Please somebody tell me about the research that shows that weaning before 6 months "may damage your baby".

[SenoraPostrophe]

....only all I can find is the Gill Rapely research, which, as far as I can tell, was based on a small study, centered on chewing not digestion and wasn't longitudinal. I could be wrong as the paper itself isn't online. I did find lots of summaries of it and lots of talk about stone age mothers not having blenders (well no, but they did have teeth).

Is there more to it than this? and if not, why is everybody being quite so aggressive about it?

lucy - lol at el gordo. I have one of those too. el gordo despierto I call him.

I find it very surprising that unicef and who do make so much of this 6 month rule given the limited evidence...they don't have the same kind of conviction when it comes to food additives artificial sweeetners etc precisely because they don't have enough research

it seems very good where risks are higher in developing countries to say this but there is a bit of a question mark in places like the uk

In the 'olden days' babies were not waened until 9 months. Then with modernthinking babies were weaned early -probably due tothe fact that mothers were required to work for the war effort.

From what i have read, early weaning may contribute to probelmes in adult life such as autoimmune diseaeses such as rheumatoid arthritis and chrohn's. Chrones diseaese can lead to ileaostomy and colostomy.

In my mind, waiting till 6months reduces the likelihood of probelms in later life. Only managed it with DD (babe no.4) because I was determined.

Yes she woke at night for extra feeds. I went with it, where I started solids with her brothers. Extra feeds at night meant more milk production and she slept through again.

She started solids at 6 months and it was an easier process that the faff of starting early.

There is no risk to delaying solids till 6 months. That was good enough for me. This is not a new fangled idea - DD is 13 years old. I knew it when DS1 was a baby and he is now 20. I just didn't have the confidence then.

DS1 slepy all night from 12 weeks.

Bugger all to do with solids. I firmly believe it is a baby's personality that dictates how they leep.

No. I was SlightlyMadScientist. Decided that I wanted to change the 'Scientist' bit, had a MN pole on what I should be and I liked the suggestion of slug as it is so random. (and the 'Mad' has been change to 'angry' cos thats how I am feeling tonight )

Not too sure about people calling me 'slug' tho....and I think that if I get involved in too many of these debates I am going to end up tripping over a pile of slug pellets , so I may change again soon....I also like cods idea of a regular change....just to keep people on their toes as it were

v good point re sweetners and additives.

maybe they're scared of being sued.

mears, but you weaned your ds1 at 4 months right?

now will search breastfeeding and crohns

I found lots of "duration of breastfeeding is inversly proportional to risk of crohn's disease" (not exclusive breastfeeding) and "not conclusive" studies.

am really beginning to think that the world of health advice is more political than scientific.

The world of health adive is a 'political' collation of medical evidence IMO.

i'd love to know how long those crohn's studies followed people for, i can't imagine how such a piece of research could be designed...

SP I asked exactly this q of Hunker - she referred me to the kellymum website - I have yet to give it a read- but it does seem to have a lot of references in it that might provide what you ask.

here

FFS peopel weaned earlier before because it wasnt researched properly, now it is and babies are weaned later as it is better for them.

People trust HV over their natural instincts which leads to problems ssometimes.

back in the really old days babies were weaned very late and built up slowly when thier mouths learned to swallow things

hatwoman: it doesn't. It provides lots of organisations that recommend 6 months, and lots of vaguely related studies, but no evidence that exclusive breastfeeding till 6 months is best.

(admittedly i read it quickly though. may go back tomorrow).

Penelope: can you show us that research please.

