Starting baby on porridge

[Rosebud1302]

Hi all,

So my DS is 5 months and has started waking every couple of hours in the night wanting food. I know it isn't a settling issue as he is very good at settling himself (seen him do it on the monitor between cycles etc) and we have always encouraged self settling (no crying I might add!)

Now I know that they aren't meant to start solids officially until 6 months. But has anyone started baby porridge earlier than this? Either for the same reason as us or for another reason.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good healthy low sugar baby porridge brands to go with? And, final question (!) would it be ok to give this in the evening, say before his bath, then do his normal BF just before bed?

Sorry for all the questions 🙈

Porridge will have fewer calories in per volume than milk. Add in the odd sensation of digesting food and you will probably find your baby wakes more often.

Have you looked into why food is not advised until 6 months?

When you are ready to wean you can buy regular oats and blitz them up in a blender until very fine and then store in air tight container. Then you can stir in fruit when you want to add flavour

I started DD at 5 months as she was grabbing my food out my hands. She had porridge first and loved it.

It didn't make any difference to night wakings though.

Wait til he's 6 months and he can regular porridge oats and milk. Baby porridge is a con.

If your baby is hungry then feed him. They are supposed to wake up for milk (few 5 month olds sleep through)

Even if you did start food you shouldn't give it for the first time at night so you can check for any adverse reactions. Best to give it during the day. Don't expect it to make any difference to night wakings either - it could even make them worse

You can start at 5 months if you like (UK guidelines are around 6 months, absolutely no earlier than 4) but it's recommended to start when they are taking an interest in food, rather than to encourage them to sleep. When you first start you'll only want to give small tastes anyway and build it up slowly over a few days/weeks to a full meal, so it will take a long time before it's actually . You don't want to rush into solids too quickly as it can make them less hungry for their milk and they still need all the calories and nutrients from milk feeds. When you build up gradually they stay on the same volume of milk, with food as additional to that until milk starts to reduce, around 8-9 months.

It doesn't matter which mealtime you start with, dinnertime is a good one. And yes normal porridge blended up tends to be better than baby porridge, babies don't need special "baby" food, they do well on our normal food abviously avoiding anything to processed. For example, be careful of things like ready brek as they can have too much salt.

That's wrong, ready brek has NO added sugar or salt

At 5 months a baby will have one or two teaspoons or porridge, that won’t stop him waking up overnight.

Whoever does the marketing for baby porridge deserves a pay rise!

The advice is to start weaning around 26 weeks and if they are showing signs of readiness. You can start giving them food you would eat (so normal porridge oats or ready break). I found, as did a lot of my friends, that weaning made sleeping worse to start with and tbh I was willing to put off having to change food nappies for as long as possible.

Baby porridge is an expensive way to get a load of sugar into your baby

If you buy the dry baby porridge then a lot don't have added sugar. They may be gluten free too as its not advised to have gluten under 6 months

Normal porridge made up with formula or breastmilk works great. I dont blend it or anything and my six month old loves it and eats it just fine! Dont use flavoured porridge or baby porridge because of the sugar and check salt content on the back of whatever oats you buy because some of them have random added salt.

Wow thanks everyone for your help. Isn't it amazing how something branded for babies is so bad for them! I definitely won't be buying that then.

Also interesting to hear it didn't help at all. In that case I guess there is no point and I may just wait until he can have proper solid food in a month. I have no real problem with the night wakings but I just wondered if it would help him feel more full and satisfied but I guess not!!!

Ah sorry - when DS1 was little there was a lot of publicity about a case where a babu had died due to being fed excessively salty foods, and ready brek was the headline on most of them, so became a bit of a buzzword for salty/processed foods in general, but it seems the headline was misleading: www.marketingweek.com/1999/07/29/ready-brek-acts-to-clear-death-salt-charges-2/