We're finding that the mums who wait til 6 months often have problems with weaning...

[Ceolas]

Said HV to me.

DD3 is 7 months. Eats nothing. Plays with (and sometimes licks or chews) lots of foods. Spits anything on a spoon in your face.

Apparently it's all part of a conspiracy theory. They used to say 4 months but then lots of people started at 2 or 3. If they say 6, most people will wait a bit longer.

amen to that, bitcat!

Aitch, interesting about you thinking the guidelines will suggest weaning earlier in future. Why?

no, i think they'll suggest weaning later in future. seems to be the direction they're taking, really. at the turn of the century in the west the norm seems to have been 9-11 months, i think we're heading back there. politics has a lot to do with it, the 6 months guideline has been in place for ages, but it wasn't until recently that UK HVs started using it. why? well... we didn't have 6 months maternity leave until recently... now we have nine months, who knows?

oh, sorry, i misunderstood.

i was interested to see a seven-yer-old elephant calf having the odd suckle on tv the other day, and it occurred to me - i wonder if mammels with similar gestational periods feed their babies for a similar length of time? ie if you could specify 'a mammel with a nine month pregnancy tends to feed for x months' maybe that would be interesting to compare with our 6 month guideline for weaning.

Random thought.

I dont intend to have any more babies, so its quite interesting to see so many things changing. I do hope that bf really takes off and is taken up by most in the future as the uptake isn't very high at the moment..and some of my friends are so anti it..i really dont know why!! Its the most amazing thing and the best thing i think i have ever done for my children..the bond is great and its so natural!

sushi, you need to give your speech therapist friend a copy ofthis link

the natural age of weaning cross species comparisons.

ooops that wasn't weaning onto solids. i rarely stray onto weaning threads anymore. i so wanted to do blw with dd but she had other ideas. didn't take to solids till the grand old age of thirteen months when she hijacked some salami off my plate. salami remained her food of choice for ages.

we later found out that she is allergic to egg and dairy so the little monkey knew something was up and waited!

sounds completely baby-led to me, kiski. that first doc you linked to is a good one, imo. good attitude to finger foods.

yes aitch, but i wanted to do variety! she still won't eat my home made from scratch, mexican beans, for example. I make my own tortillas ffs! she just turns her nose up.

she eats canned baked beans though. the traitor.

Just a question since I'm not in the UK - when your health visitors talk about weaning at 6 months (or less it seems), what on earth are they talking about? Are they saying stopping milk feeds altogether and only doing solids or going from breast to formula? Do they recommend this the same for ff mums and babes?

It's just that here weaning is stopping milk feeds (either bf or ff) and having food only, so I'm getting confused

weaning here tends to mean the introduction of solid foods - so, weaning at six months would be first solids

but also sometimes used as the entire process of going from milk feeds only to full range of foods

weaning means both here, i believe, and people qualify if they mean onto foods, or off milk feeds, be it ff or bf.

they say things like, weaning from the breast or weaning onto solids, ime.

where are you, janz?

New Zealand, but maybe I get confused because I only work with women for the 6 weeks after birth, so any weaning is far, far away...

There must be some night owls up and about out there, it avo here

They recommend ff/bf for atleast a year in the UK. There isn't really an official age where you are supposed to stop though. (People have opinions on when people should stop formula/stop bf, but no government advice that suggests a particular age in same way as 6 month recommendation for solids).

Replying to the OP, not had a chance to read all the posts yet but I couldn't contain myself any longer.
The HV is talking complete poo, sadly most some of them do.
I see it from the inside (I'm a HV, but so is Gill Rapley so please don't switch off)
PLEASE PLEASE COMPLAIN TO YOUR PCT if you are given rubbish advice, that's the only way things will change. Use the official complaints proceedure, check your PCT website to get address.
I've always believed that later is better as far as weaning is concerned, and BLW is the way to go.
I've never (in 20 yrs) seen any problems from babies not having food till 6 months or later, they all seem to do much better both developmentally and health wise.
The baby food manufacturers put out misinformation (and HPs often believe them) because they need to get the babies hooked on jars as early as possible.
From what I've seen early weaning (ie before 6 months)to purees, baby jars etc can cause problems later. Babies get used to the stuff and don't want want to change, not unusual to come across 1 yr olds on 6 - 8 jars a day refusing to try anything else. The pattern is set for fussiness and a very limited diet and this can have health implication for the rest of the child's life.

