Weaning a baby onto solid food?

I have just taken my 3rd daughter for her 7 month check, whilst I was talking to the Health Visitor about feeding and weaning etc I mentioned how complicated and contradictory the advice was these days compared to how it was when my other two children were that age (they are now 8 and 5 and I weaned them at four months).

She said that in this day and age research is constantly been done and they are now thinking about changing the guidelines again back to 4 months because they think babies are now becoming allergic to food because they are not been introduced to it early enough and it is also impacting on their development and growth because they are not getting enough of the vitamins and minerals that are needed.

She also said that the guidelines were changed to 6 months originally to keep things simple basically because of the less educated mums that would just feed there baby anything at four months, rather than waiting six months for certain foods (red meat etc).

Talk to your health visitor or doctor to clear things up for you, they are trained in this area and aware of the up to date research

My first - when she stopped sleeping through the night again after having done so for several months. My second - when we (parents and medical professionals) had run out of things to try with a 12 week old who was hungry literally (and I do mean literally) 24/7. I wish we'd found something else that worked, because it has caused him ongoing problems (he's now 9 years old). Please don't wean your baby onto solids until he/she is at least six months unless you have tried absolutely everything else. Sure, lots of babies are fine - but yours might not be, like mine wasn't. It's not worth the risk.

The WHO bases their stances on medical research, as do many other health organizations: http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids/delay-sol... There's a list there of the organizations that recommend waiting until 6 months, and they all base their standards on medical research and studies. You can scroll down to bottom of that page for a bunch of links to medical studies. For example, here's one that compares exclusively breastfed babies with babies that are offered other foods sooner: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15293973?dopt=A...

Here's another, and I quote, "Infants who are breastfed exclusively for 6 months experience less morbidity from gastrointestinal tract infection than infants who were mixed breastfed as of 3 or 4 months of age." Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15384567?dopt=A...

And another: "Exclusive breastfeeding for 6 mo is associated with a lower risk of gastrointestinal infection and no demonstrable adverse health effects in the first year of life." Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12885711?dopt=A...

These are all at the bottom of the first link, by the way. I'm just making them easier for you to see.

In my experience, health visitors give terrible advice with regard to breastfeeding, weaning, starting solids, and general infant nutrition and care. The vast majority of the advice that I've seen them give is *not*, in any way, reflective of evidence based medicine. Some of it is actually downright dangerous. I don't know what kind of training they receive, but I feel confident in saying that it's certainly not adequate for the job that they do.

Research baby led weaning.

A babies first solids should be real whole foods.

They have less chance of choking (liquids/mushes make chocking more plausible)

Avocado, banana, steamed broccoli and hand cut oven roasted fried are perfect first foods.'

The info we have on infant feeding (re:formula, rice cereals and mushes) are severly out dated and with obesity on the rise and numerous health issues related to foods is a clear indicator that we are doing things wrong.

they say to start a child on solids at or around 6 months old. because they say if you do it too early they could have allergic reactions. and at 17 weeks old i do not think a babies belly is ready for the solids. try oatmeal to see how he reacts. if he looks like he is having a hard time swallowing it then stop asap.

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How about switching to bottle feeding first, then introducing rice and Oatmeal cereals half and half with the formula. When Baby is old enough to sit at a highchair introduce some dry breakfast cereal, along with spoon feeding pureed foods.