HV advised giving DS, 4.5 months, baby rice. She's a loon, right??

[WindUpBird]

He's 20 weeks, breastfed, born on the 75th centile, steadily dropped to 50th, now dropping slightly more. He's 98th centile for height. For the past 6 weeks he has been waking AT LEAST 3 times a night, which I'm finding a real problem, but don't take it as a sign he needs baby rice!! I quote: 'I know the WHO/NHS state waiting for 6 months, but I, as a children's nurse and health visitor think that if you wait till 6 months his weight will drop even more and he won't thrive.'
Are there any instances where it's necessary to start weaning onto solids earlier than the recommended 6 months??
BTW, I also have a 2 year-old who perfectly happily waited till she was 6 mths old so she could take the BLW route.
Will also post this on the breast/bottle-feeding board.

great stuff neenz!

you can plonk some steamed carrot sticks in front of them around 26 weeks and see what happens, if they are sitting , lost tongue thrust reflex etc.. they give it a whirl nearer to the time and see what happens

milk will remain their primary source of nutrition for the first year anyway..

BLW is great !

How do you know when they have lost the tongue thrust reflex?

lol, when you put something in their mouth and it doesn't come straight back at you!

Good grief - I can't believe you're all getting so het up over this. She's not advocating stuffing him full of shepherd's pie or something - just a bit of baby rice......at 20 weeks.........for a baby who is clearly losing weight atm

Not a loon at all IMHO. Both my babies started on baby rice at 20 weeks, veggies and fruit soon after, and protein after 26 weeks. Both are doing very nicely!

I find it amazing the number of people who follow "the rules" (whatever they may be at a particular time) without thinking things through for themselves and looking at their own baby rather than the "text book" baby the guidelines are supposedly aimed at.

What do you put in your baby's mouth to test the tongue thrust reflex if you can;t give food until they lose it LOL??!!!

Am I being thick??

my dds are 8&5 yrs now. Both started on solids at 5months cos they were waking, unsettle-able, reluctant to take further milk etc etc. Tried a very small amount of baby rice and hey presto, all problems solved! Very gradually increased amounts and introduced more variety of purees over space of 6weks (ish - from memory)

Basically, go with your gut feeling and take everything slow.
Advice was different when mine were babies and theres nowt wrong with em now!

G&T - but how will rice help a baby put on weight?

It is bulky but low calorie. It will fill the baby's tummy, causing him to feed less often, so a drop in calorie intake. And then the mother's milk supply may start to drop as the baby is taking less feeds and not stimulating production.

MakemineaGandT and hairymcclary - I'm with you on this, you'd think baby rice was some sort of killer food.

i am advocating looking at your own bab, to see if tehy are showing the physical signs of weaning.. and giving food around 26 weeks...

but guidelines are given on the back of research, not made up to annoy parents

baby rice is not a killer food

but it can be fairly pointless

To anyone feeling "got at" here.

Babyrice is a fairly gentle food BUT (and a big but is necessary here) it will NOT help windupbirds DS put on weight - it's less calorific than milk - end of story. Weaning is NOT the answer here.
I don't think from what the OP has said - that her baby is NOT putting on weight, rather that he is not putting on weight in line with one growth line or another. Sometimes this can be an issue (especially with babies who are unwell in some way), but for normal healthy babies it is rarely an issue and all that needs to be done is to check the baby is having adequate milk. This can be done in a variety of ways and NOT just by looking at the growth lines - are there lots of wet and dirty nappies? etc.

As a HV myself I often get into angry frustration with HVs who tell the mother of a healthy shiny happy baby to start weaning just because that baby is not following the growth line he was on between birth and 10 weeks. Look at the baby, ask the Mum about feeding - check that the baby is having adequate intake, ask if the baby has been unwell (which may affect growth temporarily) and if all is well then leave Mum and baby to continue feeding.

I'll say again that Baby rice will probably do no harm BUT will not help the OP's baby gain weight.

anarchy - although baby rice is low calorie IMO every baby who has it does not drop the amount of breast milk they are having. If that were so every baby who had baby rice (or any solids) at for example 5 months would lose weight when they start solids and I doubt if that's the case.

Treat every baby as an individual and use the "guidelines" as a "guide".

Ok, I am not calling baby rice a 'killer food'! I know its nice and runny and easily digested etc.

I'm just saying that

a) It is generally unecessary, as a baby who is ready for solids doesn't need wallpaper pastey mush - they can have proper finger food.

b) It is not a panacea for poor/slow weight gain. It is less calorific than milk, so how can it help to boost a babies calorie intake, which is surely what you'd wish to do in that situation?

genuine question:

Why is a baby rice feed less calorific than milk since it is made up with milk and should be preceded and followed by a milk feed?

