HV advise on weaning...what does everyone think?

[hollyboosmum]

My dd is coming up to 5 months old and is relly interested in food and is feeding every 2 hours on Milk and taking a lot. SHe has started to wake in the night and i felt she needed something more.
I spoke to the health visitor about this and got the following answer. She stated under no circumstances that weaning should begin before 4 months but after that you are ok to start on simple foods. She also said that the research that has been done (which made them move the guidelines to 6 months) was based on children in third world countries and that it is better for them to have milk for 6 months but not always the case for western babies. She also thought it was a lot to ask of a 6 month old baby to go through wening very quickly...is soft stuff to lumpy in the space of weeks whereas before when you started them at 4 months they got adjusted to the food better and this resulted in less faddy eaters as the children get older..... just wondered what peoples thoughts on this were?

right - off to bed as ds2 definately rooting around up there. Also i dont follow 'all' guidelines as i co-sleep, but i dont drink, smoke, sleep particularly deeply, use duvet etc

night Awen!

here's to all us co-sleepers!

Night ! My boy is already warmimg my bed. Bollocks to weaning - cheers to co-sleeping !

Haven't read whole thread but - OP - I remember my HV saying similar and that the WHO advice about waiting til 6 months was due to the need for sterilization of feeding equipment before then, which would be difficult in a developing country. Was difficult enough in my own kitchen actually - as for the pureed bleeding sweed business, think I'd definately wait and do BLW if I had another DC.
Agree with harpo though- my DS is only 2.5 and I did exactly as was recommended at the time. Could have saved myself many stressful sessions with the food processor. Luckily he absolutely refused to be spoonfed from 9 months on so went to real food then.

from the WHO background document on the child growth standards, which are based on children "fed after the first six months according to guidelines for complementary feeding recommended in the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding."

"The Strategy states that breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants. It recommends that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health. Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, they should receive adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues up to two years or beyond."

Are the new standards just for children in developing countries?

The new WHO Child Growth Standards are global and for all children. They are intended to monitor the growth of every child worldwide, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status and type of feeding.
Therefore, the standards are meant for use in both developing and developed countries.

The WHO are very clear - the strategy is NOTHING to do with third world countries. Any HV who tells you this is making things up to try to support their own advice.

There are some risks with weaning at 4 or 5 months. This doesn't mean the world will come crashing down and every child weaned early will have severe health problems.

Course not!

But some babies weaned early will have health problems because they were weaned early.

I respect everyone's rights to feed how and when they like - however, I am amazed that anyone thinks that cooking food for their babies is a lot of faff. I made 6 pots of sweet potato last night in literally 10 minutes. I was on my own (dh away), with a 4 month old and a toddler, but STILL managed to do this! I did 8 pots of carrot a week ago in about 5 minutes and my dh did an apple (2 pots) yesterday. That's food enough for her for about 2 weeks, although I do enjoy trying her with different flavours so will probably do some more in the next few days.

it is a faff if the alternative is not to do it at all. and not to have to bother with spoon-feeding etc.

you also have to think - what have we tried? what shall we do next? when is the next meal due? Really bfing on demand is far far easier

also we do not have a freezer and I was back at work by 6 months so it WAS a faff.

FWIW - as a part time HV myself (who used BLW with her DS) the information coming from the various advisors is as clear as mud - even the DOH says six months but also adds "not before 20 weeks". With gudence like that it isn't surprising that most HVs are a tad confused. I am obviously not including the idiot ones who suggest it at 16 weeks.

they are bad, aren't they, fedup? i was lookingn for them the other day and couldn't find them, would you know where i might find a link? ta.

I'm coming in a little late to this debate, but I weaned my 6 year old DS at 4 months as that was the guidlines given to me by my then HV (although if I'd been told about the WHO recommendations I would've seen differently). with my now 10 mo old DD, I caved due to HV pressure and tried her with a few purees at 19 weeks (she was needing more milk, waking at night etc etc). This lasted two days and she rejected all of it. I satisfied myself through reading lots on here and on links to WHO etc that this was normal behaviour and not an indication that she needed solid food. I then held off until she was about 23 weeks when she started helping herself to my food and was managing to eat it by herself.

the whole "the guidleines used to be 4 months" argument should be dead in the water as far as any mum of 4mo old baies now is concerned. New research, better research happens all the time; it's called progress, and imo we should go with the newer, better researched guidleines. Would anyone go against the "back to sleep" advice for instance? probably not. there really shouldn't be any difference with this.

OK, it's not life threatening per se to wean early, but as a baby who was weaned onto rusks at 10 weeks, now suffering from coeliac disease which was undiagnosed till I was 35, with untold gut damage that has increased my risk of getting non-hodgkins lymphoma, osteoporosis and bowel cancer, I might disagree with that.

But surely you could extend that agruement to say cooking for your children altogether is too much of a faff so why bother? Hey, we'll just have takeaways again tonight kids! Joking aside, I did say I respect your choice so I hope you respect mine. I don't think it's a faff, either the making or the feeding part, I actually quite enjoy it. And I wouldn't want to put first time mums off weaning if they thought it was going to be terribly time-consuming.

I realise that my views go against MN-trend, but in the RL that I lead weaning wth purees at this sort of age is actually very normal! And I will re-iterate, this is what I did with my dd1 and she is one of the least picky eaters I know now.

you could extend it, but it wouldn't actually make any sense.

no one is being disrespectful of your choice, you have every right to wean exactly how you want to. but you're saying is that it isn't a faff, and i disagree with you in the respect that by DEFINITION it is more of a faff than just giving the child milk and then later giving them what you and dh are having. and spoon feeding is more of a faff than letting them feed themselves. (course there's probably more cleaning up to do with self-feeding if you're doing it properly ).

i'm not saying that one way is inherently better than the other, but one takes more thought and requires more one-to-one care from a hungry mother. to extend that to 'well why have kids in the first place if you don't want to do that?' is a bit silly imo.

Why would not wanting to faff around making up purees etc equate to feeding them takeaways when older? As a family we east very healthily with well balanced home made food.

I am going the BLW route because it makes sense, it feels natural and right. I enjoyed masking up purees etc for ds1 but tbh it was like playing dolls. With ds2 today for example (ok he is only 15 weeks tomorrow) I took him out for whole day with ds1, bfed him 3 times whilst out, sat on benches, on the grass etc. We had a lovely day and i didnt need to heat up food. I am looking forward to when we all go out and ds2 is snacking on fresh fruit pieces, rice cakes etc. BLW does not equate to junk food, it just has the perk of far less faffing/coaxing/stress.

not having a go clara btw, just saying what i think. xx

Sorry to hijack - is the advice on 6 months from the World Health Organisation?

kekouan - the advice is from the UK Dept of Health. Here's the link to the latest weaning leaflet (Jan 2008) on the DOH website
tinyurl.com/2wu936

It's a lot clearer than the previous leaflet.

I'm glad they've changed the picture on the front, previous one had a woman with a weird expression on her face sticking a spoon into a baby's mouth. The new picture has the baby putting his own spoon in.

definitely a better and clearer leaflet than the old one.

I still feel snobbish about the reclining high chair on pg 3. Only babies who can't sit up unaided need a reclining high chair, so should not be weaned. What an ugly, work creating, unnecessary work creating piece of furniture.

yeah, work creating needed to be mentioned twice.

Much better leaflet from the DOH now - am relieved to see that the latest one no longer says "not before 20 weeks".