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Weaning

Find weaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Weaning forum. Use our child development calendar for more information.

Original poster

When to 'Up' meals?

316 replies

MrsMagooo · 12/01/2009 15:47

Hello ladies,

I should know what I'm doing as I have a DD who's 2.6 but my brain has turned to mush lol!!

I started weaning my DS just under 2 weeks ago at just over 21 weeks, I realise this is under the 'guideline' age of 6 months but IMO he honestly did seem ready & he is loving his food.

At the moment he has breakfast (pear or apple mixed in with baby breakfast) & then lunch (so far have tried him on carrot, sweet potato, brocolli carrot & potato, apple & pear. (I make all the purees myself)

Anyway I digress - my question is when would it be ok to 'up' to 3 meals a day??

DS is enjoying his food, he eats very well & still has bottles (he also still wakes in the night to be fed hence we wondering when I can increase to 3 meals) but as I have started weaning before the guidelines I'm unsure as to when it would be ok to increase his meals.

Sorry for the waffle - any advice welcome

OP posts:
nappyaddict · 20/01/2009 13:13

I wasn't replying to you MrsM. I was posting in agreement with macaco and bubbly.

neenztwinz · 20/01/2009 13:14

LOL bubbleymummy!

Aitch, you have hit the nail on the head there, cos I don't like to think I am doing anything wrong and MN weaning board makes me feel like I am. Yes it is my problem, but not a very serious one. Your post made me laugh. You are right, I am not going onto BLW, just finger foods, I was just musing about how many people 'discover' blw at say 8mo and say 'my baby hated purees, blw was the way to go for us' when really it was just that their baby was ready for finger foods at that point. I know it is not like that for everyone, we have three or four people on our PN thread who did blw from the start and it is really working for them.

Yes you are right that blw means your baby probably won't eat much at 6mo and you have to be happy with that. I wasn't happy with that, for reasons already mentioned. So yes you could say it is a nonsense to say blw 'didn't work' cos as long as you are offering milk when your LO is hungry anything will work.

Macaco, but you can't argue with the fact that GF's routines DO help babies sleep through the night. I don't see the problem with making sure a baby's feeds all happen between the hours of 7am and 7/11pm so that they sleep from 7/11pm to 7am. But I also see no problem with getting up once in the night to feed a baby, if that is what you want (getting up 5 or 6 times is a bit much tho )

neenztwinz · 20/01/2009 13:17

Kate, have you tried an all-in-one fleecy sleepsuit type thing? I have mine in vest, babygro, sleepsuit and 2.5tog sleeping bag cos it does get very cold. It is too expensive to have the heating on all night.

Aitch · 20/01/2009 13:19

once again, neenz, can i repeat that if you have twins and are bfing them then you have only my considerable admiration. i think whether you squish their food or not is of very little importance by comparison.

(actually, though, that was very healing for me, as someone who didn't crack bfing, to feel that i was getting back to some sort of demand feeding element with blw. it felt nice, after all the disappointments of bfing, just to let her do her thing without any bits of plastic in the way, iykwim? i know from my blog that a lot of people feel that way... we failed bfers are an embattled majority. ).

but allow me a hollow laugh at "you can't argue with the fact that GF's routines DO help babies sleep through the night". you did hear about the court case, didn't you? lol.

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 13:20

Hi Neenz - when you say "at 6mo blw didn't work for us" do you mean your los didn't pick up the food or eat it or play with it? If you're doing blw, if your baby doesn't eat or even pick up the food, it doesn't mean it's not working, it just means your los aren't ready to eat yet. It's still a success IYSWIM. Whether you agree or are happy with that or not is another matter of course! But that's how blw works.

Quite a few of us have started blw later on down the line, because our los rejected the spoon, but that doesn't mean that blw is only suited to older babies. The way blw works is that if you have a 6mo and start presenting him with food, it doesn't matter if they don't eat much or anything for a couple/few months, because you're making sure they get enough milk and you agree that the milk is enough for them in the meantime and you trust your lo knows what he/she needs to eat and when he/she is ready.

With my (fingers crossed) next lo, I'm going to start blw at 6mo, but it won't be a problem for me if he/she doesn't actually eat for a couple of months. Do you see what I mean?

Aitch · 20/01/2009 13:21

oh by the way, though, i would argue that most babies are ready for finger foods at 6 months, so anyone trying purees for a few weeks (often starting before 6 months due to societal pressure) will find this. just not in the way you were meaning.

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 13:21

Sorry neenz, I see you've said all that yourself already now!

Aitch · 20/01/2009 13:26

yes, pis, fortunately neenz has acknowledged that We Were Right and She Was Wrong. ROFL.

nappyaddict · 20/01/2009 13:28

pis - how old was your DD when you started BLW?

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 13:29

I knew someone was eventually going to call me "pis"! PSML!

giantkatestacks · 20/01/2009 13:29

aitch - i wanted to ask you about that (the blw making up for the ff) but thought it might be contentious - it makes sense though - I felt the same about bf to make up for my e/csections. Maternal guilt is rubbish isnt it...

