Feeling pressured to start weaning a week earlier than planned

[CoconutCath]

Hi
We had set our heart on waiting til our LO was 6 calendar months before beginning weaning, which is 13 January, but am feeling enormous pressure from the world and his wife to just get on with it.
The reason is that the night before last and the previous night, our LO, who normally sleeps through from 6pm to 11pm (when we wake her for a feed) then til about 5/6am, woke almost every hour. After asking around friends/family EVERYONE said she MUST be hungry and made me feel like I was starving the poor thing. Last night we have her Hungry Baby fomula instead of the normal one we use at 11pm and she slept through til 6.30am without a peep. She is exclusively formula fed since 4 months when my milk supply ran dry (combi fed since 4 weeks for various difficulties to do with her and me).
Do we stick to our guns and just get on with it? I just can't decide. DH wants to be there when the big event happens so will be this Sat or next Sat. Will one week make any difference? I don't want to deprive her on principle!!
Many many of my friends with LOs, and parents, aunts etc, started weaning around 4/5 months but we wanted to wait.
Thanks
CC

I don't think one week is likely to make that much difference, but they get so little solid food when you start weaning anyway that giving her solids is also unlikely to make that much difference to her sleep. There could be loads of reasons she is waking more frequently - growth spurt, "processing" a milestone, teething.

Agree with fluffy. 7 days makes no difference either way. if the hungry baby formula keeps her going so you get some sleep in the mean time, go with it.

At 25 weeks if she's showing the signs of being ready, start if you want to start, wait if you want to wait

Why is it so important to you to wait till exactly 6 months?

Ok we're going to just start now
Bigbum - just trying to do my best on the advice we have been given by HV

Oh OK. I just wondered if there was a special significance or anything, other than HV advice. I would just get on with it but also carry on with Hungry Baby milk.

I weaned my eldest at 3 months! (As was the advice in those days). Looking back he clearly wasn't ready, but with my youngest there was no way I could've waited till 6 months. He also started waking through the night and as soon as I weaned him he slept again. He was 5 months I think.

I don't think that weaning at 5 months and 3 weeks will do her any harm at all.

Weaning a week early won't make a difference but neither will waiting a week! The first foods you give them are usually veg, they take very little to start and it has less calories than milk anyway so won't help her sleep through. Stick with hungry milk and if you thinks shes hungry increase her milk in the day until she starts to take a decent amount of solid food.

Waiting a week won't make ANY difference.

But then weaning won't make any difference to her sleeping, so tell your friends/relatives to stick that advice up their back passage - if it DID make a difference, then magically all babies would sleep through at 6 months.

bigusbumus the reason they 6mo is because this the general age that babies get good hand co ordination to pick things up and put them in mouth, can hold head up and sit unaided so all these make for a good start to weaning. Obvs all babies are diff and some get these skills earlier, i started mine when dd was a few days off 20wks ans it's been nice cos we've been able to take it a bit slower.

coconutcath do what you feel is best, you know your dc more than anyone and there is really nothing more annoying than ppl telling you to give them a bit of this or give them a bit of that!

Stick to your guns- waking at night can be due to a million reasons and onw thing for sure "if it is hunger" firstly you can give more milk and secondly DC wont eat enough to sort the hunger out for a while- weaning foods are low calorie value compared to milk.