baby rice at 13 weeks?

[PipIsOutNow]

my little one is still only going 3 hours at night as he's waking for food and tbh i am sooo tired i was wondering if it might be worth trying him on a little bit of baby rice before bed? my friends babies have been on it ages, one since 8 weeks, one since 10 etc but I dont want to put him on it if its gonna do him any damage. i would appreciate some advice, dont want to ask health visitor as i know recommendations are 16 weeks...but my nan who had brought up umpteen babies suggested i try him on it???

No absolutely not. recommendation is actualyy 6 months with nothinhg but milk. a baby's gu is justnot develodenough to be able to digest or deal with anything else at all.

baby's have small stomachs. they need to eat small meals often. that is what they do.

well the guidelines actually say 6 months. and for very good reason

babies guts are not mature enough to handle anything other than milk and giving solids may damage his gut
you'll find people who say "i weaned at x weeks and my kid is fine"... well how do they know? side effects may not be noticeable immediately.
we KNOW that babies weaned early are at greater risk of food allergies and obesity for example. that doesn't mean all of them will be fat and have allergies, but it means a much higher proportion of them will compared to those who ae weaned later

the way i see it is, there may be damage done by weaning early. there is NO chance of damage being done by waiting

lastly- it's normal for him to be waking every 3 hours, he's a tiny little baby!

fucksake. that makes no sense at all and a shocing use of baby's rather than babies. i apologise but you get the gist. No do not feed it rice at 13 weeks.

The recommendations are 6 months. Your baby needs to be sitting up by themselves - ie. not propped up in a chair or bouncer or anything before they are ready for food.

Just give more milk.

ok thanks guys!!! will just get on with the sleep deprivation!! dont want him to be unwell or develop an allergy just so i get more sleep. was actually shocked thar my friend's 8 week old is on baby rice. another girl i know has put hers on it at 1 month!! not sure why!!

PipIsOutNow: Good for you, questioning the extremely bad advice your friends have been giving you. Little babies who can't sit up are much too young for baby rice or anything except milk (breast milk or formula).

Unfortunately small babies aren't guarantied to sleep through the night no matter what they're eating. Some 1950s-style methods of getting them to sleep more (e.g. giving them solids at an early age) might appear to "work" for some babies (as your friends have found) but can be bad for their overall health.

Think about your long-term goals with raising your DD. Top of the list probably isn't actually getting her to sleep through the night at 13 weeks. For most of us it's all about raising a healthy, well-adjusted child.

Do some reading about baby nutrition and eating habits on the internet or at the library. Everyone has to start somewhere and it's worth knowing the facts.

Good luck.

my HV said 17 weeks is the absolute earliest they should have any solids. DD1 was on pureed carrot from 20 weeks, I'll probably wait a bit longer with DD2 as she is nowhere near ready yet.

3 hours at 12 weeks sounds pretty good to me!

maybe im just expecting too much from him? its just all of my friend's babies are sleepin thru the night and they are much younger than my little one..but his health is more important than my sleep xx

My doctor advised me to give ds babyrice when he was 14 weeks old. He was feeding from me for 40 mins immediately followed by 4oz of formula. Then an hour later it started again. He told me to give him 2 teaspoons of babyrice mixed with breast milk to the consistancy of formula milk in the early evening. I had to do this once, wait 24 hours to make sure that he pooed normally, then give him the same again. As long as his poos were normal and he wanted to take it from a spoon (not from a bottle) I could carry on. I did this and he was fine. He's now 4yrs old and has had no problems from this.

This worked for me with ds but I only did it with medical advice. Ds was a very skinny baby (still is) but off the charts in length. Dd was average in every way and I felt no need to start her early.

I wouldn't say that 3 hourly feeds during the night at 12 weeks was an indication to give solids though and if you were thinking of giving anything other than milk don't do anything before speaking to your gp.

