Help- very hungry but way to early to wean!

[Paintyourbox]

DD is 17 weeks old, exclusively BF. She has always been on the bigger end of the scale weight and height wise and a very hungry baby.

She refuses a bottle so the chance of popping her on some hungry baby milk is slim. I know we shouldn't wean her until 6 months but she's taking a huge interest in food- trying to grab what's on my plate and can sit up unaided.

Several times I have put large bits of veg in front of her to play with while I make dinner, over the past few days I have been astounded that she has picked them up and tried to put them in her mouth and licked them.

Anyone had an experience like this so early?! Should I try some food for her or just leave her a bit longer? She's started waking up in the night again to feed when she was going 10pm until 6am without.

Thanks LittleBearPad I have decided to dig out the original research from the WHO supporting the stance on waiting until 6 months and then appraising it myself.

What I found very confusing was that the same HV who told me I must must must wait until 6 months told a friend who lives round the corner from me that "it didn't matter if she didn't manage to wait the full 6 months". Totally conflicting advice really! My friend has now weaned her 21 week old who is currently taking 3 meals per day with no adverse effects!

It does sound very much as if you want to wean early. What are you hoping the benefits will be? Are there any other things you might be able to do that will produce the same benefits?

Don't get too overwhelmed with it all OP.

Basically milk is the highest calorie food they can have. No other food comes close to it. Weaning will not help your DD sleep nor will it cause her to want less milk.

The advice is 6 months preferably but definitely no less than 17 weeks. So basically no it doesn't matter if you don't make it to the full 6 months but the closer then better.

There's no harm in trying little tastes from say 5 months ish but she won't be eating anything like decent, high calorie, varied foods until after 6 months as they can't have any wheat til then.

It's not worth getting stressed about honestly just give her more milk.

Seeker I think the main reason I was hoping to wean early is that she won't take a bottle and I have to go back to work full time in January.

I feel really guilty that I am going to be leaving her and the thought of her being at nursery all day and refusing the bottle really upsets me. I was hoping to have her just taking some little mouthfuls of food by that point (she will be over 6 months by then) as I can't bear the thought of her being hungry.

The HV said I could more or less "starve her into taking the bottle" but that seems really cruel. I have been dutifully trying every day to give a bottle (tried all sorts of brands, teats, expressed milk, formula etc) but she just refuses all of it.

We can't afford for me to have any longer off work so it feels like a really hopeless situation.

Forgot to add I think part of it is the fact I have PND and it's made me very anxious- I am already lying awake at night worrying that when she goes to nursery she will drop lots of weight because she won't take a bottle. It's totally irrational but I can't get on top of it.

Have you tried her with a cup of milk instead of the bottle?

Oh,paintyourbox- please don't worry!

When they are ready they eat like horses! It's October now- if you start her on solids at the beginning of December, say, she'll have 3 or 4 weeks to get into it before you go back to work. And if she's anything like mine, she'll be hoovering down 3 meals a day after a couple of weeks of solid food!

Try to relax about it ( inmpssible, I know) then wean her in 6 or 7 weeks time. She'll be fine. And introduce a cup at the same time. Mine were bottle refusers too- but took cups with a bit of persuasion.

Paint please don't worry about her eating in January. She'll get the hang of food by then and the nursery will make sure she eats and drinks. As Seeker says she may be much happier to take a cup of some form than a bottle so I wouldn't worry about forcing her to take a bottle at the moment (will she take one from your DP at all?). Plus you'll be there in the morning and evening for feeds too. The longer you can hold out towards 6 months the better. Hope you're ok, I had PND too and it was crap.

What seeker said

Niggle, Dr Gillian Harris's work is with food refusers, and her research supports introducing a range of different tastes and textures into the early weaning diet - her work should not really be used to support weaning earlier than six months, because it did not look at that.

She compared babies whose early weaning included a wide variety of foods with babies who started on bland purees and rice, and she found less fussiness in babies who started with different foods. The babies started on solids between 4 and 6 mths - as most babies do in the UK. She did not compare age of starting, and her point about allergies is nothing to do with age but the (incorrect) idea that babies ought to start on rice and pureed veg because of allergy fears.

She's a psychologist not a nutritionist - she may have views that 4 mths is ok but that's not what her research is about.

