The government guidelines for weaning say to wait til 6 months, don't they?

[Wallace]

So why, when I asked today, did my HV say they recommend between 4 to 6 months? A bit later in the conversation she did say something about "as close to 6 months as possible". Even worse, the red books you are given (for development checks, growth charts etc) say "babies can begin eating solid food between three and four months" !

OK so just to clarify, I am not hassling anyone into weaning early, what I was trying to reassure the OP at the beginning was whilst WHO guidelines are 6mths, there are a lot of health professionals out there who advise based on what they know of the baby earlier, so what had been said to her was not unusual or anything to be specifically alarmed at.

God is the point where I just give up or what????

Hang on - weaning isnt dangerous as such!!!! The guidelines were issued based on extensive research which showed that, very simply put, the incidence of allergies and various digestive and development problems and adult illnesses and disorders were more common the earlier a baby was weaned.

There are absolutely no proven benefits whatsoever to weaning early/before 6 months. Full stop.

So why do it?

The WHO recommend that for optimum 'benefit' you b/feed for 2 years.

Well most of those points are bollocks (partic. the last two).
I speak as someone with specialist training in chewing and swallowing.

would you go through them and explain why they're bollock, moondog? i must say the pincer thing looked iffy to me. i'd have needed to wait 'til about 8 months if i'd been waiting for dd to pick up peas.

or indeed bollocks.

What has the pincer grasp got to do with anything food related?It is more to do with exploratory activity.

Children chew on things way before they are ready to eat.

The 'participating in mealtimes' bit is more about social interaction than anything and the grabbing and mouthing food is due to the fact that at this stage the mouth is a primary sensory organ.

The tongue-thrust reflex is as much about not choking to death on small objects that the baby wants to mouth (as above) as anything else.

Sitting up without support?
Hmmm,arguably a prerequisite.

Yes because that's the advantage of breastfeeding not because weaning is totally inadvisable ahead of 6mths. Every single one of the arguments on most of the web links re exclusively breastfeeding would apply in the breast v bottle arguments as well as the weaning one and that is all I am trying to say. They are promoting breast feeding more than anything else. At no point on there are they saying solids vs milk (i.e. breast/forumula)- it is all about breastfeeding and I have simply questioned the motivations in that in relation to the weaning debate.

and yet i'm forever seeing babies being fed in bumbos because they can't sit in highchairs. but my hatred for bumbos must wait for another day, i fear...
thanks MD.

Ooh I loved my Bumbo.
(Not necessarily for feeding though...)

dd threw herself out of hers within minutes of trying it. that's £30 down the drain...

Mmm,they seem to be one of those love 'em or hate 'em things don't they?

I never got on with a bumbo but luckily it was lent not purchased. I always felt that ds looked totally unnnatural and uncomfortable stuffed into it!!! Much the same way I feel when I've sat in those inflatable chairs

It will happen.

You will take your baby along to the GP (or whatever GP has morphed into) - they will run a scanner over baby's tummy, mutter "hmmmm" a bit, and then turn to you and say "OK, that's fine, your baby's gut is ready for solids now. However, he has a 47.78% risk of cow's milk allergy, so keep him off dairy stuff for now and we'll make an appointment to cure the allergy next week."

Until that happens, we have to work to a general guideline for starting solids, and I'm sticking with the best available impartial advice, ie the WHO.

6 months is a bit of an arbitrary age - it's what they use in studies because it's an easy landmark for mums to remember. It may well be that the average optimum age for starting solids isn't 6 months, but on current evidence, it's likely to be later, rather than earlier.

welliemum, have you seen my GP? i think he might be morphing into something else already... he's a funny-looking chap at any rate.

I am LOLing at the idea that a health visitor can look at my baby and tell me to ignore guidelines based on extensive studies and the evidence of squads of researchers involving many thousands of babies.

'Too many rules and regs' about feeding babies these days, says Whoosh. Huh? There's only one, as far as I can see: 'Exclusive breastfeeding recommended for the first 6 months (26 weeks) of an infant's life as it provides all the nutrients a baby needs' (from the DH leaflet).

Can we clear something up, too? Lets get away from the World Health organisation telling mothers weaning before 6 months is dangerous. The WHO speak to governments, not indivdual women, and their research and guidance are for governments to consult, to develop policies consistent with public health. So it's a question of enabling women to breastfeed to 6 mths, rather than telling them to. Out of date HVs do not 'enable' at all.

The US, Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, all of Europe and the UK (and probably other countries, too, but I don't have the info) have the same recommendations - 6 mths excl bf.

This is because we see the best health outcomes when this happens.

Individual babies may need individual management - but they won't get it from HVs who are still parrotting 4-6 months as if nothing had changed.

aitch

I still haven't got over the shock of discovering that in NZ, the "official" advice on weaning is sponsored by Watties: makers of, you guessed it, baby food jars.

The breastfeeding support here is excellent, so being hassled (no other word for it) to wean dd1 at 4 months was a terrible shock.

To be fair, the advice might now have changed as this was 2 years ago, but I've been hiding dd2 from them so I've missed the cheery "weaning advice from Watties" pamphlet.

I cross to the other side of the road when I pass the clinic in case the nurses are hiding behind the gate, ready to jump out and menace me with weaning spoons.

It is bizarre, really, in a very pro-bf country.