Can someone please remind me why I'm waiting another month to wean my 5 month old dd.

[cupcakes]

Need advice on this one. dd2 is 5 months and one week. Till a week ago she has slept through from 8pm to 6am for a couple of months. She is now waking twice a night for a feed (she is exclusively breastfed).
Everybody I know is recommending I start to wean her but I had decided to wait till 6 months with her (I haven't spoken to my HV but I know she'll say I should wean as she told my friend that bf babies rarely last till 6 months old on breast milk alone).

I'm pretty sure I am doing the right thing in waiting another three weeks but am having a slight crisis in confidence. All thoughts gratefully received!

I weaned my eldest at 4 months too, as that was the advice at the time. But the advice changes as more research is done, wasn't long ago we were advised to put babies to sleep on their front was it?

I suppose we just have to hope all was ok with weaning at 4 months, not much we can do about it now.

My sister was weaned at 2 weeks (on the advice of the GP) who told my Mum - that baby needs food. She's appraoching 40 and seems very healthy thankfully - was weaned onto jars and something my mother calls "coddled egg".

if i hadnt of weaned earlier than recomended (3 1/2 months) i would have spent all my time feeding my baby. she was having 8 - 12 full bottles of milk (expressed and formula) a day! i only gave baby rice at first before ver gradually introducing fruit, veg etc.

years ago babies got feed almost immediatly and got given alcohol in bottles

some say it hasnt done any harm, others say look at the amount of people with ibs, liver problems etc

i did what i felt was right at the time and im glad i did

Yes, my aunt quite blithly told me that my cousin was weaned onto rice at 5 days old because her milk "wasn't rich enough" .

She was telling me this to emphasise how mean I was being to ds by waiting and feeding him with only my milk which couldn't possibly be enough. I smiled politely, muttered something about guidelines and left.

Yes, and years ago most people smoked when pregnant, doent mean we should keep doing it.

Do what you think is right for your baby ... IMO all the guidelines seems to assume every baby is identical. I'm sure all us proud mothers would deny that! I weaned at 20 weeks (after hanging on for 2 weeks) as DS was having a formula feed every 3 hours, a full breast feed inbetween, stopped sleeping through the night, threw up the whole time as his stomach couldn't hold the amount of milk he wanted to drink and spent all day throwing himself frantically at whatever I was eating ...

well, guidelines rather have to operate on the basis that the most babies will be protected to the best extent if parents follow the guideline. so yes, as previous posters have said, some babies' guts will be ready before 6 months. but how do you know for sure without an endoscopy?

you could try the old carrot batons on the tray and see how the baby does. tbh i think BLW is how most third children are weaned anyway as the parents have less time to faff.

my DD started waking twice in the night at about the same age. Thanks to support on here, we managed to wait until 25 weeks and then started BLW. I don't think she actually started to eat anything till she was 26 weeks though.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but despite the fact that her solid intake is steadily increasing (at least 2 good meals a day and a bit of a third) its 2.5 weeks later and she's still waking twice at night and it certainly sounds like she's swallowing a good feed and not just sucking for comfort

BLW is great though, we had a pub lunch with a couple of our friends with babies the same age on sunday and we got admiring glances at DD packing away chicken, parsnip, potato and carrot from my plate whilst we ate rather than having to faff with spoons and pots of gloop whilst my dinner got cold like the others.

Gloria - that meal sounds great!

By the sounds of it, this night waking might be a developmental stage rather than hunger. If you have found that introducing solids doesn't change her sleeping pattern then I have nothing to leave by waiting another few weeks.

Am definitely going to look at that blog and find out more about blw.

lose not leave