4 month old wants to eat food

ceadaoin.

Does anyone have any experience of allowing younger babies to try finger foods? I was planning on starting baby led weaning with my daughter at 6 months. She is only just gone 4 months but has started to grab food from us and put it in her mouth. I've been taking it off her which just makes her cry and then she looks at us eating and makes chewing motions!

My partner wants to give her some cooked broccoli later to see what she does but I'm worried that she is too young. The BLW book says that if they can support their head well (which she can) and start to grab food then they are ready but 4 months seems very young. Should I start her on purees now and then go to finger foods once she is older? That might be confusing for her though.

KKkitty

Try her on purees first and see how she goes. Make sure any food you give her is soft.

Bannasidhe

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Does anyone have any experience of allowing younger babies to try finger foods? I was planning on starting baby led weaning with my daughter at 6 months. She is only just gone 4 months but has started to grab food from us and put it in her mouth. I've been taking it off her which just makes her cry and then she looks at us eating and makes chewing motions!

My partner wants to give her some cooked broccoli later to see what she does but I'm worried that she is too young. The BLW book says that if they can support their head well (which she can) and start to grab food then they are ready but 4 months seems very young. Should I start her on purees now and then go to finger foods once she is older? That might be confusing for her though.

My son was eating pureed food at 4 months - veg or fruit that I blended the living daylights out of - and he is now a 6 foot odd 27 year old. His daughter was the same - on pureed fruit at 4 months (she walked at just under 6 months). She is a fine, fit and healthy 5 year old now. I think it very much depends on the child. Some children seem, not just, 'ready' earlier but to crave 'real' food then others- my grandson was about 6 months before he showed any interest.
I remember the first time my granddaughter had pureed 'real' food - I had made a chunky veg soup and she was watching us eat it - her mouth opening in anticipation every time someone took a spoonful. In the end I blended some and she mangled it, we couldn't get it into her fast enough and she has never looked back. By 6 months she was feeding herself - woe betide anyone who tried to feed her.

Winnie

I started weaning my son at 4 months old, purees only first

How Strange

The BLW book says when the tongue thrust has gone further back ie when they stop sticking their tongue out. Being able to support their head and sit up unaided are the two other signs of readiness. Grabbing food isn't necessarily a sign of wanting to eat as they put everything in their mouths from about 4 months on.

At 4 months she's definitely too young for blw so if you want to start her on food then try purées. The minimum recommended start age for blw is 6 months.

littlefriend

The local health nurse told me that it is ok to start with purees between 4 and 6 months for bottle fed babies but they recommend waiting til 6 months for those who are exclusively breastfed.
They can have baby rice (its suggested that you make it with a bit of their milk), vegetable or fruit purees. The purees are to be very well blended with no additives. Only a couple of teaspoons to begin with.
No meat, pulses, beans, cereals, dairy etc until over 6 months.

foxinsocks

Pretty much nothing they eat before 6 months, whether it is purees or finger food, will be digested, it will all come right back out the other end, just as it went in. If you want to do pure baby led weaning, I would wait.

Right now, the official WHO recommendation now is to wait until 6 months for solid food, whether breast or bottle fed, because they get no benefit from solids before then, and early weaning has been linked with a range of health problems in later life. Course, they change recommendations quite a lot.

At the moment, she probably doesn't want food, and she definitely doesn't need it, so if I were you, I'd just give her a baby spoon or something similar to chew on, maybe even an empty baby cup, so she feels included, but isn't learning anything that might mess with baby led weaning later. She doesn't know that food will make her full, so if she's grabbing your food, it is only because she wants to do what you do.

(One of the points of the baby led weaning is to learn to chew, before learning to swallow. I'd be worried that if you started her on purees now, when you start giving her finger food, she'll be sucking it back, risking choking. If you do it 'properly', she'll learn how to chew before learning how to move the food to the back of her mouth, and the risk of choking will be a lot less.)

