Weaning dilemma

[wilbur]

Ds2 is coming up to 21 weeks old, and I'm facing a decision about whether or not to wean him early. He is currently fully breastfed, but for the last couple of weeks has started waking at around 5am starving hungry (he had been sleeping through to past 7am for the previous 6 weeks or so). I have been topping him up with ebm after the evening feed - he took almost 6 extra ounces last night - but that doesn't seem to help. It may be that my milk supply is a bit low, it certainly doesn't seem to be as generous as previously, but he is quite happy during the day, not crying with hunger.

I don't know whether to wean him onto a few solids now, or try to increase his day time milk feeds as well as the evening one. I can't imagine we're going to get to the magic 6 months on milk alone. When ds1 and dd were babies the weaning advice was different and they were weaned at 18 weeks and 20 weeks respectively (I delayed it a bit for them as we are a very allergic family and I was trying to follow all allergy-reducing suggestions, so far they are fine).

Any thoughts?

growth spurt .. just ride it out and he'll settle down in a week

I would heartily suggest NOT weaning early and it won't help anyway because there's more calories in the milk than initial weaning foods and its potentially bad for his long term health to do it early due to the maturity of the gut .. not linked to size of baby but age

I thought about a growth spurt at first, but it's gone on for nearly two weeks now - which is much longer than previous ones. Is that normal at this age? In reality, I don't want to wean him at all (for reasons of his health and my laziness, lol) but am not sure what to do to alleviate the hunger.

Hmmm, the allergy issue in particular makes me think ride it out as long as possible before weaning. Can you kind of balance it out by remembering what a total PITA faff weaning is - all that wretched pureeing, sterilising, messing about with very small quantities of stuff in the freezer, remembering to take things out with you, et sodding cetera?

long growth spurt?

seriously I'd ride it out .. as mi says the allergy connection would just make me always doubt whether I'd done the right thing if I went against current advice

Thanks MI - makes me really look forward to weaning now.... hahaha. I think I will tough it out, it's just that heartsinking feeling when the wail errupts and I know my day has begun (ds1 goes back to sleep after feeding no probs, but I don't).

Oh, I remember that wailing. All too horribly well. You poor love.

What about just a half a teaspoon of baby rice mixed with milk in the evenings to fill him up a bit? I'm certainly not an expert as my first is just 18wks, but most of my antenatal group have started baby rice already and it seems to work for them.

More calories in milk than baby rice. IF you have allergies I would really wait until 6 months for the gut to be ready.

Wilbur - exactly the same happened with dd at around the same point. We were loosely following GF and after I tweaked dd's daytime sleep to the recommended times (she'd been having about 4 hours) she started waking at 7-8am again.

I also kind of changed the way i fed her. Instead of boob1-burp-boob2-burp I did boob1-burp-boob1-burp-boob2-burp-boob2-burp IYSWIM and almost forced her to stay longer at the breast (she's a fairly efficient feeder - on and off in 5mins)

I also found that eating a lot of fatty stuff like cream cakes (!) made me feel "fuller".

She was 6 months a fortnight ago and we managed to wait fine. And she took to mashed stuff really quickly rather than puree because she was ready to take it. That's made life soo easy.

most of the people in your antenatal group are going against current recommendations for no good reason whatsoever

the recommendations are to NOT start until 26 weeks dues to maturity of gut. If started earlier there is increased risk of allergic reactions / conditions (such as asthma / excema) developing in later life

its your choice to follow them or ignore them (but they have been the World Health Organisations recommendations for over a decade and only adopted in the UK in the last year)

I think someone should be telling hv's the correct age. I'm sure most the other mothers are doing it because they've been told to and know no different. I know you can look these things up, but we all asume that as hv's they know what they're talking about. My hv told me to start giving baby rice from 4 months, and it was only because i discovered MN that i decided to wait and started weaning at 24 weeks

I was told by my NHS trust that the hvs in my area would only know if they had read up on it themselves or attended a voluntary course. It is sad so many are unaware as it is even on their national website and is now gov health recommendations.

My head hv had never heard of waiting for 6 months and she was the one advising all the gps and hvs in my practise.

Herc - so if you have a HV who's "always done it this way" then you're stuffed, right?

I complained to my trust who said it takes a long time for it to become accepted as the norm.

Also, at 25 weeks, i went to get ds weighed, and they told me to cut his milk down and that he should only be having about a pint a day. At the time he was only having breakfast. I, of course, just smiled sweetly and said 'yes ok'

and if we're talking about poorly trained hvs, what about Midwives? I was told in hospital only 2 years ago that I was starving poor dd by not giving her a bottle and none of the midwives were helpful in exclusive bf.

The trick is is not to go to these clinics.

As the mother of a severely allergic son (and I did wait, so goodness knows what it would have been like if I didn't) I would say please wait. Yes 5am is annoying, but he may well do that anyway. It could be a developmental spurt. Milk has more calories than any weaning food so feed him at 5am and one of 2 things will happen;

1. You will ride out the growth spurt and things will get back to normal sleep wise

2. He's being like just about every baby that I have read about on Mumsnet and having a funny time at 4-5 months, but you will get better at getting back to sleep afterwards.

Please trust your breasts, you wouldn't want that massively full feeling for the whole six months, so rejoice in the fact that they have settled down.

Why not give that 6oz bottle of EBM to dh or dp for a couple of mornings, rather than feeding it at night? Maybe it will be sods law and it will stay in thhe fridge untouched.

My 2nd starting waking again at 20 weeks after sleeping 7 'til 7 for the previous 10. Did wait until 6 months and at 7 months she has got the hang of weaning. But she still wakes approx twice per night. Doubt very much that weaning stops this.

Didn't work for us. Dd was waking every 2 hours for a feed at night, managed to ride it out for around a month until she was 26 weeks, started weaning and she is still waking every 2 hours to feed! Doesn't really seem that interested in solids still and we've been doing it for a month now.

We've been talking about this - ds (21 weeks) is now waking at least twice a night, having been happy to sleep for 10 - 11 hours until recently, and we're finding it incredibly difficult - we have a toddler too. It's not helped by everyone we know thinking that we only have ourselves to blame, because we're not giving him solids. Our HV's advice was that we can hold on until 6 months if we choose (of course) but she feels that rigid adherence to the 6 months isn't particularly helpful because every baby is an individual, and it's not as if a switch will click in their tummies the day they turn 6 months! She also said that she fairly recently attended a conference where a paediatrician argued against the 6 months rule, saying that some babies then miss their optimal time for taking to flavour/texture.
Anyway, we're soldiering on for the moment.....

What a load of balls about missing the optimum time for tasting!

Not to mention breastmilk tastes different anyway!