i am a Bad Person. today i ahve given my 20 week old food. and it's pureed.

[TutterrysChocolateOrange]

i was going to wait

i was going to try blw

but am too exhausted and fed up

ds2 (5mo next week) is having nights from hell. hence so am i. last night he managed no more thna an hour at a time between midnight and 6am

gp has seen him - nothing obviously wrong

i could have stuck it out but i am like a zombie. i haven't slept properly since he was born and the last few nights have been truly horrendous

i know a bit o pureed pear is going to makje feck all difference at first but i had to try something

Wannabe -
at last some old fashioned common sense. I weaned ds1 at 16ish weeks as per guidance at the time (and for the 30+ years previous). Advice had changed by the time ds2 was weaned but hv was perfectly supportive of me weaning him at around 16 weeks too.
I totally agree with everything you've said

Yes, when mine were small the guidelines were 16 weeks (they were just changing with my second child). Both loved food as soon as they had it and carried on developing very smoothly.

My (very nice) HV was insistent that there wasn't a "one size fits all" approach and you needed to look at everything (we had no allergies which impacted on this).

Mine are now 4 and 6, fit and healthy, and have always been extremely good eaters, both quantity and variety-wise. Of all the things which have affected the DCs development, I do not believe that pureed carrot/pear/barley in the 16-20 week stage has made a difference one way or the other.

everyone's reacting as if people have come on here and said tutter should wait until 6 months, i note... despite the fact that they haven't.

I personally find it hard to believe that weaning just a few weeks short of 26 weeks will make much difference in terms of health.

What I do find interesting is the assumption that babies will sleep better once weaned. That certainly didn't happen in my case - but then, neither of my babies were particularly 'hungry' babies. Maybe it is true for some babies.

I think the nut guidelines have changed recently and pregnant women are no longer told not to eat peanuts as more nut allergies were noticed in children who had been told to stay off them.

It just goes to show that your gut feelings are probably far more trustworthy than all the new guidelines and recent research!

I'm not at weaning stage yet, but according to community HV weaning is OK anytime after 17 weeks; prior to that there's poss evidence of link with irritable bowel etc. So 20 weeks should be fine on that advice... WHO advice poss also has greater impact in societies where disease more prevalent, better to bf for 6 months in that case, I guess. However I'm going to try for 6 months if I can with my DS, if he doesn't want food sooner - apart from anything is more convenient for me, food on tap .

someone actually posted the HV guidelines here once, they did say 6 months but then went on to talk about 17 weeks as well. they were completely impossible to make head or tail of.
and i don't think th epeanut guideline has changed, but it's something that ther eis about to be a study into. but the advice is still to keep off them until told otherwise.

Could you do a dream feed sometime between 10-11pm? Or if your LO is waking and not hungry maybe try putting a toy or little blankety thing that you've had stuffed down your top for a few hours - apparently their sense of smell is really good and they find it reassuring. The idea is that they settle back without a pick up/cuddle from you. Worked for my DS but then he'd been an absolute nightmare for a couple of weeks after a cold. Only just getting back to one feed a night zzzzz......

oh - I take it back then! Was sure I'd read that they were changing back as since the peanut 'ban' more children had actually developed an allergy to nut oil due to no tolerance being built up. I can't keep up!

All I know is that if I'm lucky to conceive number 3 I shall be ignoring everything and just going with what I did the previous 2 times as IMHO the physical make up of babies hasn't changed. My first HV gave rubbish advice on the whole and with number 2 I didn't bother with them at all......

DS was weaned at about 5 months because he went from sleeping 7-7 to waking up in the middle of the night. After starting him on solids (weaning at 4 months was the guideline then...only 4 years ago!), he went back to sleeping through the night. He (I) wouldn't have lasted until 6 months.