Owryan

Go for it, as already said, start with pureed food. i ve a 3, 2 and a 1yr old. At 4 months the 1yo was stealing and eating from his brothers plates.

If he wants to eat dont stop him and sometimes the books arent always the best guide

lynski

i'd say no to the purees as with the blw it is counter-productive.
my large son was mad for food around 4mths too so i gave him finger food at dinner, whatever we were having more or less just cooked a bit softer, but what goes in must come out and he was a good 6/7mths before he actually ate anything, iykwim. he would gum broccoli, carrots, potatos, raw veg, bananas, digestives, slices of fruit, etc, but i keep and eye and i knew when he started to swallow.
after that I started then to include him in meals and fed him mashed versions of our food, no purees, and at 14mths he is happily feeding himself, again whatever we have. today he had a plate of potato salad, salad and omelette and dinner of egg-fired chicken noodles, very same as the 5yr old and the 3 yr old.
He has been off the scale for weight and height since he was born, so there was no co-relation between his size and the need for food. He was exclusively breastfed until recently too, he now as a bottle of milk a day.
there is no harm in giving finger food at 4mths, imho, as it is unlikely they will eat any and if properly supervised will just build their taste buds harmlessly.
btw i knew my daughter was ready for food when she popped in between her brother and his food and gobbled up a spoonful while he was distracted. she was just 5mths.

littlefriend

foxinsocks wrote: »

Right now, the official WHO recommendation now is to wait until 6 months for solid food, whether breast or bottle fed, because they get no benefit from solids before then, and early weaning has been linked with a range of health problems in later life. Course, they change recommendations quite a lot.

Not arguing with you or anything but the health nurse was only here 3 weeks ago and gave me a booklet about feeding between 4 and 6 months. Its so confusing! I thought I was doing the right thing by starting her on a few spoons of baby rice in the mornings. Now I don't know what to do.

admiralofthefleet

we started our son on puree at 4 months. he is gradually getting sick of the bottle though but he still has it. he is 6 months exactly now

missis aggie

http://kellymom.com/nutrition/starting-solids/delay-solids/

ceadaoin.

Thanks everyone, I definitely don't want to do purees or mushed food if it is going to interfere with BLW later.

She had a play with some banana and broccoli yesterday, she gummed it as Lynksi said but it all ended up on her face and top anyway!

I'll hold out until 6 months but if she wants to 'try' some of our food at dinner then that's fine as I know she wont swallow it anyway.

silja

Do you breastfeed? If so, express a little and make "momsicles"- freeze the milk in icecube trays and then give her one when she seems to want to "eat solids". You could also put some in those small mesh bags they have for babies who are starting solids. This will give her the satisfaction of eating, while not really having solids. Great when it's hot too- we live in Arkansas currently and it was a life saver for me when the kids were babies during the hot summers.

Queen of Sheebs

I started ds on purees at 16 weeks on advice from consultant. I also started him on finger food at 6 months. He is now 9 months and feeds himself pieces of beef/chicken/lamb, grapes,pears, melon,mango, bread, veg etc. He's my first and I'm no expert but I don't feel having started him on purees has had a effect on him being able to feed himself (blw). Best of luck with it.

TooManyDogs

Originally Posted by foxinsocks
Right now, the official WHO recommendation now is to wait until 6 months for solid food, whether breast or bottle fed, because they get no benefit from solids before then, and early weaning has been linked with a range of health problems in later life. Course, they change recommendations quite a lot.

littlefriend wrote: »

Not arguing with you or anything but the health nurse was only here 3 weeks ago and gave me a booklet about feeding between 4 and 6 months.

