Weaning - when did you start?

[Fleetw00d]

So I'm a bit confused about whether to start weaning my dd, would still mostly breastfeed but would give her a bit of pureed fruit or veg too. She's 4 months/just over 17 weeks, she's on the 90th percentile and pretty advanced with rolling over, very good neck strength, can sit in her little seat or jumperoo and can stand with just her hands on something for support.

The reason I'm thinking of starting to wean her soon on a bit of food is she's feeding all the time and lately has started waking more in the night and doing a full feed each time, so not sure if that is the 4 month regression or her being hungry. She brings things to her mouth such as toys etc and will stare at anyone eating and has tried to take food out of our hands before.

A lot of my friends have weaned at 4.5 months and my mum weaned me at about this age and all had very good experiences, I'm just not sure if I'm jumping the gun a bit though and don't want to cause any damage to her stomach/gut for the sake of starting a few weeks early.

Does anyone have any thoughts or good/bad experiences with weaning at 4/4.5 months? Thank you!

@FartnissEverbeans is that advice because of family history of allergies or just general for all babies? Leaving it too long to wean and causing an allergy is a fear of mine!

Dc1 at 3 months
Dc2 at 6 months

Different NHS advice at the times.

6 months. I was in no rush either time as I hated the faff of the early days. Having to suddenly remember to plan a whole other load of stuff to plan for when out and about etc.

@Fleetw00d My new baby will be at higher risk because my 4yo son has allergies. But I’d be weaning earlier anyway as the current research is all pointing in that direction. I spoke to our allergist about it and he said around 5 months and straight onto peanut butter (you’d have to mix it with water to remove the choking hazard of course) and other allergens.

I always feel guilty for not introducing cooked egg to my son earlier. He had baked egg (eg in pancakes) but no cooked egg until about 8 months. He had a reaction and we carry an epipen now. However, I introduced nuts quite early and he was fine with those but seems to have developed an allergy to cashews so perhaps it didn’t make any difference for us anyway.

DD at six months because she was showing all the signs but it was too early for her she was premmie and a viral infection a week after made us put it on hold. We tried again at 7.5 months and everything just clicked

6 months. She didn't eat anything more filling than milk for a while though so it wouldn't have helped her sleep through earlier. We did BLW so she started slow. She enjoyed it though. I didn't enjoy the mess.