Apparently babies should be fed simple food and new stuff added slowly over period of weeks/months....

[Thankyouandgoodnight]

ie no spices / complicated meals and that it's related to babies immature guts, their immune system and also sleep patterns. Is this right - info given by a paediatrician. Can anyone point me in the direction of any decent counter info? Apparently there's a relationship between babies that don't sleep for longer than 2 hours at a time and gut immaturity etc. I was also told today by someone else that sleep is very important for your gut and your immune systemIs, so it does seem to be common knowledge.
Where does this leave BLW?

What age was he recommending weaning to start?

At six months their guts are ready for food. Probably not for a vindaloo (mine aren't at 27!), but healthy unprocessed family food is fine at this age.

If he means that you need to start slowly at 4 months he is talking crap.

As far as I know that used to be the advice but that was when babies were regularly weaned at 4 months. My baby was weaned at 6 months, ate everything under the sun (obviously I didn't feed him curry) and he sleeps fine.

Weaning at 6 months but althought they are mature enough to take food then, they are not mature enough to handle spices / complicated foods......

I'd lay off the oysters for a while. Babies have terrible trouble opening 'em.

Did he define a 'complicated food'?

Nothing too spicy is just common sense really, though there's nothing wrong with adding mild spices to flavour food. They should be getting used to a family diet after 6 months.

Maybe best to ignore this suggestion though!

At 6 months they can handle mild spices/garlic/ginger etc. especially if you've been breastfeeding and eating lots of curries or spicy food anyway. The only real no nos are salt and artificial flavourings such as msg., everything else is fine in moderation.

Many spices have digestive/lenitive/curative properties so it seems counterintuitive that they should be avoid for reasons relating to the immune system.

There's a story on Aitch's blog where someone was told something similar by a foreign HV (can't remember where she was from) so she asked the HV how the wean in her country "Curry"!

A breastfed baby will have had tastes of everything the mother eats (Tink loved curry from before birth! - I had regular scans and a taste for curry) so I don't see how that advice can work.

So what's the connection between sleep and the immune system? Cos my baby boy wakes up 2-6 times a night and he's fit as a flea!
And what does sleep have to do with weaning?

sounds like quite outdated (and illogical) advice re tastes.