And another thing..
The summary of the NICE Guidance on Maternal and Infant Nutrition was posted to all HVs and midwives last week, see excerpt below.
I wonder how many will read the full Guidance on the website

www.nice.org.uk/PH011

PCTs are expected to implement this so PLEASE complain about rubbish advice from HVs.

From NICE Guidance
....Less privileged mothers are also more likely to introduce solid foods earlier than recommended and their children are at a greater risk of both ?growth faltering? (that is, they gain weight too slowly) in infancy and obesity in later childhood (Armstrong et al. 2003).

Just been reading those links jet and it makes me furious, it really does. I wish my experience of breastfeeding had had some of those options and levels of support available. Instead I have had misinformation provided in a completely unsupportive way. When I asked for help with BF a few weeks ago - I was told to offer formula. Said I wouldn't so she gave me a card for a BF helpline. I said I wanted to talk to someone face to face, surely someone on the team was qualified t help me with BF? After weeks of being given contradictory info by multiple HV, my named HV came to see me on Friday, contradicted herself again about weaning and then said oh I forgot to tell you before you should have been taking supplements and so should DS - five drops a day. How can she forget this? DS is 17 weeks? I am trying to exclusively BF t 26 weeks, but just feel I am getting no help to do it. Sorry everyone,rant over. V interesting thread.

I love the idea of a "window of opportunity" I imagine all these 9 month old babies starving to death because they weren't weaned at the correct time and therefore wouldn't ever eat anything

Contradictory advice causes huge problems with breast feeding and weaning, its not surprising that women give up trying to get help from the NHS and turn to formula and baby food manufacturer for information, at least their advice is clear-cut and consistent (even if it's wrong). There's a place for helplines as back-up but nothing beats face-to-face support with breastfeeding. You've done a fantastic job overcoming the obstacles and keeping on breastfeeding, but it shouldn't have to be this hard.
Things have got worse over the past 2 years, HV numbers have been reduced (because we're expensive) and we've now got Skill Mix, which means there's loads of people (support workers, nursery nurses, volunteers) dispensing advice to bewildered parents, usually drawing on their own experience rather than evidence-based. Because training costs money.

strangetown, have you posted on the breast and bottlefeeding section for advice?

I love the 'window of opportunity' thing too. How many grown up have you seen who now have to liquidise their steak because they never learnt to chew?

Yes kis, the lovely people there all recommended getting someone in RL to check latch etc...

Either there are a lot of MNers round here I don't know about, or there are a lot of HVs who appear to believe in this amazing "window of opportunity" that apparently exists, because mine's another one who reckons it was my fault for exclusive bfeeding to 6m that meant ds2 didn't feel like solids until 7 and a half months. Big deal. Delay the faff of weaning by another 6w? Bonus, I say!

Well, speaking personally and thus purely anecdotally - the longer I have left it, the harder it has been to wean and the child weaned earliest has the broadest palate of the three and is the most willing to try anything new...three boys, same parents, same environment, same ridiculous mother who makes everything from scratch for them - only variation has been the age at which they have been weaned. Same has been true of a friend of mine who also has three boys and has left it later each time and it has been much harder each time. If we have another I would definitely go with earlier rather than later.

Should add that the HVs at my practice are very encouraging & supportive of bf and also encourage delayed weaning as per most recent guidelines. They are fab.

Im so lucky that my HV is so good and supports the NHS and WHO guidelines about the benefits of weaning at 6 months. she was very supportive and full of praise when i said i wanted to wait until 6 months, and looking back i am so glad i did. DS took to it brilliantly, the theory about missing the window is just a myth.