Weaning babies in different cultures and times.

[precious_one]

I had children in 1984, 1988, and 1995. Expert advice was different with all three of my children. First child, formula fed until 6 months then went on 2% milk. Started introducing solids about 4 months. She was off her bottle before 1 year. Second child, formula fed exclusively until 1 year. I started introducing solids about 4 months and she had no interested. So I tried again at 6, 8, and 10 months. After taking her off formula she was very interested in food She still took a bottle until she was 2. She was the biggest baby had. Third child, formula fed and started on solids about 4 to 5 months and was off his bottle before 1 year. What I mean by solids is baby food or puree food in a blender is what I usually made. I had two children start sleeping through the night at 3 weeks and another at 6 weeks. My other one woke up on average of every 3 hours until she was probably 3. I am TOTALLY against the Ezzo or Pearls parenting. I am against any type of parenting that causes a baby or child suffering!!!

[AVENues]

Hooh! Ok, outsiders not welcome. Fine. Sorry. *Backs off.*

[MissA]

I was advised to introduce solids around six months, pureed fruits and rice cereal. Which is the official thing that I did.

Unofficially, my baby was introduced to solids at around 4.5 months because she was quite sly about mooching off people's plates when she was sitting in laps:) So my baby's first food was a fistful of that flavored rice they serve in mexican restaurants. It's always interesting to tell this story to other mothers and see the abject horror on the faces of the women whose kids have allergies.

[August]

Yes that is the way I read it. Why would that be hogwash? Like others said mine tracked my food and reached for it. Looked for more feeds was over six months. She also used to suckle for comfort, but it's pretty easy to determine between that and feeding.

LOVE the curry story. Baby has good taste :lol:

It's common advice, but bad advice. I dud a breastfeeding class before I had my first and they didn't tell me about why it's wrong. The breast isn't like a cup you have to refill after it's empty. It's more like a sump pump in a rainstorm. Milk is continually made, but the rate is faster the emptier the breast. It's been a while, but I think the figures are something like 30% capacity after ten minutes? Whatever the actual number, if the baby's still hungry after the second side you just put them back on the first side, then the second again, ad infinitum. Of course it's not actually ad infinitum because you could actually have low supply or the baby have a poor suck or other problems. But, for most people it's a very simple fix.

[August]

Anyone noticed this fad of feeding big kids purees in bottles? I heard two women at the playground the other day saying how they'd bought refillable pouches so their kids could have multiples a day. Seems like a recipe for slamming down calories before your brain realises its full to me. I used to keep a few in the car, until I saw how quickly my kids ate them and wanted more, which doesn't seem to happen with a bowl and spoon.

But I guess now they make a distinction between "exclusively breastfed" and anything else. Seems silly and like it would be a discouragement to nursing overall.

They make the distinction because there is a big difference. A purely formula/solids fed baby has the gut flora of an adult, a purely breastfed baby has a unique gut flora which is more like yoghurt (you can smell the difference). They suspect that a large number of the differences between formula and breastmilk fed babies are due to the gut flora, so for studies they have to specify which it is. At some point between exclusive breastmilk and exclusive formula/solids the flora tips to the other kind, but it's not set in stone, and it can tip back. That's why they have to separate partial and exclusive breastmilk.

It's not putting a value judgement on people, it's a basic biological difference.

[OkToBeTakei]

It's common advice, but bad advice. I dud a breastfeeding class before I had my first and they didn't tell me about why it's wrong. The breast isn't like a cup you have to refill after it's empty. It's more like a sump pump in a rainstorm. Milk is continually made, but the rate is faster the emptier the breast. It's been a while, but I think the figures are something like 30% capacity after ten minutes? Whatever the actual number, if the baby's still hungry after the second side you just put them back on the first side, then the second again, ad infinitum. Of course it's not actually ad infinitum because you could actually have low supply or the baby have a poor suck or other problems. But, for most people it's a very simple fix.

