Too late to BLW?

[Jonut]

DD3 is 5months old and seems incredibly unsatisfied with milk. She feeds literally ALL the time (and I mean literally, I've BF'd 2 hungry DD's on demand and she never seems to have had enough!) She also wakes around 5 times a night so I decided to try and start feeding her a small amount of baby rice every morning. I have only done this twice and have just come accross BLW on here. Is it possible to carry on giving her the baby rice every morning and then introduce BLW when she gets to 6 months?

Bumping for you.

TBH I can't imagine that that amount of babyrice in the morning would make that much difference to amount of BFs but that's your choice!

By all means switch to BLW when your DD can feed herself (sitting up, etc), the only thing I would think about would be if your DD is used to getting a quantity of solid food and then you switch to BLW, the quantities will inevitably drop which might upset and frustrate her? There might be others around who have done this who could help you more, I just did BLW from 6 months.

you could do what I did and give puree alongside finger foods but that wouldnt be called BLW that would just be 'giving finger foods along with purees'

TBH there are far fewer calories in almost any food than in milk so a few spoons of baby rice aren't really going to do anything for her hunger.

Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that weaning doesn't actually make any difference to sleep and some babies sleep is actually more disturbed when they start weaning.(sorry).

It's definitely not too late for BLW, you can just start it at 6 months as usual. By all means keep giving her the baby rice if you want to and it seems to be helping, but don't expect much change miracles sleep/hunger wise.

Sorry to be such a doom munger

You could try BLW now? My ds is 26 weeks tomorrow but I started giving him bits and pieces last week. He was def very ready and is enjoying food! The 6mths is a guideline - some babies will be ready slightly before, and some after. But I agree that I don't think it will make much difference to sleeping...

Oh good point Umlellala, I let my DD have food to play with and explore from about 23 weeks. She loved it.

the major thing to wait for is the sitting up unaided, if I had a DC of 5 months and they could do that, I'd probably start offering foods.

Just to confuse matters re sitting up unaided - my dd is nearly 9 months and is not sitting up unaided yet, but she sits up very well and very straight with a wee bit of propping. She's very strong and sometimes I think she would be sitting by now if she actually had the patience to be still for a moment!

Anyway, we do BLW and she's been wolfing down her food (most days) for a month or so now and explored the food and ate a little from when we started. I did purees for a month or so before changing to BLW at 7 months, so it's definitely not too late for you!

You can stop the baby rice and introduce finger food straight away. If she's ready she will be able to do it and if not just leave her to do it in her own time.