How much do I feed my 4 month old?

[lovemybabydoll]

Dear All
My baby is 4 months today and I was so very excited to start her on her first foods - cereal. I am bf but want to quit when she's 6 months.
She is so cute trying to learn how to swallow. I made her cereal twice today and she took a few mls each time. She likes it I can tell.
I am not sure how many times a day to try or is there a routine to start working to or do they just eat whenever at this age? I am bf her every 3 hours.
Any thoughts please?
Thanks...x

we will all be assuming you are posting this on here for some reasons other than being for real. if you are serious then pls expect to be completely flamed or ignored. why on earth have you started solids so early? just keep on bf every 3 hours....save the solids til she is 6 months

Trip trap!!!! Try harder next time!!

TBH she is a bit too young to need anything other than breastmilk.

You say she is 'trying to learn how to swallow' - if you wait until around 6 months, her physical development will have got to a stage where she can sit up, pick up food, transfer it to her mouth, have a bash at chewing it, and swallow some.

There's no benefit to giving her solids at this age and some evidence that it can be harmful. Her stomach may not yet be able to digest the food properly. I know its an exciting stage but if you wait until she is truly ready it will be just as fun for you both, if not more so as she will be able to move straight onto family food.

Stop giving her cereal. SHe doesn't need it./

here

defo wait for a bit longer if you are in fact genuine - my DS3 is nearly 7 months and we are still on the odd bit of banana here and there with a bowl of ready brek for breakfast. There is no hurry and she will take to it quicker if she is able to sit up in a high chair and hold her own bits of finger food. i would have waited longer with DS but he was making these amazing panting noises while watching his big brothers eat so I knew food had started to interest him.

Surely if this was a troll the baby would only be 6 weeks. But yes, agree with the rest of you.

In the past everyone weaned their baby at four months. I think that in most cases the solids just went through the gut completely undigested. It is not as devestatingly harmful as some fanatics on mumsnet seem to think.

Personally I think you are creating extra work and you would find life easier to wait longer. However you are the the mother and you know your baby best.

I suggest that the poster gets a copy of an old annabel karmel book if she wants to wean the old fashioned way. I am sure you can get it from your local library. Or if you want something a bit more prescriptive then Gina Ford does a weaning book although I have never read it.

Good on the OP for breastfeeding exclusively for four months.

Wow, thank you for the replies. In particular thank you to 'reallytired'.
I did not go into the history as to why I started her weaning and will not do so now.
All I wanted to know about was experiences from mums who took the same route as me.
As much as this site is useful, you lot can also be quite damning! And personally, I do not think that you will say this to your family and friends, so why reply in such an awful tone to a stranger?
If my topic was should I bf or not, then I can sort of understand but I already passed that stage and did bf exclusively.
I think some tact wouldn't go amiss here from you guys especially when you do not know me? Or try and vent your frustrations elsewhere?
Yes I am for real.....

hi lmbd

i have ahungry 4 month old who has just started re waking at night, trying to grab my food and is making chewing motions. im trying to put off weaning (lazy) as long as possible but not sure how long ill do. both my dd 1 and ds now 5 and 4 were weaned around 4 to 5 months and it was led by their needs and behaviour. they are fine with no allergies or tummy problems. im sure it also depends on the size of babe. mine was 10 lb 2 born and has remained in top centile so prob hungrier? good luck

Blimey, I was ging to ask about weaning my boy at 17 weeks (the health visitor said she would be more than happy if we get this far as he is such a big boy and very hungry - waking for two feeds a night still and every 2.5 hours during the day) Don't think I dare now!!

I think it's perfectly understandable when people are at threads like this!

There have been a gazillion discussions explaining, often at length and with great patience, the needs of babies...which are individual, for sure, but which hardly ever equate to starting solids at age 4 mths.

There is no evidence that babies who are big, or who feed often (and 2 x a night and every 2.5 hours in the day is not all that often, anyway!) or who make 'chewing motions' need anything other than milk at this time.

However, it's also true that prob most babies who start solids as early as this show no ill effects, so if parents are determined to give them, then prob the best advice is to give the baby something pretty bland and harmless to hold (like a rice cake, or a piece of pear) and see what happens!

There is really no nutritional benefit in spooning in cereal, no matter how cute the baby looks [hmmm]...that's not my opinion, it's the facts

tiktok - I have heard that early weaning is worse for ex-bf babies as it can compromise the virgin gut, is that correct?? I can't seem to find any information about it.

To the OP, and sundry other sockpuppets posters, signs of readiness for weaning are:

• Sitting unaided
• Loss of tongue thrust reflex
• Developing pincer grip

If your baby isn't showing any of these signs (and at 17 weeks, I'd be amazed if they were, frankly) then they're not ready to wean.