Because they take less milk with it slim22.
It should be followed/preceded by a feed but even then it can affect the latter feed as it will sit in their stomach waiting to digest and possibly push back their next feed.
Kind of like mixing flour with milk or drinking milk. You could drink a lot more than eat the mushy stuff.

gagarin - the risk with baby rice is not that it is poison, or a killer food, just that it is not an especially effective way of getting more calories into a baby. Hope this thread has explained to you why this is.

For most healthy, well growing babies this doesn't matter. They continue to gain weight normally, and there' no problem. Rice can be an easy way of helping a baby get used to different tastes because it is so bland itself, and it takes on fruit and veg flavours easily. Texture wise, it does not do much to extend a baby's range, of course, but it's simple to prepare and it's cheap. So it's easy to see why it remains popular.

But as a device for addressing weight, it's very poor, and there are many other, easy, cheap, tasty ways to start a baby on solids - even easier as with BLW the baby does the self-feeding thing!

If a baby under six months needs more food to remain growing well, the first option should be to increase his milk intke - if bf, more bfs, if ff, larger or more freq bottles.

If the baby refuses these, it's sensible to wonder if he really needs the extra food at that time.

Have always wondered what the point of baby rice is (I haven't weaned my babies yet so I am a complete novice). It must be so heavily processed to get it to that state. Surely better to try sweet potato or something like that? Would that be more calorific than breast milk (if the OP did indeed want to wean now).

thx VS.
I do agree it interferes with milk feeds which is all they need at 4 months really.
From my experience early weaning does not stop night waking.Especially in BF babies.

On the merits of baby rice porridge however, I have to say am somewhat surprised that it is quasi vilified.
Here in Asia we are well into several millennia of babies weaned on rice porridge.
In Italy babies thrive on very runny risotto (or baby pasta cooked in milk).
Porridge made of cereals or starch root vegetables is also the favored staple in Africa and south america.

Are we too posh for it in the west?
If any of you recently saw the thread on "artisan"food, that's what the discussions on BLW make me think of.

Don't get me wrong, I think BLW is the way to go because it's just so much easier, but can't really understand the fuss about avoiding yummy purees/soups/porridge etc...

Hi everyone, lots of posts for me to come back to thank you! I hadn't meant to get into a weaning 'discussion' here or meant to offend anyone either - I hope I haven't!
Neenztwinz - I am so envious of your unbroken nights' sleep!!! What I would do for just a once a night waking!
In my very limited experience, night waking does not disappear with weaning (DD at 2.5 YEARS still wakes up at night!). So for me, that wouldn't be a reason to start. BLW really worked well for DD so I was just hoping to do the same again (especially as I am at the lazy end of the scale of mothering). I just felt that the HV wasn't really listening to me. It is a problem for me that DS wakes up so much and that's what I wanted to discuss with her. I was just surprised that her one and only suggestion was to give him baby rice, and then to follow this with saying that if I waited till 6 months I was almost putting his health at risk made me cross with her, then worried too! fedupandisolated - think my HV needs to be a little more like you in her approach!
And yes, it's not that DS has actually lost any weight, just that he is gaining less and less as the weeks go by and I feel like I am trying to feed him all the time with no big results for my efforts (and sleep deprivation).
slim22 that's really interesting that other cultures use porridge/mush to wean their babies. I've always wondered how our methods compare to other countries but never known how to find out. Where in Asia are you? I used to live in China which was fab.

Hi
I'm in singapore. They are obsessed with food here.
Ethnic chinese do "congee" or rice poridge which you must be familiar with
Ethnic Indians do rice/dhal/yogurt
Ethnic malays do "nasi lemak" litterally fatty rice (mushy steamed rice cooked in cocnut fatty milk) with some fish.
Western expats do organic baby jars or organic veg specially flown from Australia/NZ (only half joking)

I meant [GRIN] as in of course

Slim, is the rice they use highly processed or in a more natural state? I think rice is a good food but not when it has been stripped of all its goodness which our baby rice surely has.

it's just plain rice. The economical sort you buy in 10kg bags. definitely not the organic type at $10 for a 250g pack.

neenz there is no rule you have to use baby rice, if you are doing baby led weaning, then you can introduce soemthing like a chunk of sweet potato first.

weaning is a process, there is no hurry to get a baby who lets face it, is still only a few months old, onto 3 meals a day in a set time...

it is about enjoying tastes and textures and then gradually getting into meal times and dropping milk feeds

Thanks Lulumama... my DD woke at 4am this morning for a feed - the first time in 8 weeks that my twins have not slept through the night! But after reading up on weaning I am definitely going to wait until 26 weeks (they are 21 weeks now) even if they both start waking [please no].