OK please settle this for me: does early-ish weaning help sleep??

[OrganicHairbrush]

I'm getting so much conflicting advice from family, friends, HVs and strangers in the park... so please, share your experiences: does starting a baby on solids help them to wake up less at night??

(Just for the context... DD is 5mo and absolutely tiny, loving being EBF and showing no interest whatsoever in food. However, she's feeding at ever-decreasing intervals, sometimes as much as every 90 minutes, day and night )

Looking forward to hearing...

you'll get divided opinions, presumably because it does help some babies, and not others!
Sorry

No, IME with my 2 DC and from what I've read, weaning really doesn't help with sleep. In fact the sleep often gets worse at first.

There are more calories in milk than most foods and certainly than there are in the foods that can be eaten before six months. So, weaning wont help her be less hungry either.

She's probably having a growth spurt, hang in there with the EBF it's the best thing for her. You do have my sympathy though, I know how hard it can be to BF every 5 minutes.

No. In fact can make sleep worse at that age as their insides are not ready and it can be uncomfortable for them.

hang in there - ds exactly the same - i was sooooo tired. he is just over 6 months now and has settled right down again... do you co sleep? even a night or two can help - i resorted to it one weekend when i couldn't take anymore...

OK deep breath, I think it has helped us.

DD weaned at 26 weeks - beautifully, no problems, had no reason to start earlier. Went puree route - success.

DS 20 weeks - all signs were there. Sitting up, frequent waking over a week (didn't seem to be a growth spurt) Drinking nearly 40oz of milk in 24hours. VERY interested in food, chewing hands alot. So we did it despite the knowledge that the recommendation was to wait.

He is a week into it with very small amounts of baby rice/puree. Logically this shouldn't make any difference - fewer calories than milk and literally a few spoonfuls, but it has. He has started sleeping through the night (with a dream feed). He is settling during the day better too.

This could of course be coincidence, he might have done this anyway.

We thought long and hard about it and for us I think he was ready.

FWIW I think weaning is a big ball ache. I would be happy to keep him on milk only for as long as possible but our descision was based on what he seemed to need.

Not at all for DS - we started weaning at about 24wks and from about 26wks he stopped sleeping through the night (which he'd been doing from about 3mths) and didn't sleep through the night again until he was 10mths... Weaning was a nightmare for us and he didn't actually eat anything much until he started crawling and obv needed extra energy so I was trying to do solids and still bf what felt like constantly.

If your dd is not really showing any signs of being ready then just stick with the ebf - I know it is tough but it's (imho) better than worrying about how much (or not!) they are eating food-wise and how on earth to get them to eat enough iron/protein/carbs etc etc, dealing with all the mess etc

IME yes it does (prepares to be lynched)

No. Well, we didn't wean early, but still it has made no difference.

dd was a great sleeper until she weaned. Darn it.

That's the risk isn't it? That they just aren't great sleepers anyway.

We didn't go down the 'hungry baby' formula route as DS is on comfort milk. Whenever we've tried to move him back onto normal 1st stage milk it seems to upset his stomach. It was a risk that weaning onto solids might do the same but he hasn't reacted in the same way - ie doesn't seem to be uncomfortable. Still early days for us really though.

Well, in fairness, she's a great sleeper now - aged 3... (and has been for a while, but it was a hard 6 mo or so!) DS loves food, as did dd, but it's not hunger that affects his sleep. Fuck knows what it is, mind...

Thanks for your input! I think we'll wait... after all, only another month. That said, I did let DD suck homemade pasta sauce (tomato and garlic, no salt) off my finger this evening and she totally slurped it down. Will keep the vampires away, anyway.

(Thanks too for the co-cleeping suggestion. She's always refused to sleep anywhere but with her jaw clamped to my boob...)