5 months today & feeding all night - should I start/wait to wean?

[monkeysmama]

I am a first time mum and am totally confused by all this weaning information!

My dd is 5 months today and apart from some calpol & dentinox has only ever had my breast milk. I intend to keep on breast feeding until at least 8 months, probably a year.

However, everyone we know is suggesting we start weaning dd. My plan was to wait until 6 months but now I am not sure what to do.

The main reason "everyone"'s suggesting we wean her is that she slept through from a few weeks until about 6 weeks ago and now wakes up from 2am - 7am every hour for food. She goes down to bed at 8 and has a long feed just before, I have tried dream feeding her around 1130 when we go to bed but it makes no difference - she'll eat a boob full of milk then wake again and cry until I feed her at 2am. Basically she seems to always be hungry. There is no problem with my milk supply but it is getting a bit draining. I can keep going for another month but wonder why some baby rice mixed with my milk wouldn't be good?

I spoke to my HV yesterday and she seemed shocked we haven't started weaning her already (though this is the same HV that suggested I start at just 4 months) & said "give her some banana and see how well she'll sleep" which I didn't find that helpful.

So - a longish post but I would really, really appreciate some helpful advice. Dp has already started buying plastic spoons!

MM

My DD is just 5 months and has been avidly watching all of us every time we eat for a few weeks.

She has just started to cry and get angry when she sees us eating and she doesn't get to try any, so the last couple of days i have been giving her a bit of baby rice as well as breastfeeding. She seems much more settled during the day, much less frustrated!

I haven't noticed any difference in her sleeping but then i wasn't doing it for that reason, I started because she was showing all the signs of readiness for weaning which my DS showed later, at about 6 months.

So go with what you think is right - if you're unsure then don't start yet - your baby will let you know when they're ready and a few more weeks of breastmilk will hardly do any harm!

HTH and Congratulations on breastfeeding all this time!

Yeah I knew about citrus and strawberries etc SB/lulumama, so what about the normal first foods eg banana, apple, parsnip, sweet potato? I suppose it is also to do with the gut producing the right enzymes or are they produced when the food hits the stomach?

The reason it isn't advised to wean until around 6 months is due to the fact that there are holes in the digesive tract that don't close til then. They are there to allow the relatively big imunoglobulin (SP?) molecules to be absorbed.
At around 6 months the baby starts to produce more of their own immunity so the holes close up and it becomes safe to give them solids.

Doodleboo, one of the advantages of BLW is that they experiment by putting food in their mouths but usually can't swallow it before 6 months-ish. The tongue thrust stops this hence if you want to get anything down them at an earlier age you have to spoon it in. Just showing an interest doesn't mean they are ready. - that isn't meant to sound bossy/patronising btw.

Wisknit i didn't know that
about the digestive tract - very interesting.

I mainly decided she was ready for a bit of solid food because she has taken and eaten a whole baby biscuit by herself, so i took that as a sign. I've never seen a baby so aggressive over biscuits (takes after me maybe )

Since reading the advice about gluten on here though i think i'll stick to the baby rice for now, i'm in no rush to wean her and i can't afford for her to grow out of all her clothes just yet!

OP - I held out weaning my DC2 until 6 months and then started BLW (combined with the odd puree). From about 5 months she was quite a big baby - suddenly shot up the graphs, and did start waking more often. When I started the weaning she ate well, and continued to BF a lot, but it was at this point that her night waking increased. Basically, what I am saying is that (in my experience) night waking is not solely linked to hunger, but can just be an age/teething thing.

OP - I held out weaning my DC2 until 6 months and then started BLW (combined with the odd puree). From about 5 months she was quite a big baby - suddenly shot up the graphs, and did start waking more often. When I started the weaning she ate well, and continued to BF a lot, but it was at this point that her night waking increased. Basically, what I am saying is that (in my experience) night waking is not solely linked to hunger, but can just be an age/teething thing.

banana and mango should be avoided too i heard for the same reason of being quite allergenic.

