Irish weaning guidelines different?

[nappyaddict]

I was reading this article and it says that in Ireland the official guidelines are 4 months for formula fed babies and 6 months for breast fed babies. Does that mean it's 5 months for mix fed babies

Discrimination against mums who cannot breastfeed or do not want to breastfeed. I think that's a crap guideline. Should be recommended 6 mths for all babies, as it is in the uk and a lot of other countries.

Ignore! They have some strange ideas over there. I would be suprised if it's discrimination against women who cannot breastfeed as I found the breasfeeding rates in general to be much lower than UK.
I was treated as a freak because I was still bf at 6 months, I actually fed until 17 months but didn't tell the public health nurse that as she was a bit of a nutter and was convinced I was feeding my DC's too many carrots as they had olive skin.

Bloody hell! She actually thought your dc's had olive skin from eating carrots?

don't quite see how that's discrimination against non-breastfeeding mums

I used to live in Ireland, from what I've observed there not many mums do breastfeed.

But why the different guidelines I don't get it! Formula contains nutrients etc so it's not like they would have some sort of deficiency that BF babies don't get.

Maybe they have not done any recent research on what is in the best interest of babies. The WHO recommends 6 mths at least, so Ireland seems a bit behind the times really.

I suspect it's because there is a culture here of weaning early & there is no way most mothers would wait until 6 months whereas 4 months is a more realistic target. Major generalisation but most BFing mothers here tend to be middle class & well educated and more likely to read up on things so will wait until 6 months as I did. But I got a lot of pressure from my parents and the in-laws about waiting that long. My brother in law had baby rice at 2 weeks . I was weaned at 2 months apparently and that was standard.

It does make a little bit of sense, if you're exclusively BF. Someone on here recently linked to a study somewhere (photographic memory, me ) showing that EBF for 6 months is better than 4 or 5 months, so if you've got that far you might as well keep going I guess?

Whereas if you FF, you haven't got the same issue so might as well start introducing other things. Especially while there's still some uncertainty whether (comparatively) early or late weaning is best to avoid allergies.

Apparently if you're exclusively breastfeeding then you should do so for 6 months because it decreases the risk of gastro infections. But what about if you mix feed? That's the best where I'm confused.

I'd leave it until 6 months for your baby nappyaddict. Follow the WHO guidelines.

iirc there have been recent studies (haven't got links to hand but they have been posted on here) which suggest that weaning guidelines should be between four and six months and not a rigid six months as per the mn mantra. Several countries have, iirc, actually revised the weaning guidelines back to between four-six months, I know that scotland has, and several european countries so it's actually england that are behind the times here.

wrt the impact of breastmilk/formula, it all has to do with the effects on the gut. So if you're exclusively bf then the gut is dealing with breastmilk only and this has a different impact than if you start introducing formula, because the gut reacts differently to that as it's a new substance iyswim, and some of the barriers are broken down and the baby becomes more suceptable (sp?) to infectin etc. This is why women who are HIV positive are told to either exclusively bf or exclusively ff but not to mix feed as once they introduce formula the baby is more likely to contract HIV through the mother's breastmilk.

This is just off the top of my head, but am sure someone will be along at some point to put it better..

I was told by my GP, midwife and health visitor here in Holland that between 4-6 months depending on the baby was okay, so long as I stuck to certain fruit and vegetables. protein (apart form milk) of course was to wait until after 6 months. That advice is valid for both formula and breastfed. Seems sensible enough to me. It certainly worked for us.