weaning my baby

[hiliry]

I have started to feed my 20 week old baby He has been totally Breast fed up until now. My Sister says he should be on 3 meals a day, my health visitor says she cannnot advise me to feed solid food until 6 months. The books say breast feed then give food.

If i breast feed first then he doesnt want solid food.

if i give solid first then he doesnt want breast fed.

is it ok to drop a milk feed in favour of a jar?

If i dont feed him solids he wants fed every 2 hours and his tummy is so full he brings the milk back up.

[meltoadhall]

you could try a teaspoon or two of baby rice mixed with your milk in the morning then continue to breast feed. if hes like mine, then they usually fall asleep after a feed and so are not bothered with eating. it will be trial and error until you find out what suits you both. personally three meals a day at 20 weeks is too much.

he may just be on a growth spurt and after a few days go back to breast only. on the other hand he may decide that he does want solids - be led by your baby and dont panic about it.

[electricblue]

He's 5 months old now so he will be needing some solids,try starting by giving him some baby rice in morning for breakfast then topping him up with milk,from there progress to dropping a meal for solids, eventually he will be getting filled up with his solids and maybe just having his bedtime bottle,do it gradually.

[little coojy]

i find that you get differant advice from health visitors from year to year, i have 3 children and was told everytime a differant age to start solids and theres only 11/2 years between them, i think you should let your baby lead the way, but if he's wanting all that breast milk then bringing it back up it sounds like he's wanting something more solid, use your milk to mix baby rice and feed him this at a time he's not starving otherwise they can get quite stoppy about it, stick to this for a week or so, so you can make sure he doesn't have any allergy to it (if you introduce lots of differant things at once and he gets a rash or something you won't no what it is from) then try introducing differant meals at same rate and upping them when he seems un satisfied with just milk, your soon set out a pattern, i always found food then breast best if they are not to hungrey, he wont take half as much breast if any when he has solids, offer boild water to. i found they prefer the puddings but this can make it tricky getting them to eat dinners, i always tried to give at least 1 spoon full of dinner first, but rice is best to start with for a while.

[puzzled54]

20 weeks is too early for 3 meals a day. I agree with the baby rice advice, take it slowly, but it's too early to drop a milk feed for a jar. Just be confident to tell your sister that its your baby and that you and the baby will sort it out between you!

[redcrx]

My HV actually told me to start on solids when my sone was 4.5 months old. I was told to start with ceral / carbs to keep his weight up. He had a baby cereal in the morning made with 2ozs of his bottle. We then continued like that for a few weeks before introducing some food / puree with his teatime bottle.

Once he turned 6 months he had solids at lunch as well as a bottle.

From 7 months i dropped his lunchtime bottle so he now has

8am porridge and bottle

12pm savoury and desert

4pm savoury and bottle

7pm bottle then bed

I will be cutting out the 4pm bottle soon as he is drinking less and less of this

[lynlockwood]

By the way, don't bother with jars when first weaning they are 90% wasted-make your own first feeds by whizzing up/blending cooked pears or carrots into a puree and freezing them in ice cube trays. Your baby probably won't even finish one of those for the first month or so but even if you buy organic veg it will only cost you 5-10p a meal rather than 50p per jar and you know they're only getting pure food with no preservatives etc. Just a suggestion!