Hi Monkeysmama,
My friend's dd grabbed her cheese sandwich at around 6 months and ate it all. Presumably she was ready! I tried to wean ds1 at 6 months but he was having none of it till over 7 months. ds2 loved soft stuff from 6 months, but couldn't swallow even the tiniest lump till nearly one (no blw for him!)...just different children...Gut maturity is not something I can judge by looking so ds1 and 2 had to wait till 6 months. In fact, once I'd weaned ds1 and realised what a total PITA it was compared with bfing, I would happily have waited longer with ds2...it didn't affect sleep anyway, ds1 was rubbish until his teeth were all through and ds2 is (touching lots of wood) much better...

my friend showed me today a list of things she was told to avoid until 26 weeks because they are quite allergenic. (weaning early cos her dd is FTT and won't take milk so they are going to try sneaking it into fruit and veg purees) i can see why it is much easier to wait - i can't actually see a fat lot of what they can give her.

nuts, fish (both normal fish and shellfish), meat, gluten, rice, eggs, milk, cheese, apples, pears, plums, cherries, nectarines, peaches, mangoes, melons, bananas, kiwis, raspberries, grapes, strawberries, citrus fruits, tomatoes, mushrooms, peas any type of bean and peppers.

maybe it's not food at all. maybe she wakes in the night cos she's cold. then once she's awake she's hungry, so she'll have a feed. That's what happened with DS and once he was warmer the night waking mostly stopped. I doubt a teeny bit of baby rice will make a difference.

It's not just the open gut that is a problem before 6 months. Although that is a large part of it.

The pancreas isn't ready yet, and many different enzymes are missing to aid proper digestion. Also things like egg (foreign proteins) can fool the body into thinking that they are intruders and need to be fought off, causing life long allergies.

Plus if you spoon feed a baby before they can physically refuse food, i.e bat away the spoon and move their head away, then they are at a higher chance of being overweight as it is easy to overfeed. Then on top of that before 6 months they don't yet know how to properly regulate food intake, with milk this isn't really a problem but once they start on solids it can be a huge issue, causing obesity in later life.

It'll all be linked and referenced on my blogwww.wait2wean.blogspot.com tomorrow or tuesday.

Well, I weaned both mine at 16 weeks, but that was the guidance at the time. I don't think it made any difference to their sleeping at all though. I only gave pureed apple, carrot, pear to begin with, and introduced each new food slowly - about every 3 days. (No egg, fish, gluten before 6 months).

However, I found that around 5 months they really were hungrier for food, and were happy to try a wider variety of fruit and vegetables with a little chicken.

Thanks for all the responses.

I tried putting the heating up a bit last night before she went to bed and she seemed happier even though she still woke up 4 times.

I feel much more informed now and I've decided to stick to my original plan and to wait and start weaning her after 6 months.

Thanks again,
MM

this is probably the wrong place to post thIis and I'm just off to bed, but I wonder what the implications of 6 month weaning is for a lot of mothers breastfeeding twins. I weaned my twins (normal weights)at 18 weeks on advice of HV (one had bad reflux which is often relieved on introduction of solids). This was six years ago. Breastfeeding was such a uphill struggle until I weaned them and suddenly it was a joy, and I continued bfdng plentifully until they was two years old. One slept well after weaning, the other continued his erratic nightwaking. Neither had any allergies, or any ailments. I wonder if I would have managed to keep feeding them just milk without introducing lots of bottles. I think many mothers of twins can hardly manage to get through the 3 month growth spurt by demand feeding. I feel very sorry for all those exhausted twin mothers desperately trying to catch up for six months under new guidelines. Maybe there are singleton mothers who will give up breastfeeding for exactly the same reasons.

MM - my DD is 7 months old. I weaned at 6 months (breastfed for 6 months) and it had no effect on her frequent night wakings!

I agree that at six months the nightwakings definitely increased ie: it was something other than food intake, but possibly teething new experiences development etc. However, I did notice that at 20 weeks a baby given babyrice slept right through after waking several times a night in the weeks prior to that. That was bliss. I was fine with the baby waking in the night before 20 weeks and I just fed him (this was my first baby). My milk supply increased accordingly. However it seems certain that in order to provide extra nutrition up to six months you have to accept that breastfed babies need to be fed in the night. Perhaps some of the early 18-20 wk weaners (me included) had a problem with that or we felt judged by others for not solving the problem. It is a social issue. If we didn't feel we were wrong to be tired we wouldn't wean early - ie: something to do with good and bad management. Does anyone else have this opinion? Perhaps we should be allowed to say I'm permanently tired because I've been feeding all night and I'm doing to right thing to wait. We shouldn't expect mothers of 6 month old babies to rush around being superwomen.