Very cool I honestly did not know that. Makes me wonder if the 6 month thing was so firmly fixed or I was excited to try something new.

[treehugger]

I was advised to introduce solids around six months, pureed fruits and rice cereal. Which is the official thing that I did.

Unofficially, my baby was introduced to solids at around 4.5 months because she was quite sly about mooching off people's plates when she was sitting in laps:) So my baby's first food was a fistful of that flavored rice they serve in mexican restaurants. It's always interesting to tell this story to other mothers and see the abject horror on the faces of the women whose kids have allergies.

Ditto on the bolded... except the reasons I started on solids with my girl were a) she was super interested in our food, trying to grab for it and such and b) because I was nursing on demand, we had just spend an entire month with her nursing every 2 hours and I was just plumb worn out. She is 8 months old now.

In Alberta, we were told by Public Health nurses to start the baby on iron-rich foods (i.e... fortified infant cereal, meat, egg yolks, etc). My daughter has some sensitivities to dairy and gluten (we found that out when I was still breastfeeding) so I am super careful about what I feed her - but she seems to be doing fine.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Advice changes with time and place.

Standard advice in 1971 reads like Ezzo. My MIL was initially anxious to share with me all of her baby feeding knowledge: give newborns exactly 4 oz of formula, exactly every 4 hours, add rice cereal to the bottle if they get hungry before the 4 hours, introduce homemade pureed solids by 8 weeks. Problem was, the advice in 1999 was pretty much the exact opposite. I insisted that I would do nothing but breastfeed on demand for the first six months, and continue breastfeeding for as long as I could after that. Poor woman was a basket case, since breasts aren't calibrated and she couldn't deal with the fact that she had no idea how much the baby was eating or how often she would eat. I wonder if some of the fundie love for Ezzo comes from the fact that it matches parts of the older approach, so it may simply feel right to grandparents.

Some allergy advice has changed since 1999. Back then, the idea was to avoid allergens for as long as possible. Today, there is a growing trend toward introducing some of them, like peanuts, earlier.

[Slt]

We did baby led weaning, so we didn't do purees at all. DS started eating different fruits and veggies (ie avocado spears with cheerio dust to better grip them, diced pear, bell pepper sticks, corn on the cob, etc) around 6 months, he got really good at about 8 months and started eating a substantial amount around then. We weaned from the breast at 13 months and he was completely table fed from then on. He is still an excellent eater, and will eat almost anything. One of his favorite foods are salads with mushrooms, carrots and blue cheese crumbles now at 18 months.

[Savoring Samsara]

Yes that is the way I read it. Why would that be hogwash? Like others said mine tracked my food and reached for it. Looked for more feeds was over six months. She also used to suckle for comfort, but it's pretty easy to determine between that and feeding.

LOVE the curry story. Baby has good taste :lol:

Yes, he totally does! :D One of the happiest days of his short life so far was the day we took him to the Indian buffet. He gorged himself on mangoes and palak paneer.

Also, AVENues, I don't think it's an "outsiders not welcome" thing - just a strong desire to stop the spread of misinformation about baby related things (of which there is a lot on the internet).

[Katiebug]

We have a 2.75 year old who was exclusively breastfed from birth - 6 months. We started introducing foods at 6 months, but she wasn't very interested right away; solids were a once a day thing until around 8 months. By 10-11 months she was having some solids at every normal meal time but was either nursing or having a bottle of pumped milk before her solid foods in order to avoid early weaning due to filling up on solids. The message overall from our pediatrician and lactation consultant was "Food is for fun under one" - i.e. breast milk and/or formula should remain the foundation of a baby's diet under a year of age.

We used a combo of purees and baby led weaning. Definitely by the time she was a year old we were just mashing/cutting whatever we were eating, for the most part. I made most of her purees at home because I knew exactly what was in the food and it was cheap, but we occasionally used the baby food in pouches for convenience. The time period where she was only on purees was pretty short. We never used rice cereal; she preferred oatmeal (and still loves oatmeal for her breakfast).

