Been advised to wean early by Doctor not sure what to do?

[mummyemily]

Just got back from docs about babies weight and pale colour, he has advised me to start weaning DD is only 19weeks and was hoping we would get to 6 months so I could do BLW could i still do that at 19 weeks? if so what food should i offer? he currently has 210ml of milk over 12hours (every 3hrs on the dot or he screams the house down!) between 7am and 7pm totally at a loss as didn't wean older dd till 6months,
So do i go down the puree path or fruit blw path?
thoughts please

I weaned all three of mine at 4 months, started with purees and slowly introduced BLW when I felt they could cope with it which was around six to seven months for all of them.

I would up the milk. We use Hipp organic and followed the recommended amounts on the box which at 3-5 months is 5 feeds of 180ml each feed. 210ml per day is very little. In the early days weaning is on top of milk because you don't get much down them! You can offer bits and see how it goes.

Is that 210mls over the whole 12 hours, because that doesn't seem like very much?

My 17week old DS takes around 800mls in the same time period, could you encourage more milk ?

210ml per day doesn't sound much. The individual cartons have 200ml in and that's one serving

I would up feeds to every 2 hrs and offer 200ml each time

So: 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm.

After a day or two you can see how much of each feed he drinks and decrease it to say 180ml if that's better. I would still feed every 2 hrs especially if you are saying he is screaming the house down at 3 hr. I would assume that means he's hungry

Many babies especially if bf may be fed every hour or more

The more calorific and nutritious thing for him is more milk so I wouldn't start food yet

I weaned DS at four months (ie introduced food on top of milk). Try things like Weetabix (using normal formula), banana etc. Baby rice is grim on its own but a useful thickener for purees that have gone a bit runny and won't stay on the spoon

sorry i meant per feed not over a 12 hour period. should have explained better
210ml at 7am
210ml at 10am
210ml at 1pm
210ml at 3pm
210ml at 6.30pm

mummyemily, can you arrange to speak to your health visitor about this? If your baby is not gaining weight as she should, then introducing solids at 19 weeks is usually not the best response to tackle this - the first thing would be to increase the milk (maybe you have tried this and this is why the doc has suggested solids?).

210 mls could be a typo? It's way, way below the amount you'd expect a baby of this age to have - perhaps you mean 210 mls every 3 hours?

Ah, cross-posted!

Is your baby's weight a problem?

Still think best thing would be to speak to HV and work out a plan.

He was doing great with his weight didnt loose any after birth then got a virus and weight gain dropped considerably and since then haven't been able to get him back up, he is on a prescription lactose free milk - although this has been a nightmare doc put him on it at 8 weeks as he cried and fussed after every feed but showed no signs of allergy to cows protein but the milk did stop his discomfort but since weight gain has been slow mv did mention weaning early when we saw her at the end of december we were going to speak about it this month so both have now mention weaning him early.

Please don't give weetabix! Babies under 6 months should not have any wheat/ gluten/ dairy ( apart from baby milk), meat/ fish. The only foods if given early should be fruits or veg as their intestines aren't developed yet

Hence why people say introducing food wouldn't help as a carrot is obv far less filling than milk.

Like I said I would up to 200ml every 2 hrs instead if 3. However If your baby is still pale/ not gaining etc after a week max personally I would want a second opinion if your worried