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Weaning

Find weaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Weaning forum. Use our child development calendar for more information.

Weaning help please!

5 replies

ihearttc · 10/05/2011 21:18

Apologies if this turns into a long post!

DS2 is 6 months next week but was 2 months premature...he was born at 32 weeks as I had severe pre-eclampsia! He was a dinky 3lb 8oz but absolutely fine...6 months on and he is still only 12lb 10oz so not gaining a huge amount of weight but doing absolutely fine. Neonatal consultant has basically said to start to wean him asap as apparently prem babies need to be weaned at actual age rather than their corrected age.

All very well and good...I have lovingly prepared purees over the last week and been attempting to give him some. He gets so excited bless him and actually opens his mouth to take it,does a sort of chewing action (which actually does look he's really chewing!) and then it all comes back out again. It seems like he hasn't lost tongue thrust yet which consultant says is perfectly normal and just to persevere.

Just out of curiousity yesterday I broke a bit of banana off and held it to his mouth and he was sucking great big bits off,chomping and then swallowing them! Tried it again this morning with a chunk of soft pear and he did the same thing and then again tonight with a piece of soft cooked chicken.

Great you all say you can do BLW...but he is technically only 4 months old and cannot get pick anything up. He can hold toys but there is no way he'd be able to pick up a bit of food. So any suggestions as to what I can do...carry on with purees and hope the tongue thrust goes soon (he sort of blows it back out so literally everything gets covered in puree lol!),wait another month or so and don't give him anything and hope he can do BLW or carry on holding things for him and let him eat that way-Im more than happy to do that for him but it just seems wrong for some reason!

I don't mind waiting a bit at all because I know it's all about milk at the moment but he is a terrible milk drinker...I really struggle to get 20 oz of milk into him on a good day so we haven't exactly got that to fall back on!

Any help much appreciated!

OP posts:
ZimboMum · 10/05/2011 22:15

Hi - I think that if your doc said to start weaning then you should follow their recommendation. If your DS is loving chomping on bits that you hold for him then I'd go with that. You can always use the purees as pudding when he'll take things from a spoon?

Good luck with it all - we've just started weAning DS who will also be six months next week. :)

ongakgak · 10/05/2011 22:19

Could he hold a fork? You could you spear some softish food on a plastic/soft baby fork. Things like avocado, banana, cooked sweet potato, cooked regular potato, peach, plum and so on. Then he could self feed a bit more independently?

ihearttc · 10/05/2011 22:22

Oh thats a fantastic idea...why on earth didn't I think of that? We've got some plastic kids forks left over from DS1...will have a go at that tomorrow!

He was enjoying it so much bless him but I know it's going to be a while before he's able to pick it up himself!
Thank you so much!

OP posts:
ongakgak · 10/05/2011 22:25

Grin great, good luck. I loved the weaning stage, so fun.

TurtlesAreRetroRight · 10/05/2011 22:27

Have you checked out the Bliss info? I know a friend found it useful though was saying recently that actually there's not a lot of information about when you should wean a premature baby. Her paediatrician said to wait for the tongue thrust reflex to go and not to wean before 5 months but wasn't so worried about an upper age 'limit'.

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