Weaning Premature baby?

[Liskey]

My little girl was 4 weeks prem and is on the 0.4% growth line(someones got to be i suppose). She got weighed again this week and has gained 7ozs in 2 weeks which is about average for her - HV who isn't my HV agreed with this. She was meant to speak to a dietician about weaning DD as she's 26 weeks but 22 weeks corrected - however my (interfing old bat) of a HV said no don't do this she'd phone me instead - of course she didn't. My HV came round yesterday and has said I have to see GP (again) as weight gain is still not good and see if referral is needed to paedtrician or dietician before weaning her. Honestly i was fine before yesterday but my HV always make me feel upset and worried.

I'm now feeling really worried about weaning her - she's not sitting up by herself which my HV said she HAD to be before I started weaning but I don't want to delay too long either.

Any advice please?

DS2 was 4 wks early too. With DS1 I did 'baby-led weaning' (there's quite a few people who do this on MN). This means they start to eat solids when they can pick something up, put it in their mouths, and swallow - not by following what exact age they are. This is really reassuring to me as I'll wait until DS2 is chronologically 6MO and if he's not sitting up unaided I'll wait some more until he is. So he might be 7 MO before starting on solids - so what? milk is more nutritionally beneficial at this stage and there's no rush. How are you feeding your DD?

She's bottle fed as she lost over 10% of her weight in the first 3 days as she had trouble breast feeding enough times

I just don't want her to get vitamin deprived as I'd heard prem babies don't have the same reserves of vitamins.

Don't panic, Liskey. She isn 't going to wake up one day lacking all her vitamins - remember, she gets all her nutrition from her milk at this age, and food is just the 'icing on the cake' as it were.

DD was 13 weeks early, and we started weaning her at 5.5months actual age (so 2.5months corrected). She couldn't sit unaided or hold food. However, she couldn't sit unaided till she was nearly a year, so 9 months corrected. I wasn't happy waiting that long.

We've puree fed and she loves her food. She finger feeds herself now, but still likes to be fed mush!

In the long run, a few weeks wait isn't going to be a problem.