Aitch it is not hard - you get subscribed into these studies as babies and then they plot the outcome at 5, 10, 15, 20yrs etc. They were probably looking at what effects weaning at certain ages had on the body and it wouldn't have just been chrons they were looking for IYSWIM.

well all organisations are political

they also develop a natural bias through their membership and recruitment systems which then becomes identified as ethos or culture of an organisation think bbc, metropolitan police etc

its hard to find reseearch becasue no wonan is going to give their baby to medicl research that could harm them

but as far as scientists can tell it is best to wean later.

weaning in tho old ddays was later because babies ate the same as their parents when they could only more chopped up. Natural instict told mothers to feed as long as possible

tbh SP - that's what i suspected - but haven't read it yet. some of the organisations it links to I'd already looked at and whilst their guidelines etc are pretty clear, the grounds aren't. but I wondered if it might be somewhere in that list of references

don't babies now eat the same as the family/parents too?

did they, though? i've not looked. if they're using available data and working it backwards then it would be impossible to be categorical.

tbh, my friend has barely kept down a piece of solid food in a decade and spends her every morning puking and shitting blood, it's absolute torture for her. if waiting a couple of months to wean could reduce my dd's chance of going through that my the tiniest sliver then i'd do it. completely unscientific, completely personal, but imho completely sensible.

zippitoes thats my point

nowadays many people wean later and feed babies proper un mushed food whereas in the 70s it was reccoended to wean early using baby rice( which no adults eat)

therefore natural instinct is to wean later on proper food

I think the first thing to point out is that it is not a rule but a guideline. Hence it is meant to give guidance not to be prescriptive, thus recognising that all children are different.

What scant research there is, concentrates on the adequacy of certain nutrients in the baby's diet, and most of the research highlights that the outcomes will be different in the still-developing world from the developed in this regard.

This paper here:
WHO publication on the adequacy of exclusive breastfeeding for 4-6 months points out that th'Particularly evident is the lack of crucial data for evaluating the nutrient adequacy of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 4-6 months.'

This paper might be starting to get to the heart of the guidance, as it is suggesting that the biggest differenciating factor in the still-developing world of exclusively breastfeeding until 6 months is that there is a lower rate of morbidity due to gastrointestinal infection. It also noted that the mother has a greater loss of post natal fat stores! In the still-developing world though, this is not seen as a positive - such is the gulf between the haves and the still-have nots!

the optimal duration of exclusive breastfeeding

It certainly seems that the reason for suggesting 6 months vs 4-6 months as a guideline for weaning is skewed somewhat by the poorer outcomes in the Honduran trials due to gastrointestinal infections. What relevance that would have in the developing world is not easy to assess.

Both papers, and a fair amount of the other research are concerned with the depletion of key nutrients (especially iron) in the 6 month sample. ALthough they did say that due to the small sample size in the first place it is not possible to say whether the increase in failure to thrive of delaying to 6 months is significant or not.

I hear what many are saying about the less risky option being to wait until 6 months, however, based on what I have read tonight, it would seem that the risk is pretty insignificant in the developed world. Of course, there will always be parents who wish to eliminate almost all risk from their babies lives (and who would criticise that) but a more balanced view as far as I can assess from the evidence presented by the WHO is that the change in outcomes between a baby who is exclusively breast fed for 4 months versus one who is exclusively breast fed for 6 months is not likely to be at all significant for the population as a whole. Of course there will be individual gainers and losers within that population, and that is where a common sense approach similar to the one suggested by Gess gains credence in my view.

Now of course the real question is what the hell am I doing spending my Sat evening wading through WHO research when my children are 7and 8 yo!

Well here is a list of citations on the subject /link{http://www.kellymom.com/newman/risks_of_formula_08-02.html\sadly the list is dated 2002} which is a few years ago. However, that doesn't mean that the conclusions within those publications are any less valid on an individual basis.

Sadly there are no links, and we are unlikely to be able to get the full citation as they are likely to be subscription only. The headings 'risks to child' suggest that the outcomes support later weaning. I believe that it is also fair to say that the definition of 'artificial feeding' is anything which isn't breastmilk (so would include formula).

So the citations appear to be there, but not in a form which Joe public can access IYSWIM. If there are one or two citations which people are particularly interested in I will try and get them if we subscribe to the appropriate journals at work. No promises tho.

Aitch the research will have been done before the guidelines were published so the parents wouldn't have felt they were 'harming' there child as they probably didn't feel they were doing it 'early' just within the guidlines. I will see if I can find out how it was done for you.