If you don't follow latest research or guidelines wrt baby feeding (in particular weaning)

[hunkermunker]

Can I ask why?

Obviously all babies are individuals, yada yada - and guidelines are just that.

But what happens to make you disregard the up-to-date stuff?

(This is following on from a posting on another thread - but I wanted to make it a less personal, wider thread, rather than it be construed as an attack on one person - because I think the process of how we make decisions regarding our children is interesting).

Morethan - no one blames mothers for accepting what HVs say....that would be v. unfair. It's the HV's job to transmit good baby and health care to parents, and they get it very, very wrong. Not the mothers' fault at all

Okay - well, I think that's why people don't follow the 6mth guideline - we don't get told the same thing by the experts. That's all.

MTM, my OP was written with another poster in mind, as I said in the post, who does know what the guidelines are, but has her own theories on why it doesn't apply.

I hope she'll pitch up on this thread later

But of course there will be poorly-advised women who trust those who are meant to help them.

I know there are cases where some health professionals give very unhelpful or incorrect advice. But maybe the ones who are saying try weaning a bit earlier than 6 months are following the 'know your baby' or common sense approach.

I'm not talking about the 'give baby rice at 12 weeks' kind of advice, I mean those who understand that 6 months is not absolutely rigid and some babies will need food a bit earlier.

If we accept that some babies won't want solid food until maybe 7 or 8 months, why is it hard to accept that some will want it somewhere between 4 and 6 months?

5.5 mths for DS. Maybe I did the wrong thing, but he was dropping centiles and very unsettled. I was under pressure to give formula, so decided to try solids instead as I didn't want to compromise my milk supply.

As far as the 6th mth weaning guidelines is concerned, surely it's common sense to realise that some babies will be ready before 6 mths and some after. Unless we're talking about 'robot' babies that all develop at exactly the same rate

I think the word is used in a not quite accurate way wrt weaning

here here

VS, I thought Tink was big, she was 4lb 2oz!

"Hunkermunker considering official advice, on this subject in particular, has changed so much do you think its really safe to rely on? "

Should we not trust doctors because they keep changing how they treat someone? "Well treating the humours worked, why should we trust this new medicine?"

Meemar, I don't need instinct to know when to change, feed, cuddle or put my baby to bed. It's pretty damn obvious! Her nappy is full when she needs changing, she routes (or drags me to the kitchen these days) when she is hungry, she snuggles me when she wants a hug and rubs her eyes and gets irritable when she's tired.

Where does the "animal or reflexive or hormonally driven behaviour" come into that? Apart from leaky boobs! (Tiktok, love that post)

i weaned ds at 23 weeks because i was desperate for him to stop screaming of boredom while we ate. I was also doing BLW (he only had vegetables until after 6 months) so i thought the chances of any adverse effects were minimal. He self fed entirely, we didn't 'feed' him anything.
If I had another baby i would still try to wait until 26 weeks, and looking back, I would have put ds in a highchair with a tray.

tray i meant toy!

i think the advice has not changed that much ! i think the vast majority of parents were and are advised badly by HCPs. or follow the advice of their parents

luckily, we were all weaned at 5 months or so !

as my mum sagely said, the longer you were all milk fed, the easier it was .. it is just common sense, surely? she is very sensible, my mum!

My 'instinct' with DS was that when he was sitting up on my lap eating a pear, he was probably ready to eat it (he was 6 months).

The idea of trying to spoon food into a floppy four month old lolling in a bouncy chair felt v odd...

"How about letting babies follow their own development (and instincts?) by allowing food play before 6 months Hunkermunker, where do you stand on that?"

Well if Hunkermunker is following Gill Rapley's work (which I'm pretty sure she is) then she will know there's nothing wrong with it. Gill started at 4 months with her study, none of the babies were eating before 6 months. She said in one interview I read that we give babies the opportunity to walk from when they are newborn by putting them on the floor, but they don't do it until they are ready.

well mine was eating at 23 weeks - is that evidence of his developmental advancement?
[onlyjoking]

Tinkerbelles mum, I did say later that instinct was the wrong word and knowing your baby personally was a better expression.

