Anyone see Breakfast this morning (just now) talking about weaning?

[ELF1981]

?
Not sure they should be saying wean at five months if your breastfed baby is not sleeping well at night!

Why not Elf?

Why not? Because it is against WHO guidelines for a start. And universally accepted by all major health organisations that early weaning [before 6 months] can cause food allergies and gut problems. Can't believe this kind of rubbish advice is still getting spewed out in the UK.

Well, you're entitled to go along with every piece of new advice that they roll out year after year if you like, very difficult to keep up with it though.
I can only speak from my own experience and all my friend's and friend's Mums! - both my children were weaned at between 4 & 5 months - on advice of Health visitor at the time, neither have allergies or any health probs whatsoever. Most people were weaned at 3-4months before the nanny state emerged ie before the 00s. I think each child is different and one should be guided by your own judgement and child's needs - as I said my opinion...

I posted because

1. I keep being told it is a myth that if you wean a baby, they will sleep through the night

2. WHO says 6 months, and it is easy to get confused with all the different items reported

The advice was 4-6 months for years, before it changed a few years back. That's hardly changing advice 'year after year' is it.

Hi Elf
I'm not sure about the myth bit, I feel that some do and some don't.... not v helpful I know! I do believe that BF babies often get hungrier than Bottle fed earlier in the process. Certainly mine needed to be weaned earlier than 6 months but that was a while ago. Sorry if I appear to be going against the WHO views (I'm not trying to be argumentative) but it irritates the bejasus out of me that each year they tell you some other piece of info which usually contradicts something else and IMHO children haven't changed much over the years.
Incidentally I was also told to put my eldest DS now 13.5 on cows milk at 6 months and she's fine too! Someone told me that a great deal of the research into children weaning and cows milk/ formula theory is funded by the makers of formula

Maybe not on that one particular subject but in the space of my 2 children (2.5yrs apart) there was loads of stuff that changed. I agree that all knowledge and research is good and we progress but the allergies thing about weaning just doesn't sit right. More children have allergies and asthmatic conditions than ever before it seems, so why does it have anything to do with weaning which was the same for donkeys years? I'd be looking more towards gm foods and pollution for my answers..

Wisteria, I really don't feel that the advice was the same for donkey's years - my dh is 42 and his mum was advised to start him on baby rice at day 2. I'd agree this wasn't the national advice for everybody though.

Your own experience, your friends and friends' Mums is one thing. Research over larger numbers is another thing. That's the point of it, surely?

Well Wisteria, the research has been done. You may not believe it but it has been published in peer-reviewed scientific papers. This, at least to me, gives the reassurance that all the controls were made, a large enough number of people were used in the study and the statistical analysis was done correctly.
We gain knowledge through studies and research. Just because it was believed to be right a few years ago does not make it right. Tbh your attitude is a bit like someone saying 'well my uncle smoked for 50 years and he has no health problems at all and besides a few decades ago everyone thought smoking was fine, so it can't really be that bad!' Or can it? Just because your children don't have any allergies doesn't mean that early weaning doesn't increase the risk.

Apparently children have a natural growth spurt at around 4 months which makes them feed a lot more often and leads so many parents to believe they're ready for weaning at that age.

Well like I said I'm not trying to provoke argument, it is only my opinion and I do understand that research has been done and progression is good - however, the only point I'm really trying to get across is that I do think children are all different and need different approaches at different stages and there are still health visitors out there, who are advising to start weaning at 4-5months so I'm clearly not the only one .
I take your point about the smoking and agree. I hope you will also consider that research, like most things is very often found to be flawed in later years...

Yes, absolutely. Lots of research is later found to be flawed so we do have to take everything with a pinch of salt and try not to stress too much about all the overwhelming advice we're given. However in this controversial weaning subject I'm always surprised at how many mothers and grand mothers and hvs and doctors even choose to go against the WHO recommendations. These are the result of lots of independent studies put together and really should have a higher impact. For some reason they don't....

Not a mum yet, but is this why my sister used to find her daughter slept better at night if her evening feed (around 10.30 11pm) was a FF bottle? I read somewhere that ff is slightly higher in calories and fat so making the baby feel fuller longer.

No, formula isn't higher in calories and fat. It is harder to digest, so it sits in the stomach longer.

I agree the goalposts on lots of issues around health and nutrition are moved fairly frequently depending, on many occasions it seems, on nothing more concrete than which way the wind happens to be blowing.

Talk is cheap and it's easy to say that "early weaning can cause food allergies and gut problems" but I'd ask at what point in a human being's development can you objectively measure this with any validity?

So many vairables affect a person's health as they develop and grow and I'd wager that you could just as easily find a child or adult that was exclusively breastfed until weaned in accordance with the WHO guidelines (of the day) that had food allergies and gut problems as one who was not.

All any mother can do is what she considers to be the very best for her child, some would argue that much of that should be based on instinct too. Every child is different and I don't think that anyone should beat themselves up because they didn't follow this particular set of guidelines to the letter. This sort of nonesense is a complete double edged sword; it is just as likely, if not more likely, to cause moral panic as it is to inform, advise and educate.

My mum was stuffing Farleys rusks down me at 8 weeks old 40 years ago and I'm fit as the proverbial fiddle

my mum did that too and i suffer badly from IBS, high blood pressure, heart problems and PCOS. look! we cancel each other out with our pointless anecdotal evidence!

I'm another early-weaned child with IBS. Oh, and my sister was weaned early and is very obese. (I'm no lightweight myself, to be fair.)

krazykoolkazza, the WHO guidelines are NOT talk, are based on lots of certified research. It's people like you that I really can't understand. Going back to my argument a few posts ago: just because I someone got lung cancer and never smoked doesn't mean that smoking doesn't cause it!

I also have IBS and lots of food intolerances and was early weaned. Does that mean anything? No, of course not. Only the statistically analysed data of a large sample of people does.

krazykoolkazza, the WHO guidelines are NOT talk, are based on lots of certified research. It's people like you that I really can't understand. Going back to my argument a few posts ago: just because I someone got lung cancer and never smoked doesn't mean that smoking doesn't cause it!

I also have IBS and lots of food intolerances and was early weaned. Does that mean anything? No, of course not. Only the statistically analysed data of a large sample of people does.

Endless so called "scientific reports" based on so called "certified evidence" are reported almost daily in the media. Eat this, don't eat this, take this supplement, don't take that supplement, ad nauseum.

Every study can usually be very quickly refuted by another study based, once again, on "certified evidence". Most of this so called research is driven by nothing more tha the need for huge multi national corporations to generate ££££££s. Very little of it is based on "real science", and for the most part it's scare mongering nonsense which is eagerly devoured by a ever increasingly paranoid public.

Every Tom Dick and Harry has IBS and/or an allergy to wheat/dairy/gluten/you name it these days.

Are we to believe that if all children the world over were to be weaned in accordance with WHO guidelines (which let's face it change fairly often) that none of these conditions would exist?

I think not

krazy, tell me about how often the WHO guidelines change... seriously, how often have they changed in the last, say, ten years?

and yes, lots of people have IBS these days... why is that i wonder? is it because they were all weaned on grains too early? it's certainly something worth considering, surely?

PS don't look for scientific advice in the paper, by the way. that's written by journalists, not scientists.

The 'need for huge multi national corporations to generate ££££££s' tends to make me think of baby-food manufacturers hanging pseudo-scientific 'nutrition plans' in baby product aisles in suopermarkets implying a baby needs carrot at lunch and meat/potato in the evening from 4 months , actually.

(My local supermarket (am in Germany) had one of these, btw)