When to start a baby on solids?

Bumbleroot

My DD will be 17 weeks on Sat. She was low birthweight 4lbs 6oz & born at 37 weeks she has caught up well now & is about 12lbs.
She has 5 formula feeds per day of approx 5 ounces & sleeps 10/12 hours through the night. For the past 10 days she has been really irritable during the day. She used to go 3 or 4 hours during the days between feeds but now I'm having to feed her nearly every 2.5 hours daily & she's not sleeping properly during the day only for about 45 mins at a time. The only thing that will stop her bawling is to feed her.
Both the public health nurse & GP said not to start her on solids till about 20 weeks as she was small & her digestive system may not be ready but everyone else is saying to start her e.g grandmothers, husband, sister etc. If I knew this is what she needed I wouldn't hestitste to start her but I don't want her to become sick or develop allergies or anything. How many weeks did ye start feeding solids any advice would be appreciated .

Thanks

Nevyn

Have you tried changing her feed? what did your PHN say about that?

gowayouttadat

I have just been through this with DS.
He is a bit different because he has issues with milk not agreeing with him so he doesn't particularly like his bottle. My doctor told me not to start him on solids until he was 5 months (1st Jan). We had a week about two weeks ago of him being completely irritable. We couldn't put him down, he was crying constantly (he's not a crier) and was so off form. He struggles with the bottle so he wasn't looking for extra feeds but boy was he hard work! I put him on solids at 20 weeks. He's on them a week now and is a different baby. He absolutely destroyed the first bowl of veg we gave him and cried when it was gone! He was starving!

I would say try it, if it doesn't agree with her you can always stop and just go back to the bottles. DS is on solids a week and on four meals a day. He's just unreal, you can't stop him eating. Have you got the Annabel Karmel book? Very good on weaning with good recipes on what foods you should start them on.

lalalulu

Hi OP..
You could try putting your lo on to the hungry baby feed first? as if the phn and doctor have advised you not to start your lo on solids yet, i would maybe go with their advice for now... I started my daughter at 19 weeks never had any problems...

hairyfairy00

Hi Bumbleroot, my daughter was born at 34 weeks and was 3lb 13oz and like your little one slept through the night until she hit the 17 week mark.
I started her on a small amount of baby cereal (stuff for 4 month old babies) when she was about 18 weeks. I just gave her some in the morning and in the evening, the 'average' baby should have been given 8 spoons of feed but i was only giving her 3 spoons. She settled very well for me once she had some food in her belly and is back sleeping through the night.
She will be 8 months on the 30th Dec and even now she still only takes 5oz of milk, sometimes not even that much but she has taken to solids wonderfully.
I found the Milupa or Heinz powdered cereal was best to start and when i eventually started her on 'real' solids i thought the Organix range of baby food was great.

Good luck

nesf

The issue I think with the 20 weeks recommendation is that while a younger child may be perfectly capable of eating "solid food" (i.e. baby rice etc) their digestive systems aren't very good at breaking it down for energy yet. So while they will happily eat it for you you're not guaranteed that they'll be able to digest it fully and get enough energy from it (They'll still "digest" it in the sense of food goes in, full nappy results a few hours later so it may appear like they're eating well but this can be deceiving).

From my limited understanding of this, a baby could settle for you because of having a full tummy but not actually be getting enough nutrition from it and thus not gain sufficient weight etc. You'd want to talk to your GP about this really.

The thing to remember here is that babies were "designed" to survive solely on breastfeeding for the first four to six months and their digestive system is set up accordingly similar to how other mammals develop.

Bumbleroot

Thanks guys I'll try & hold off for a week or 2 what with Christmas & all & hopefully she'll take to solids like a duck to water:)

Bumbleroot

Can you just change straight from sma gold(1st infant milk) to sma white(for hungrier babies). I'm going to try her on the feed for hungrier babies but don't know if you have to start off giving just 1 feed a day of this & more the next day?

Nevyn

You can, I did that with mine and they transistioned just fine.
If you little one is rejecting the sma white you could try doing have gold and half white until you can wean them on to it.