I didn't mention you needed instinct to know when to change a baby's nappy - of course it's obvious

What I was talking about was if you use your baby's cues to tell the difference between a cry for food, sleep or just cuddles (because you know your baby best), then why is it so wrong to think you can tell if your baby needs something other than milk around the 4-6 month age?

People also have different ideas about what constitutes weaning I've found.
here

and here
are a couple of examples

Message withdrawn

lol at "unsettled for philosophical reasons"!

"We correct age for babies born very early (and I assume that is taken into account when it's time to wean?)"

Depends on the baby to be honest. Some will catch up very quickly with their peers - Tink was 6 months old when she was 6 months old and I would have waited but she was ready, evidenced by successfully BLW'ing from the start. Some though will lag far behind even their CGA group and some will do what they "should" be doing for their CGA. With premature babies it's impossible to predict what they will do.

"because they are only guidelines"

They're only guidlines because the government can't stop you doing anything! Guidlines say you should stop smoking when you're pregnant. We all know it's bad for the baby and many mums do it, should it be made law and have all smoking M2B thrown in jail?

I'm not totally convinced all of it is bad advice from HCPs. Around here MWs and HVs are trained by two wonderful ladies who run the BF group I used to go to (they're one each, MW/HV) who are very AP. They believe in waiting till six months and then BLW. Their passion has converted every MW and HV I've met! Unfortunately you still get mums who don't believe it and will wean sooner. Those that go to the group generally don't!

"The idea of trying to spoon food into a floppy four month old lolling in a bouncy chair felt v odd..."

Agree. My SIL is getting excited about the prospect of doing it to my 7 week old nephew, in fact she's already giving things she can dip her finger in

Knowing when a nappy smells, when a baby is rooting, when they're grumpy because they need to go down or when they're just snuggling you is not the same as knowing that a physical change has taken place inside their gut.

"That said despite sticking to fruit, vegetables and rice and her barely eating before 24/25 weeks I still worry that I did the wrong thing."

If you were allowing her to do her own thing, you did the right thing.

I appreciate that TM. But as far AFAIK the evidence is that babies guts are unable to digest anything other than milk for the first 4 months. Between 4 and 6 months solid food is not harmful but has no proven benefits over milk.

What happens if you allow food play from 4 months and the baby decides to eat it?

Do you stop them because the guidelines say no weaning until 6 months?

If baby is managing to eat it then the gut has sealed as the abilities to enable them to do it happen in the right order. So they can't pick something up, chew and swallow until that part of development has happened. I think I did answer this about allowing them to eat before 6 months, wasn't that in the post right before yours?

If they're unable to digest the food it can get whole into their system through the unsealed gut, it takes up space that milk can't (how often do you hear that mums wean early then have to add hungrier baby because baby is still hungry, that's because their stomach is smaller now!)

The change takes place sometime between 4 and 6 months but you can't see into their gut to know what's going on, before it has happened it is as bad as giving food before 4 months. At this time there is at least one growth spurt which a lot of parents I hear talking about early weaning are using as their reason to start giving food.

I knew. I can honestly say I extremely well understood the evidence (health professional myself). And I was soooooooo tired. What I should have done was got DP to help me get a few decent length sleeps (you know, like 4 hours ) and then re-evaluated. What I did do was baby-led-wean at 22-23 weeks. Did it help her sleeping? Well, her sleeping improved, but who knows why.

I comforted myself - still do sometimes - with that she was sitting independently, feeding herself, and all that. I knew the guts and immune system don't pay all that much notice to such things!

Sleep deprivation makes you do all sorts of crazy things. I did the best I could at the time. I forgive myself - I wouldn't encourage it though.