For restrictions we didn't give her honey until she was 2. The pediatrician said that and no liquid cow's milk until around 1 were the only real "rules". We stopped keeping track of food introductions/working on a schedule after the first few weeks. We did avoid shellfish and nuts until we saw an allergist, due to a possible reaction she had to one of them at around a year old, but those allergies were later ruled out.

I pumped milk for her daycare bottles until she was a year old and then it took her 2 months to use up what was left in the freezer and transition fully to whole milk (which she doesn't drink a ton of). She continued nursing until shortly after her 2nd birthday, when she self-weaned.

[Mami2four]

Hello all, coming out of lurking to reply to this one as I'm due with my 5th baby on August 1st and there has been differing advice each and every time time.

I live in a tiny mining valley in Wales and, in 2001 when I had our twins, the local health visitor was of an older generation so even though on the record she had to give the current recommendations she would often give advice that would probably have gotten her fired.

At the time the current advice here was to start weaning between 12-16 weeks but no earlier than 8 weeks. This health visitor (and any slightly older mother-including my own) also told those with hungrier babies to crumble Farley's rusks into the bottle from only a few weeks old and if they struggled to get it through the hole to use a rubber teat and a heated sewing needle to make slightly bigger holes! I must add that i never did this myself.

First foods were pureed fruit, veg, baby rice and cereals.

I had my third daughter in 2003 and along with a new health visitor advice had changed to start weaning at 16 weeks and not earlier. I had allergies to all fruit and tomatoes as a child and my first two daughters had developed the same sensitivities. Wanting to avoid this happening again and having read up on the fact that WHO recommended avoiding weaning until 6 months for this very reason i brought it up with the new health visitor and was basically told that she could report me to social services for starving and abusing my child if I didn't start weaning at 4 months!

Luckily she wasn't at all interested in solids anyway as I had had to move her onto the bottle after my milk supply diminished, I think the change was a lot for her to take in. I just told the HV that I was trying her even though I wasn't and went with my gut instict, she eventually started taking baby rice at 7 months has never had an issue with food sensitivities or allergies.

By 2006 when my son was born I found myself having a lecture off the same HV who had told me she would report me only 3 years earlier about how she knew it would be hard to change my way of thinking from weaning earlier and spouting exactly the same research at me that I had told her :pull-hair: I just smiled my way through it and walked out astounded lol DS was breastfed until he was 18 m/o when he weaned himself, this was completely frowned upon even though it is perfectly acceptable for babies to still have bottle way past 12 months! He did develop lactose intolerance when he stopped breastfeeding but that pretty much has fixed itself now as long as he doesn't gorge himself.

Having been almost 7 years since I had a baby I am dreading to think(and have actively avoided looking) at what the current recommendations are. I have never really used jarred baby food, always fed the kids what we eat but I did go down the baby aisle in Tesco the other day and was suprised to find that they are still labeled from 4 months onward.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

I just wanted to jump in and say that in America we associate weaning with cessation of breastfeeding but in other places it means to add in other foods but continue with milk, am I right?

[Irishy]

Ha! Rice in bottles, mashed potato in bottles.... My mum says she and her friends used to cut bigger holes in the teats because there'd be more rice than milk in them at times. Also, every person of my generation and older was given booze as a baby at least once. Half a teaspoon of sherry or brandy in the milk to help the baby sleep. More often than not it didn't work. 70s babies were on a three course 3 square meals a day diet by 12 weeks.

My four noughties babies were all weaned between 5 and 7 months. Number 3 never really swallowed anything until about 13 months but the rest were savages. To me, the important thing is that they were all fed on human milk and nobody has any allergies.

[Drina Adams]

I just wanted to jump in and say that in America we associate weaning with cessation of breastfeeding but in other places it means to add in other foods but continue with milk, am I right?

Weaning in an Irish context would be introducing solids. I'm not sure we have a term for cessation of breastfeeding.