I can't believe how freaked out people get about weaning ,emotions seem higher than bf verus bottle or GF versus attachment or grapes in supermarket to me. My dd1 was exclusively bf until six and a half months because she slept well, went four hours happily between feeds and showed no sign of being interested in solids. I naively thought any mum weaning before six months was a fool and couldn't understand why they did it. But then came along much bigger, much more ratty DD2 who has almost never been happy just with milk and was so unsettled at 18 weeks, plus showing a real interest in what the rest of us were eating that I thought a bit of pureed pear couldn't hurt and guess what she devoured it like a starving lion would a carcass and went on to scoff everything I gave to her (a bit off food now but she's been ill , but that's another story). She's still pretty unsettled but I'm sure she'd have been worse without them. The moral as with all things parental is PLEASE DON'T BE JUDGEMENTAL. Every baby is different, every mum is different, if your baby is settled on milk you'd be mad to go through all that hassle just for the sake of it, but if your instinct tells you they need more you're probably right and other posters who have never met you and probably had a completely different type of baby are in no position to comment, simply to offer kind advice

Agree absolutely Mrs S. My two have been very different, which was a real surprise as I did expect them to behave the same, for some reason.

Less bombastic judgements, more kind advice please.

I won't judge. But I'll never advise someone to wean before the guidelines say. Because I'm no expert.

I also have the benefit of experience wrt to DD's allergies, and will always advocate later rather than sooner for a number of reasons (dealing with allergies is no fun, and if your baby has them - you'll be exposing them much earlier, pureeing is a faff, and I now feel that Gill Rapley's assertion that babies are reading to wean when they can pick up food and put it in their mouths themselves - only a parent will know the answer to this for their baby, but the interpretations of "ready" from one parent to another vary wildly).

Tutter, I know how you feel - DS was exactly like this. Fussing at the breast, his sleep was appalling and he didnt really sleep much during the day.

It was (and he still is) utterly exhausting. (Last night he woke at 2am saying he needed "cake", but I'm hoping that he was just talking in his sleep ).

I think he has his own unique character, and I've found life much easier to handle with him having accepted that he is Just Not Like DD. It will get better though.

is there a page missing or something on here?? where are all the unkind words and harsh judgements hiding?

is there a page missing or something on here?? where are all the unkind words and harsh judgements hiding?

is there a page missing or something on here?? where are all the unkind words and harsh judgements hiding?

is there a page missing or something on here?? where are all the unkind words and harsh judgements hiding?

is there a page missing or something on here?? where are all the unkind words and harsh judgements hiding?

pmsl, sorry, baby loose on computer, obv hungry nd trying to gnw wires

I think you've just made your own page though morocco

You are not a bad person!

I fully intended to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months. At 4.5 months in the early evenings DS would feed from one breast and cry. So I would offer him the other one and he would empty that and still cry. I came to the conclusion we either topped up with formula or tried solids.

A couple of teaspoons of pureed apple was all it took but he would stop crying, have a little sleep and be generally a happy baby again. We just stuck to fruit and veg until he was nearly 6 months.

HV said she was obliged to tell me that the guidelines say 6 months but DS was obviously a happy and healthy baby and to follow my instinct.

Tutter - you say that he's getting harder to feed in the day... I'm finding that too - I put it down to the fact that she's waking more at night, so I'm feeding her, hence she's getting all her calories at night, when it's nice and quiet and there are no distractions. What I'm trying to do now is try and get away with just one feed a night (at about 4ish, which is what she used to do until recently) and where possible, feed her somewhere quiet and calm in the day, so she's not pulling off to have a good old nose at what's going on. It does mean I have to plug DD1 into the computer or telly while i go upstairs to feed, but she does feed better in the day as a result.

Mind you, I'm pondering about a bit of babyrice in the evenings, as that is when she seems most fractious. At the 7pm feed, there doesn't seem to be much, but she won't take a top-up from a bottle, so what else can I do?

x-post apple dumpling! That seems to have answered my dilemma quite neatly!

well, thanks all for input

expected far more judgey judging. am mildly disappointed

after the pear and a half he devoured yesterday i offered banana today (they've changed their minmds about the whole stick-with-one-food-for-3-days thing if no history of allergies)

he ate a whole one