Hv advised to wean early, but want to BLW.

[no1putsbabyinthecorner]

My ds is 21 weeks and I am not convinced he is ready to wean.
My HV says I should start as he is not gaining enough weight and dropping down the percentile chart.
I have a dd (nearly 2) but she never saw a health visitor, so I had no idea if she was gaining 'appropriatley' I went on instinct and she is/was fine.

However for some reason I am doubting myself, as hv said my BM must be 'poor' quality and I should feed him.

Firstly I felt hurt and insulted by the comment of my BM being shite poor quality, secondly my ds can't even sit up unaided yet, never mind pick up food and find his mouth accuratley. (suprised HV didn't check this first tbh)
I really wanted to wait till 6 months and blw.

I am under the impression if my ds really is hungry then surely there are more calories in BM than in the tiny amounts of food I would be offering him.
I have offered the smallest amount of food, although he seemed to enjoy the expereince IYKWIM, he still has the tongue thrust reflex and pushes it back out.
It doesnt seem natural to just keep trying to shovel it in.
So what advice would you give if he isnt gaining enough weight with BM.
Sorry for waffling
TIA

am watching this with interest too No1. DS2 was about 95th on the scale port&lemon has given the link to but now is just about 50th. he is BF too but seems so hungry i have been thinking about weaning.

I personally avoid HV like the plague but DS2 has regular checks/weigh-ins due to his heart problem

THERE ARE MORE CALORIES IN MILK THAN FOOD AT THESE EARLY STAGES

go an see your doc or another hv.

some babies do suffer on breastmilk alone (for whatever reason) and it would be best to check woudn't it?

21 weeks isn't very early - it's really not very long ago that the official advice was 16 weeks, and at that age they do spit some out - it doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing it.

I thought it was an accepted fact that bf babies do fluctuate around on the centile charts more than ff babies? (Mind you I also thought it was an accepted fact that bm was not poor quality unless you are starving - and even then it would still be better than the food on offer!)

This kind of thing makes me really cross as I had my first child very young and my hv had me weaning at 8 weeks because of gaining weight too fast.

Knowing what I know now I feel that I should have knocked her block off complained about her. However, several years on, it looks like we may have got away with it and not done any real lasting damage - thank goodness - as I don't know what I would do if I was responsible for my childs health issues thanks to ill-informed advice from a health "professional".

Personally, I would put in a complaint and ask for a different HV (or steer clear, my views are with mothersmilk on the weighing babies thing).

Your HV is talking absolute shite, and needs retraining. Put in a formal complaint about her incorrect and unsupportive advice and carry on bf. If you just ignore her and say nothing she'll give the same crap advice to others who may not have MN or the confidence to ignore her. HV's like this make me really

Definitely agree that you should complain so she doesn't pass on this advice to other mummies. You obviously know your baby well and if you feel that he is happy and content and he is gaining weight (regardless of what silly line he is following) then stick with what you are doing. New charts are coming out in March so fewer bf babies will be diagnosed as underweight or slow gaining - what you are describing is a perfectly normal growth pattern for a bf baby. Like you say, if he is unable to sit up and he still has his tongue reflux then he isn't ready for solids yet AND, as others have said, he wouldn't be getting any extra calories from food anyway - bm has far more! You're doing a great job - keep it up and ignore that silly woman!

fgs, none of you have seen this woman or this baby and yet you all know better than a health professional.

It's possible the hv is wrong, but don't you think it's just a tad irresponsible to simply ignore her advice?

Have yuo actually read what No1 has written re where he is on percentile chart Senora?

An ageing labrador would give better advice than this 'prfessional'

My HV told me to wean DD (mix fed) at 4mths as she was only putting on 4oz per week. She had dropped from 50th to about 20th percentile but was as happy and healthy as you can get. Luckily, I ignored her crap advice and waited until 25 weeks when DD was ready.

Senora -- the HV has based her advice on the fact that he's dropped from just over 75th centile to under 50th.

If you plot his weight on the correct chart, he hasn't dropped. And that's leaving aside anything else.

SenoraP, the op also has said she thinks her baby is happy and healthy. She hasn't written in and said ' my baby is really miserable and skinny and loosing weight"
(That would have been my op with dc no6)

But why did you go to get your baby weighed?

Is it because underneath it all you are worried about something?

If not - then just don't go back! Well babies don't need weighing.

I have got my babies weighed out of curiosity, something to have marked in their books for when they are older and have their own kids.

My first was weighed every 5 mins of course because I was clueless ad paranoid as most first timers are!

SP - you are absolutely correct in saying nobody here has seen this baby but based upon what the OP has said, the HV's advice here is incorrect. Most HVs have NOT been educated to interpret growth charts properly and have also not been updated when new charts are introduced. I was trained to use them as I only qualified in 2002 AND I have kept myself up to date about them.

It is worth all BF Mums knowing that until 2006 growth charts were based on children with mixed feeding patterns, predominantly bottle fed (and these are the charts still being used in many child health records), but evidence from various studies shows that exclusively breastfed infants gain weight differently.

The concern with this is that misinterpretation of growth charts could lead to breastfed babies being given unnecessary supplements of formula. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this is happening - the OP is just ONE Mum being given erroneous advice - multiply that by the number of Mums her HV sees and then multiply again for all the HVs giving out such poor advice throughout the UK - no wonder our breastfeeding rates are so poor.

This is why WHO have developed new charts, which the Department of Health has recently recommended be used for all children from 2 weeks to 2 years. These should be launched by early 2009.

After these charts are adopted it is to be hoped that fewer babies will be defined as underweight and then threads like this one will become a rarity on MN (JP lives in hope ).

Haven't read whole thread but just wanted to say my DS gained just 6oz in five weeks between 17 and 22 weeks (fully BF). He dropped from 9th to bottom of chart. But HV didn't tell me to wean. I only weaned when he started demanding BFs every hour!

As long as your LO is not losing weight then I would ignore you HV. And forget the growth charts! Trust your instincts.

thanks for all advice.

I agree with the others... it seems there's much confusion about these growth charts. My breastfed DS (now 25 weeks) went from the 75th to the 50th percentile when he was about 3 months, at which point he was going through a kind of nursing-strike phase, being distracted during feeding etc. My health visitor was also a bit alarmed (although I now think she shouldn't have been; he was completely healthy in all other ways) & gave me the advice to top-up. I did top-up with expressed milk for a while, but that didn't make any difference at all, in fact, it certainly didn't help the nursing strike. What made a difference was gradually structuring DS's feeds better (after 4 months), i.e. putting him on a bit of a routine, so he started eating bigger feeds, after which point he again went up to the 75th percentile (where he is now). The thing is though, I now really believe that falling from the 75th to the 50th percentile is not a big deal at all, it happens all the time (esp. with breastfed babies) and as JollyPirate says, with the new charts maybe health visitors will stop giving this kind of advice.