Small baby, weaning early.

[Jojoba1986]

Hi all,

My DS is 5 months & isn't putting on weight so we were referred to the paediatrician who gave us high calorie milk & seemed surprised that I wasn't weaning him yet! To try & get more into him I'd been giving him solids after his normal milk feeds 3 times a day which he's been really enjoying but the paediatrician said he wouldn't want his solids if he'd had his milk first, despite the fact that he has been! She told me to give him this new milk first, then his solids & then offer him the breast after... I'm really confused & don't understand what I should be doing! Surely if he 'won't want' his solids after the breast then he'll want them even less after high calorie milk & he won't want anything off the breast!

At what point should I be reducing the number of milk feeds? Should I be replacing a normal milk feed with a solid feed? Do I just stop offering him the breast & give him solids & a drink at a feed time? I know what routine we're aiming for in the long run but I'm just not quite sure how to get there!

Help?!

solids should be in addition to milk feeds, not instead of them especially as your ds is only 5 months old. When I started solids I gave milk first and then solids an hour or so later - this helped maintain milk intake but still meant he had room for solids. He didnt start dropping milk feeds until 8 months and that was when he dropped his night feed. His daytime feeds didnt start to go until about 9/10 months. At 6 months our rough routine was:

7am - milk
8am - breakfast
11am - milk
12pm - lunch
2.30pm - milk
5pm - dinner
7.15pm - milk
in the night till 8 months - milk

The hospital weaned my DD at just under 3 months because she wouldn't take Milk, she was so anaemic because she wasn't getting nutrients ! I just gave her whatever milk she could take, followed by a couple of spoons of food, increasing as they advised, can't do that much harm to wean early especially if like you, you are struggling to get milk into them

Is he not putting on weight at all or is he just putting it on slower than they'd like?

Breastmilk is more calorific and nutritious than the vast majority of other foods, by volume, so it's odd that they are recommending you wean. Any solids at this stage will displace the volume of breastmilk he is taking.