I found that my dd at 26 weeks was more than ready for it and starting wolfing down both purees and toast straight away - almost as if she had been waiting for it.

Please lets not start talking about GF, I dont think I can cope

nappyaddict · 20/01/2009 13:30

Well least no one wants to talk about Claire Verity. GF I can just about cope with in comparison.

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 13:31

She had just turned 7 months.

Aitch · 20/01/2009 13:33

the post on my blog where i blether on about how desperately i tried to bf and how sad i was when it didn't work out is by far the most popular on my site, kate. loads of people feel really separated from their child by doctors, hvs etc as they pick on them and tell them to top-up, so i think for a lot of us it's a big relief just to let our babies get on with things by themselves. it's not guilt for me, so much as a desire just to let them do things without me 'interfering' (not really interfering, but ykwim).

giantkatestacks · 20/01/2009 13:35

oh neenz (in my head I said that in a nessa from gavin and stacey type way) we do have a sleeping bag but am more worried about overheating than being cold so dont have anything fleecy over the sleepsuit.

giantkatestacks · 20/01/2009 13:38

No I understand Aitch - along with the bf goes a lot of other things as well like the cosleeping etc and its really difficult when things dont go as you want/plan.

Are you planning to bf again?it would be different if so because you have all this MN knowledge and support.

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 13:46

Nappyaddict I saw on another thread your lo didn't sit up unsupported until 8 months and didn't eat much until then..? It's interesting isn't it, they don't all sit up at 6-7 months! My dd is now 8.5 months and isn't sitting up, even though she's trying to stand up and has been "army crawling" all over the place since she was 6 months old. As I said above, we started blw at 7 months, and she explored everything and ate a little right from the start. A couple of weeks in she started eating more and eats quite a bit now.

Aitch · 20/01/2009 13:50

i must go now, but i do have a dd2 aged 20 weeks (14 corrected). bfing a preemie is another thing entirely, as i've found out. i'm in the process of giving it up now, i think i'm jsut not very good at it.

nappyaddict · 20/01/2009 13:51

Nope he didn't eat a morsel until 8 months but he got there eventually. From 6 months I offered a few pieces of food at every meal time if he was awake and not tired. I'd put bits of my dinner on his tray and eat things off his tray aswell. I'd leave him in his highchair til we'd all finished so he could see what a mealtime was all about and he was still socialising with us etc.

giantkatestacks · 20/01/2009 13:58

sorry aitch - didnt mean to...

macaco · 20/01/2009 14:00

A slight backtrack... neenz I DO believe in routine, I looooove routine, I am routine queen me! I'm not denying routine works (although I've never actually read any GF) I'm just saying that it's a common misconception that feeding/filling them up on milk ôr^solids will have any bearing on their sleep, when the evidence is that it won't. Routine all you like but don't expect food to affect sleep. It's actually quite liberating once you think about it. They'll sleep or they won't but it's nothing you are doing wrong.

I do agree with the blw making ffers feel better somehow. DS was also fully ffed by 2 months and I wouldn't say it's a guilt thing...that's far too strong a word but I feel much better doing something where he decides about quantity in a way I would argue is harder to achieve with spoon feeding.

I never quite get the sitting unsupported bit as DS only sat really well and completely unsupported at about 8-9 months but by then was blwing quite well. As I child apparently I couldn't sit at all well til I was about 10 months.

nappyaddict · 20/01/2009 14:04

macaco can I ask what you used to prop your DS up with in his highchair. I have told my friend about the grippa thing but want some back up ideas in case it doesn't work.

macaco · 20/01/2009 14:05

my sympathies aitch. DS was 4 weeks early (nothing in comparison) and I think a lot of the reason BF went tits up was to do with issues around his prematurity. I know people do bf premmies but I found it hard in a myriad different ways and the interventions necessary at the birth because of the prematurity didn't help.
I'm hoping for better luck next time and comfort myself that any BM is better than none.

neenztwinz · 20/01/2009 14:24

Macaco, yeah that makes some sense re. eat or not they will sleep if they want to - I do think teaching your baby to self-settle has a lot to do with it. I think food also has a bearing tho, we'll have a agree to disagree.

Aitch, it's OK to talk about GF now tho isn't it? (just don't mention bombs and Lebanon ). I also have wondered about ff and blw, and wonder whether some people on MN who ff feel like they are not 'in the BFing gang' so they blw so they can be in the BLW gang. I wanted to be in the blw gang too and was all set on it until I saw that they didn't eat anything that way!

Kate, I am not an expert on sids but I think by 6mo babies do pretty well at regulating their body temps so they will not overheat (or they will let you know if they do!). Cot death peaks at 2-4mo IIRC. I think if the house gets below 18C (which mine does in the night) then a sleepsuit and sleeping bag is fine. I always check the DTs' chests in the morning and they are never sweating or feel really hot or anything. I hate being cold so I always wrap them up really warm!

Is Claire Verity the one from Bringing Up Baby? lol!

pispirispis · 20/01/2009 14:32

Sorry to hear about your bf woes Aitch