UD, I'm the wrong person to ask, though I do agree that formula does affect the gut in the short term, and I am sure there are some susceptible babies who could be compromised by solids at 4 mths as opposed to 6 mths, but for the majority of babies, bf or ff, solids at this age (4 mths) are just not the best thing for them, rather than likely to harm. So why bother? Breastmilk meets all a baby's nutritional needs in terms of calories and in terms of content - life does not need to be complicated unnecessarily by solids! Especially not for spurious reasons like the baby looking cute, or because he 'needs' extra 'cos of being big or looking hungry.

No idea whether this is different for ff or bf, sorry.

Lovemybabydoll: I think the message here is that there is in general no reason to feed your baby anything other than breast-milk or formula until they are 6 months old. Perhaps there can be exceptional circumstamces when a child should be fed food at 4 months but I'm assuming you decided on this after talking with a paediatrician or other qualified person. I think the best thing is to ask that same person exactly how much you should be giving your child.

If on the other hand you have just decided yourself to give your child food then I would strongly recommend seeing a professional about this first.

Agree with everyone here about 4 months being a bit young and against current advice, and to greeneyed; my DS2 has been BLW since 5.5 months. He is now 10.5 months and only stopped feeding 2x a night about four weeks ago.

HV's advising early weaning because of "big hungry babies" ought to be sacked imvho.

I began at 17wks after signs were there. Started with a spoon at lunch for a few weeks, went up to a couple more spoons and then at breakfast and teatime. Mainly a pinch of baby rice with b milk, banana, other root veg and fruit.
I knew I'd be working a bit when she was 6 months so needed her to eat some solids as well as bf. I didn't want to use formula and wasn't good at expressing.
Do what suits you and your baby with an awareness of the WHO guidelines.
Annabel Karmel gets a bad press on here, but with common sense applied and no blender I used her book as a guide and will do the same for dc2.

Hey,

God I love this site.

I just thought I'd let you know that a lady in my baby massage class claimed she weaned all her 6 kids at 8 weeks. And to be fair her 12 week old looked fine.

Also a very close friend weaned her baby at four months due to medical reasons. This was advised by her doctor at GOSH.

I think weaning early on a doctor's advice is a separate issue, as others have mentioned.

As for the 12 week old looking fine...have you always had x-ray vision? I was weaned on rusk at 10 weeks and have been told that this will have been a contributing factor to my coeliac disease.....which wasn't diagnosed until I was 35. I'm sure I looked fine at 12 weeks as well

Hey All
When I posted this message on 4 Sept, I did not mention that I have started her on pureed baby food for 4+ months. And by cereal, I mean baby cereal mixed with my breastmilk and water nad it is gluten free NOT crunchy nut corn flakes.
I am not giving my baby solids @ 4months, that's crazy! If I was that crazy, I do not think I will be on this website trying desperately to know what's good and what isnt based on mums' experiences!
Well I guess I have to be careful now because there will always be 1 to jump down my throat and think the worst of the Author rather than giving him/her the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks Plimple.
Thanks Monkeygirl.
Here's another question - there are hundreds of companies that produce baby food from 4+, they have to be checked and accredited by some body here in the UK. Why is this allowed?
Thanks...x

Looking fine means zilch!

My mother smoked all the way through her first two pregnancies (inc when she was pg with me) and I looked fine as well. She also placed us on our fronts to sleep and we looked fine.

8 weeks for weaning is actually dangerously early. The baby weaned at that age could have seriously over-loaded kidneys and this could mean serious damage later.

babydoll, solids is anything other than breastmilk or formula and of course includes baby cereal and purees. It does not have to be 'solid' to be solid, if you know what I mean

Manufacturers are permitted to label food from four months, you are right. This means very little. There is actually no legislation, AFAIK, regarding this - they could, without breaking the law, say 'suitable for babies aged 1 week', except there would be huge criticism from all the relevant authorities for it.

There is legislation regarding ingredients, so no added salt for instance, and certain food additives are not permitted in foods intended for babies.

But nothing on age.

lmbd, anything other than milk is solds, including baby rice.

I'm not sure of the ins and outs of it, but the baby food manufacturers are meant to be changing their labels, but because of their collected might managed to get a (fairly lenghty) time period to change all their labels to 6months; they are still within this changeover time I believe, and although there will usually be a warning somewhere about advice is to wait till 6mo, it will be very small and tucked away somewhere on the packaging. It really isn't in their best interests to have you wait is it?

Yes there are a few posts which as tiktok says are understandable, but the rest of them are giving you good advice which you appear to not want to listen to. Surely you are aware that the guidelines are to wait until six months? and that 4 months is considered too early? If so, then why are you surprised by the level of response? If not, but use a site like MN and I assume have had contact with health professionals and have a copy of the NHS birth to five book, then ytou should take the advice you are receiving here on board and not just listening to the words of others who have gone against the guidlelines because they feel they know better than the collected wisdon of the WHO and the NHS.

Gill Rapley's book called Baby Led Weaning is very good at explaining why it's important to wait until the baby is developmentally ready, usually sometime around 6 months.