Anyone have any experience of weaning very small babies?

[unbuckle]

I have 5 month old twins and am thinking ahead to weaning. One of them is extremely small (a kilo below 0.4 centile) and is on prescription formula. We are a larger family with 5 kids under 6. I intended to do BLW with the babies as I had with the other 3 but am conscious of one twin's additional calorie needs. The paeds are excellent but don't have practical advice on feeding. So I wondered if anyone had experience of either BLW for very small term babies, or traditional weaning in a large family given I can't prepare numerous meals easily.

I'm not a regular poster but would appreciate anyone's advice or experiences.

Thanks

No-one? Small not young?

My dd was prem and very tiny. I was advised to wean at 5 months. I just started with baby rice, puree, etc. Tbh my dd didn't take to weaning well atall.

Only thing I can suggest is stick with the prescription formula as long as possible and just introuce food on top rather than instead of milk feeds.

Yes, i've been told to always offer milk first. How long did you use the formula for?

I have fostered several preemie babies on prescription formula and found weaning to be exactly the same as for normal weight babies. One of my recent ones took very well to baby led weaning. I gave her lots of buttery crumpets which went down very well!

It was nutriprem2, is that what you're using? I think until she was about 13 months.

But my dd has a lot of problems with food and the bottles of nutriprem were her main source of food.

My friend - Nutritionist with special interest in bf - told me that there was more calories in milk than in food - ounce for ounce - so the most important thing is to keep up the milk. And Blw is suitable from 6 months - if your twins were prem they may be ready a bit later.

I think you are fine to blw if that's what you want. Just offer regular family meals without salt etc ( I'm sure you know from before)

Try adding high fat snacks ( avocado/ nut butters on toast/ extra creamy cheesy mash etc)

And continue with formula as usual ( main calories come from formula in their case anyway). You can always make porridge/ cheese sauce etc for them using their formula for higher calories

No, they were term and he is on SMA high energy. He had a normal birth weight but has only grown about 50-70g per week since birth, except since he has had the formula. Crumpets sound like a great idea, making me feel hungry!

My daughter was less than 5lb( born at 38 weeks) and we BLW from 24 weeks (true BLW style she started grabbing food from my plate, so we made it more available to her)no issues at all.

Ah right, I would just stick to high fat foods then, once he's got the hang of it. I was advised to add butter, cream and cheese to absolutely anything I could, including soup. Unfortunately I had already got her used to 'normal' food and she didn't like the taste when I added cheese so I would try and do that as soon as possible so it tastes 'normal' to him.

Does he have a dietitian/SALT?

No, he doesn't, I was going to ask about dietician next time we went to paed as it is pretty obvious the paeds don't know about the practicalities, for example they told me the formula is made up as normal whereas actually it comes ready mixed. Other than that they have been very good.