My public health nurse said the same to me, that bottle fed babies could be weaned between 4 and 6 months but breast fed babies had to wait until 6 months, when I asked her to explain why she couldn't. I asked a different public health nurse the next time, she agreed with the first health nurse but also couldn't explain it. That along with a few other experiences I had made me loose all faith in the health nurses and it's the WHO all the way for me

lynski

Queen of Sheebs wrote: »

I started ds on purees at 16 weeks on advice from consultant. I also started him on finger food at 6 months. He is now 9 months and feeds himself pieces of beef/chicken/lamb, grapes,pears, melon,mango, bread, veg etc. He's my first and I'm no expert but I don't feel having started him on purees has had a effect on him being able to feed himself (blw). Best of luck with it.

i think you are confusing baby-led weaning with self-feeding. One of the points of the baby led weaning is to learn to chew, before learning to swallow.
there is no doubt purees would not interfere with self-feeding, but might with baby-led weaning.

iguana

foxinsocks wrote: »

Right now, the official WHO recommendation now is to wait until 6 months for solid food, whether breast or bottle fed, because they get no benefit from solids before then, and early weaning has been linked with a range of health problems in later life. Course, they change recommendations quite a lot.

The thing with such advice is that the WHO recommendation is 11 years old and since then certain studies have provided contradictory findings, like the findings at the start of the year from the British Medical Journal who were investigating a number of more recent studies that suggest later weaning can be associated with food allergies, such as Coeliac's disease, and iron deficiency.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12180052

I think it's one that parents have to play by ear and trust their own instincts to a certain extent.

How Strange

iguana the coeliac/late weaning link doesn't make sense from an Irish perspective because Ireland has one of the highest rates of coeliac disease and yet we wean babies very early, sometimes as soon as 13 weeks, and give baby rice. Irish mothers are not generally known for late weaning. If late weaning gives greater susceptibility to coeliac disease then it should be very rare in this country.

Also that iron deficiency report was debunked as it was inadvertently funded by pharma companies who manufacture formula and iirc the main guy who carries out the study has worked for formula companies previously.

iguana

That's a good point. I'm just a bit nervous about the Coeliac thing as with having endo I've been advised to avoid gluten when I'm not pregnant if I still want to conceive. And my brother's girlfriend is Coeliac and it's amazing what she can't eat. Interesting about the US study on iron deficiency and disappointing the BMJ didn't catch that.

Is that somehow linked to that appalling ad for follow-on milk where they lambast cows milk for not having a lot of iron, despite milk not being where we get our iron from?

liliq

The discrepancy between starting solids for breastfed and formula fed babies is down to the composition of formula and breastmilk as far as I know.
Breastmilk changes over time to meet the nutritional needs of the baby- ie, more/ less fat, iron, protein content.
Formula stays the same, and as the baby grows and needs more nutrition, they need a higher volume of formula to meet the need. They're system can only take so much liquid, so they sometimes need to start getting nutrition from elsewhere to get what they need in smaller volumes.
Now, I could be wrong but this is what I've read!

4 months is too young for BLW, but I've done a kinda of combination. Started purees at 5.5 months, and by 6 months was combining purees with BLW, and now at just over 7 months he's pretty much completely self feeding except for his breakfast most days.

lynski

liliq wrote: »

The discrepancy between starting solids for breastfed and formula fed babies is down to the composition of formula and breastmilk as far as I know.
Breastmilk changes over time to meet the nutritional needs of the baby- ie, more/ less fat, iron, protein content.
Formula stays the same, and as the baby grows and needs more nutrition, they need a higher volume of formula to meet the need. They're system can only take so much liquid, so they sometimes need to start getting nutrition from elsewhere to get what they need in smaller volumes.
Now, I could be wrong but this is what I've read!

great explanation and afaik that is the reason

4 months is too young for BLW, but I've done a kinda of combination. Started purees at 5.5 months, and by 6 months was combining purees with BLW, and now at just over 7 months he's pretty much completely self feeding except for his breakfast most days.

would disagree there, think each baby is different and there is plenty of scope for letting children try tastes from 4 mths, my experience is they dont 'eat'.

How Strange

I personally think 4 months is too young for anything except milk. If at 5 months a parent feels their baby is showing interest then consider introducing food to play with but 16-20 weeks is too early (in my opinion!). However I know I'm in the minority on that one.