

I really think that it will take a long time until women are able to believe that babies can survive on breastmilk alone until 6 months.

It would be so good if women had the confidence to not question whether they are 'starving' their babies. They certainly would starve their babies if they did not increase the frequency of feeds. That really is where the issue lies.

The only baby of mine who was fed exclusivelt till 6 months was my fourth DD1. That was because I decided to do that come hell or high water. Yes she woke frequently for a few nights, I fed her and my milk supply increased and she settled again. With my boys, I started solids when they were up for more feeds at night. The youngest I started solids was 20 weeks. By my fourth baby my confidence was really high. My HV was horrified at what I was doing - this was 10 years ago and the recommendation for exclusively B/F was well known then.

Until mums are able to separate feeding and sleeping as 2 distict things, then there will always be the pressure to get babies onto solids. Until HV's stop saying that WHO recommendations only pertain to the third worls then mums needing their confidence boosted will continue to have their feeding undermined.

Having said all that Egypt - I think 16 weeks is too young to start solids and would advise you to try and hold out till 20 weeks. Go with extra feeds and see what happens. If at 20 weeks you find that feeding is too frequents for you, you could start then. I think though you may well be pleasantly surprised and find that things have improved.

Egypt,
Sympathies. I an April baby mummy and you've had described my experience too. Dd was 17 weeks too and I felt very guilty about not getting to six months. I started with mashed banana and she nearly ate the spoon. Once we started we never looked back. I did worry about it for a few weeks but honestly, she is soo much happier now I can't feel guilty anymore.
This is only my experience though. I don't know anymore. I just understand the guilt thing but now in my very HO I believe that you have to do what is right for both of you

After I had to go over to bottles with only 7wks (I bf every 1-2 hours and he didn't put on any weight the last 2 weeks) he was very happy with formula! Too happy, because somehow he thought he had to make up for everything he didn't get so far. He was hungry hungry and hungry again - how much ever I fed him. And feeding was always last on the list. I really tried to distract him or take him out and everything else first. But you know how hungry babies are! Nothing else on their mind than food
Well, as you can imagine by wk15 he was quite on the heavy side; on the top top top side of the chart - and still not really happy. So I decided to give him solids. It worked quite well for some time. I even could reduce the amount of milk he got without too much crying. Only last week he's gone off solids completly. He spit everything out! Though I stopped for a few days and then I tried again. From the very beginning. Spoon after spoon. And today he surprised me completly. He couldn't get enough! I still didn't give him too much. I don't want him to go off again.

Egypt - again: you know your DD best! If she is happy with the food she's getting, stick with it. We all know lo have growthspurts now and again; try just that bit longer and bf should adjust! If still not - start giving her solids - whatever YOU think is best for her

You had the impression she was doing fine because she was doing just fine! My baby was a similar size at 4 months and made it to 6 months without solids just fine, still at exactly the same percentile she'd always been at and nursing at the same frequency. I can't believe they're telling you this junk.

If you want to feed the baby solids, and you find that it works for you, great. It isn't what's recommended, and it has nothing to do with third-world babies (note that the American and Australian Academies of Pediatrics, both 1st world countries, recommend the same -- I assume the BMA does, too, I just don't know). But your baby, who you know best, may not fit those recommendations. Your HV does not know your baby as well as you do, and since she can't even figure out when the baby is four months old, I wouldn't trust her professional advice as far as I could throw her, personally.

If you want to wean, I'm right there for you. But if this person's advice is making you feel like your starving your baby, feel free to put the baby rice away, because she's nuts.

thanks california girl and all. she is slightly nuts i agree. i'm going to give up on the weaning for a week and see if she settles back to normal. i reckon it is just a growth spurt.