[OkToBeTakei]

Ha! Rice in bottles, mashed potato in bottles.... My mum says she and her friends used to cut bigger holes in the teats because there'd be more rice than milk in them at times. Also, every person of my generation and older was given booze as a baby at least once. Half a teaspoon of sherry or brandy in the milk to help the baby sleep. More often than not it didn't work. 70s babies were on a three course 3 square meals a day diet by 12 weeks.

My four noughties babies were all weaned between 5 and 7 months. Number 3 never really swallowed anything until about 13 months but the rest were savages. To me, the important thing is that they were all fed on human milk and nobody has any allergies.

Irishy :penguin-no: You forgot the ladies in Henry St of a certain era with tea in the bottle.

Wean is wean. I would imagine it means the same anywhere.

Weaning is the process of gradually introducing a mammal infant to what will be

its adult diet and withdrawing the supply of its mother's milk.

[Coconut Flan]

Weaning also means "2.Accustom (someone) to managing without something on which they have become dependent or of which they have become excessively fond."

[OkToBeTakei]

Weaning also means "2.Accustom (someone) to managing without something on which they have become dependent or of which they have become excessively fond."

Yeah cos that means babies obviously :lol: I tend to think of Benzodiazepines when you say that. Not exactly the same thing really.

[Coconut Flan]

I think it works perfectly well for getting a baby off the breast or bottle or a child to stop thumb sucking or giving up a pacifier for just a few non-drug examples.

[Irishy]

Irishy You forgot the ladies in Henry St of a certain era with tea in the bottle.

Hey, that's not uncommon to see even now! My kids all love a sip of my tea. But never from a bottle. Just because of the chavvy connotations.

[OkToBeTakei]

I think it works perfectly well for getting a baby off the breast or bottle or a child to stop thumb sucking or giving up a pacifier for just a few non-drug examples.

I don't tend to think of breast or bottle as dependencies rather necessities in the time frames referenced on this thread.

But you let it mean whatever works for you, honestly. Whatever makes you happy.

Unfortunately I cannot rename the thread but most seem to get it without the need for needless grammar and dictionary hopping.

[OkToBeTakei]

Hey, that's not uncommon to see even now! My kids all love a sip of my tea. But never from a bottle. Just because of the chavvy connotations.

A beer bottle with a teat :lol:

It's amazing really with all the alcohol, cows milk, because that was what they got if not breastfed, not only survived but seems to eschew modern allergies. I wonder how true that is, or if the ones with allergies just did not thrive and make it? Would make for an interesting study.

[eohiken]

I was just reading a study from Sweden about allergies, and it seems they might have more to do with sterile environments than weaning practices.

Lemme see if I can find it again.

ETA here it is:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05 ... -allergies

It struck me as interesting because humans probably originally weaned babies with masticated food.

[Irishy]

A beer bottle with a teat :lol:

It's amazing really with all the alcohol, cows milk, because that was what they got if not breastfed, not only survived but seems to eschew modern allergies. I wonder how true that is, or if the ones with allergies just did not thrive and make it? Would make for an interesting study.

Well that's why I don't bang the breastfeeding drum too much. I was fed all kinds of shite as a baby and I turned out ok.

[Blahblah]

I was just reading a study from Sweden about allergies, and it seems they might have more to do with sterile environments than weaning practices.

Lemme see if I can find it again.

ETA here it is:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05 ... -allergies

It struck me as interesting because humans probably originally weaned babies with masticated food.

This whole sterile environment thing cracks me up. We were all told that dummies (pacifiers), chew rings, bottles etc had to be boiled to death or soaked in sterilizing liquid for days or the baby would surely get some hideous illness.

Then in the next breath, you were supposed to give the baby "tummy time" and encourage them to roll about on the floor. You know, the floor where the cat sits and licks its arse, where people walk after having walked on the bathroom floor, where all sorts of unspeakable things can be found? I noticed one of mine chomping on something once at about 5 month and it turned out to be a dead fly. :o

I never sterilized anything and my two are fine other than a penicillin allergy in the little one for which there is no explanation.