Vitamin supplements and weaning

[KT12]

My 8.5 month old DD is not a great eater. While I love the BLW appraoch I have had to resort to both finger food and spoon feeding or holding pieces of food to her mouth. I still breast feed 4 times a day - about 8 min a feed. Since starting weaning she dropped to the 25th centile on weight. (She started out on the 75th and steadily dropped to about the 40th.)

Had her weighed today and the HV suggested that I give her vitamin supplements to ensure she gets enough iron. I'd be interested to know what others thought of this and if anyone else has used supplements and which supplements are recommended.

Should just add - DD is very alert, happy and making very good developmental progress.

I give dd Abidec but have no idea whether it's a good thing - you hear so many contradictory things about supplements that I'm really confused. Sorry, not very helpful to you but I'll be interested to hear what others think.

Thanks abracadabra for your reply - could I ask, why you give dd Abidec? I agree it is all confusing and like you I am very interested to know what others think!

If she was truly worried about your DD's iron levels why didn't the HV suggest you have them tested to find out if they are low? I would either ignore her if you weren't worried before she suggested it...or go back & ask for a list of symptoms & possible problems with iron deficiency, & ask why she hasn't offered testing first...but then I'm a bit bolshy & like winding up HVs

Good point terramum!

don't breast fed babies weight gain slow down ? I'm sure i read somewhere that compared to formula fed babies, bf LO's pile weight on at first and then the weight gain slows down in later months, whereas for formula fed babies it's the opposite. don't forget she's measuring against a ff chart... just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons !
i wouldnt have thought vit supplkements would do any harm and perhaps best to be safe than sorry ?