(Incidently, ds was sitting unaided at 14 weeks)

well, i also gave baby rice at 10 weeks - and it worked sleepwise. and had no observable negative effect on breastfeeding (which we did up to 15 months..) - studies in Sweden found that solids did not interfere with BF there (though they did here, which makes me think it is highlighting a difference in attitude to BF,rather than a de facto problem with solids)

the evidence on allergies is somewhat mixed (especialy given the low incidence of allergies in people of our my age (recommended weaning age:10 weeks) versus our kids (recomended weaning age :6 months) There is currently a study looking at 12 week weaning. (google EAT - enquiry into intolerance). Breastfeeding itself is defintiely preventative of allergies, but the exclusivity element is yet to be proved.

with respect to gastrointestinal disease - I find it hard to reach a clear conclusion from the data quoted by the WHO due to the conflation of bottle feeding with giving solids in many studies (ie, studies look at exclusive BF versus everything else, rather than FF vs EBF vs BF & solids vs BF & FF). Possibly there is some light increase of risk (think about it: the increase in risk for a baby FF from birth is noticeable, whatever the risk for a baby BF up to a year but weaned earlier is...I suspect it is greatly less than that)

weaning earlier is standard advice for babies with reflux.

Ultimately OP, it's up to you. Huge amounts of study-data to read on the web if you are interested.
Doesn't sound like you wanted to wean now though.

Goodness - mine started with a bit of baby rice and fruit puree at 12 weeks. It was on the advice of my GP (elderly but had raised four children). Mine were very big though. BF was a disaster with DS but he guzzled formula non stop; (7lb 5oz at 36.5 weeks). DD was 8lb 13 full term and fully bf - started some solids at 12 weeks after she started feeding every two hours and I lost 12lb in weight in the preceding two weeks and clearly couldn't keep up. Both fit and strong and healthy - now 11 and 15. I think this is what happened a century ago when there was no alternative to breast milk - except perhaps cows, goats or sheep which in those days carried TB.

I don't get why people seem to think that a bit of pureed veg/baby rice is going to fill their baby up for longer as it is less calorific than any milk you are giving them so it's going to be difested quicker and it has mush less nutritional value than milk. Pureed veg is diet food! Very little calories and no fat.

To the OP- 3 hours is very good, DS would only go for 90min-2 hours between feeds for months. But it only lasts for such a short while, it does get better, trust me.

it is less calorific than any milk you are giving them so it's going to be difested quicker and it has mush less nutritional value than milk

It is certainly less calorific than milk but is actually digested more slowly, I think, as their stomachs aren't able to cope properly with it yet. So you're essentially filling up your baby with something it can't digest properly. However, its stomach will feel full so it may well wait longer for the next feed. To me, this kind of sounds like basically denying a baby the calories it wants and needs.

Pip, sounds like you are doing all the right things. Hang on! It really is only a few more weeks until you can reasonably safely give it a try, if you still want to. But waiting until as near to six months as you can cope with may be a better idea.

BTW, one of the consequences of early weaning can be stuff like irritable bowel syndrome. This tends not to show up until early adulthood so a child being fine at four or ten or whatever may not mean a thing.

baby rice is 85% carbs. mixed with Bmilk, which is 90%(ish) water, it must surely be more calorific by volume than bmilk alone.

You are not going to be able to get as much volume of baby rice as a breast feed or a bottle into a baby so young.

My elsest had baby rice from 15 weeks, at the time the advice was to start weaning at around 16 weeks, and the HV said definately no earlier than 15.

I know advice had changed, but sometimes they change the guidelines as an experiment, not because they know without a doubt that it's better for the baby. When I was pregnant with ds, we weren't allowed to eat nuts, then they realised it made no difference to the number of children with allergies,so by the time I was having ds2, nuts were allowed again.

no, I don't know the ins and outs of the research to support the advice to wait until 6 months, but looking back to what my bf on demand babies were like, they were ready for a bit of baby rice way before 6 months.

"BTW, one of the consequences of early weaning can be stuff like irritable bowel syndrome. This tends not to show up until early adulthood so a child being fine at four or ten or whatever may not mean a thing."

I was weaned early because back then that is what they did. I have IBS and can't leave the house on bad days.