Here's an article that underlines her interest in developing a range of tastes:

www.babylondon.co.uk/articles/health-a-wellbeing/weaning/item/845-a-life-time-adventure-with-food

In the UK the guidance has been 6 mths for ages; there are probably many babies who would not be harmed by solids earlier than this, but there is no evidence that healthy, growing thriving breastfed babies actually benefit from them earlier than 6 mths.

manky" - there is no evidence that healthy, growing bf babies are harmed if solids are introduced at 6 mths instead of before . Or if there is, please share it. The allergy research taking place under the aegis of the EAT study has not reported yet.

The BMJ paper quoted before is a review - it's not evidence.

Indivdual babies who are not growing well on breastmilk and who don't respond to increased breastmilk or more effective milk transfer, are a different kettle of fish.

"Seeker - there is also evidence suggesting that waiting til six months can cause potential harm.

The bottom line is that there is insufficient evidence either way."

Really? could you point me to that evidence, please? I haven't seen it.

Hi everyone,

We actually had a bit of a break through today. I had been trying DD with various sippy cups but she wasn't managing to get anything out. I had a try myself and had to suck really really hard to get any liquid.

So I took the valve out of the cup so it would free flow and she actually took the milk!! I also changed her to aptamil on the recommendation of a friend and she seemed to quite like the taste (I do express but it's a bit disheartening pumping for ages then having to pour it down the sink when she refuses it)

As we all know, one day does not make a habit but I feel a bit more relieved! I also bought some books on baby-led weaning as I think it sounds quite interesting.

manky you were challenged to produce this 'evidence' you talked about, of 'harm' to (healthy, growing) babies who waited until 6 mths for solids.

The Cochrane review does not do this! Do you not understand what you are reading?

From the abstract:

"The results of two controlled trials and 21 other studies suggest that exclusive breastfeeding (no solids or liquids besides human milk, other than vitamins and medications) for six months has several advantages over exclusive breastfeeding for three to four months followed by mixed breastfeeding"

Cochrane actually finds no evidence of harm - quite the opposite of what you said:

"Infants who are exclusively breastfed for six months experience less morbidity from gastrointestinal infection than those who are partially breastfed as of three or four months, and no deficits have been demonstrated in growth among infants from either developing or developed countries who are exclusively breastfed for six months or longer. Moreover, the mothers of such infants have more prolonged lactational amenorrhea. Although infants should still be managed individually so that insufficient growth or other adverse outcomes are not ignored and appropriate interventions are provided, the available evidence demonstrates no apparent risks in recommending, as a general policy, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life in both developing and developed-country settings."

Hard to discuss anything if this is the level of your contribution :(

Glad you had a good day Paint.

Definitely get some free-flow beakers, the non spill ones pissed my DS off too.

Give yourself a break, you're doing a great job x

Not sure what you mean by 'paronising', manky - if you mean challenging you to re-read what you say is 'evidence suggesting that waiting til six months can cause potential harm' so you realise that this 'evidence' says exactly the opposite of what you claim it says, then of course I plead 'guilty'.

You were quite unequivocal, were you not, that "there is also evidence suggesting that waiting til six months can cause potential harm"? And so was I, in asking you to produce this evidence.

I am still waiting, BTW.

On the other hand, a 'whoops - I made that bit up/misread something/made a silly mistake' would be fine :)

It's ok to make mistakes, you know. I do. Everyone does. The real daftness is not admitting to them, and there's even greater daftness in persisting!

""Seeker - there is also evidence suggesting that waiting til six months can cause potential harm."

I'd still like to see this, please.

If I remember correctly,I went by what the baby wanted.
I am of the opinion that they know themselves and are trying to tell you.

Of course all of us go on and on about evidence when babies are not lab rats and it is nigh on impossible to get anything close to hard evidence when there are so many factors, genetic and environmental, that go into rearing a child that controlling for all of them is not possible. So evidence is always scanty at best, even when people are trying their hardest to make a solid, scientific study.

There is also the issue of confirmation bias. If you strongly believe something (and this post has proved that some of us have very strong beliefs about weaning!!!) you will tend to read all of the evidence as supporting your beliefs, and if evidence cannot possibly support it, you will tend to poohpooh the evidence (I do not quote directly from scientific information on confirmation bias at this point ^) and believe that the study was flawed. You probably don't believe you do this but that's because you have confirmation bias ^.

Everyone on here is thinking about what they feed their baby and trying to get it right, so I am thinking none of us is going to make that bad a job of rearing them, but maybe we all just need to stress a little less. And be kind to each other.

Glad you had a better day OP.

Hmm computer added its own italics to that - I was going for a double ^ raised eyebrows :)