When to wean?

[sh700]

I weaned dc1 at 6 months as per the doh advice. Dc2 is now nearly 4 months and starting to think about it. A friend recently mentioned that the advice was changing to recommend weaning earlier again. Anyone know anything about this? I know there's been some research that suggests allergy rates have increased since weaning later but that's all.

Hi Sh700
Advice from most health experts is to wait until the baby is 6 months. kellymom.com/ages/older-infant/delay-solids/
It's understood that baby's digestive tract will only be mature enough to cope with solid food from around 6 months of age.

Thanks that's a really helpful link. Off to have a proper read of some of the studies but glad I don't have to worry about doing anything more stressful than flopping a boob out for a while longer!

My HV told me that there is a lot of discussion about changing the guidelines back to 4-6 months. But currently official advice is 6 months.

The advice is 6 months

Experts seem to be waiting for a particular study to come out, after which they may reasses back to 4-6 months but the advice remains at 6 months for now as pp have said.

Given that there isn't enough iron in breast milk from 6 months, waiting until then puts a lot of pressure to get them to eat something straight away I think. It took my daughter a few weeks to really get into eating, and I doubt that's uncommon.

The advice I received was to basically be doing 3 meals a day within a couple of weeks and it's quite a big ajustment. I'm pretty confident about nutrition and love to cook but I could imagine finding it quite difficult if that wasn't my experience.

I've never had it explained to me what the effects of weaning at under 6 months is meant to be, as obviously I was weaned on the old advice of 4+ months.

We weaned DD1 early (4.5 months) due to reflux and it worked well as we built up slowly so by the time we were at just over 6 months we were on 3 meals a day without feeling like it was a push. I therefore weaned DD2 a little early (3 weeks but just tiny bits at first).

We're struggling with constipation and I really don't think DD2 would have coped well with waiting until 6 months then progressing quickly to 3 meals a day.

It's personal choice though.
If you do wean early go easy on what you give your DC. Fruit/veg are the easiest things for them to process at first (with maybe a little baby rice).

My youngest is 4 1/2 months and I've just started weaning him on baby porridge and he loves it. He was becoming hungrier and hungrier and has really good head control so just went with it. He really enjoyed it. I was advised by a dietician to wean my eldest when she was 4 months so I didn't see the harm in weaning earlier than the recommend 6 months. If you start weaning early you have to start with puréed food and then add lumps getting bigger until on finger food, where as if you start at 6 moths you can go straight onto finger foods so does make it slightly easier and cleaner for you. At the end of the day you know your baby best and if you think they are ready I'd say trust your parenting instinct

I would not rely on Kellymom website for recommendations on starting solids. It has brilliant information when it comes to breastfeeding but some other sections are really questionable and refer to old studies with tiny samples.

Here is a link which I personally found useful:

scienceofmom.com/2015/05/14/starting-solids-4-months-6-months-or-somewhere-in-between/

Here is some background information on the 6 month timeline:

expectingscience.com/2014/11/07/when-is-it-best-to-introduce-solids/