It's not rocket science - "it may cause harm to wean early, it does no harm to leave it till 6m" - WHY do people still want to shovel baby rice in at 12 weeks (or earlier)?

[hunkermunker]

I have come up with some ideas as to why people wean early:

they have competitive baby syndrome and are annoyed someone else's baby rolled first, so they want to get theirs onto steak and chips via baby rice and one fruit or veg a week for months

Well, an idea. Any more?

every child will start to eat at different times (as in, eat any quantity) it is just safer to wait till six months acoordingly to the DoH and WHO, because of gut development.
it may be that new research will come along to prove this incorrect. But until then, this is the best available evidence.
actually, you know, when you put it like that it isn't rocket science.

6 months for all types of feeding, and actually I would expect that bf and ff would go together in the future also, as it's likely that with time, formulas will more closely resemble breast milk.

so what is the fresh food is preferable to formula bit?

fewer ingredients/potential allergens?

actually i think that is absolutely the most interesting question zippi. there's not much research on it, obv, but welliemum did kinda extrapolate from a piece of HIV research that it looks like ff is better than solids before 6 months. but i'd so be interested in reading more about that, if you know of anything.

just thought thatmight have some bearing on a hypothetical extension to 9 months

which seems as unlikely at this stage as extending drinking age to 21 in the uk

I'm digging around for info on that aitch as I also think it's interesting, and of huge practical significance seeing as exclusive bf'ers are a very small minority and mix or ff is much more common.

Haven't found anything yet but that's mainly due to hecticness of life currently.

i'm sure it would zippi. i think that d jack newman advocates 'early' weaning rather than introducing formula, but i don't know what he's based that on.

dr jack

blimey, you have a lie in and look what happens. 'morning everyone!

My god, what a judgemental thread...I'm shocked. From personal experience, I weaned my second baby just after five months. More breast milk did not satisfy him and he was losing weight. Should I have continued to starve him?

dunno kels, that's kind of where the conversation has moved onto. should you have started him on solids or on formula? it's an interesting question, and one to which there is no definitive answer that any of us can find.

I am fair game for a slating, btw, it would seem...

[adopts somewhat fashionable victim stance]

Why abusive to wean early HunkerM.I did so because no matter what I tried ds and dd where so hungry that they didn't stop being so even when I used hungrier milk.(no BF as I didn't produce much tried everything but HV and midwife said enough as it was making me deppressed) I gave them 1 weaning spoon of baby rice in loads of milk and they were happy and contented.They now have strong stomachs and actually are rarely ill.Maybe 3 stomach bugs in 12 yrs for ds.

It can't have been the baby rice that made the difference then, surely? One tiny spoonful and it utterly settled them?

Abusive because without a crystal ball, you'll not have any idea whether you are making your child allergic or develop IBS or similar later in life. Allergies and illness a pretty unpleasant thing to do to anyone, don't you agree?

Lots of babies won't have problems. Lots will. Not worth the risk, IMO.

If yours are fine, no guilt required.

HM it did make the diff.It turned out when I spoke to HV etc. that the baby rice settled just enough in stomach to fill them but not enough to hurt them(unsure how it works) but also turned out that their is a history on both sides of family of early weaning even my dp was weaned early.

kels, quite - I had similar dilemmas and the only-breasmtmilk-til-6m brigade never answers this question adequately - their only opinion seems to be that we didnt try hard enough.

absolute nonsense, nightynight. lord knows i actually addressed it just below, and i've seen it debated here many times. twinklemegan's researched it a bit, you could do a search under her name.

nightynight - find one comment on mumsnet that says to people who did not breastfeeding exclusively to 6 mths 'you didn't try hard enough'. There's a challenge for you.

Mumsnet is very supportive to women who did not breastfeed exclusively to 6 mths - it's often discussed how hard it is to do this, because of poor support, or other factors like going back to work, or breastfeeding not working well and help with problems being hard to access, not to mention HVs who tell them not to!

It is implied. Because threads like this one keep rubbing it in that there is no excuse not to breastfeed exclusively til 6 months.

I dont believe that in their heart of hearts, the people who did it believe that they were just lucky and that it genuinely wasnt possible for others.

tiktok - that is the whole point. IF we had been better supported, then we would have been able to exclusively bf til 6 months, etc etc. Er, no. I couldnt have, full stop.

brace yourself nighty

no, zk, I will probably just go, and leave this thread to the people who clearly feel they have the moral high ground. this thread was very controversial from the title onwards.

nor could i, nightynight. but i'm missing the implication that you see in this thread. some individuals have said on threads a good while back that 'everyone can bf' (i can actually tell you their names cos it smarted so much that i remember). it was actually tiktok who came on to correct them. haven't seen any such comment for ages, and certainly haven't seen it on this thread.

well aitch, how about the question "why do people still want to shovel in baby rice at 12 weeks?"

the words "shovel in" suggest a certain carelessness, second rate care in other words. Which is clearly hm's opinion from her posts, backed up by research etc etc.