Solids before 6 months? at 4 months??

You can go ahead with giving her solids but do keep in mind that it may not be an automatic fix on the booby feeding - front.. ie.. she may still want to feed as often (as I have found out!)

Jake was on solids by 3 months (even Plunket thought he was ready!) and trying to feed himself by 5. Some babies are just ready earlier

I went to a seminar thingy at plunket who said anytime after 4 months, but if you havnt started by 6 months then you need to as they need more iron.
I would give some farex/baby rice type cereal a go and see what she thinks!!!

We started at 4 and a half months and to be honest our two didn't show any signs of being "ready" but I was too excited about the cute little bowls and spoons I brought lol Plus I thought it would be easy with twins in the long run to just get them going early. I don't see any harm at all. Sometimes I think Plunket go a little overboard with their rules. Unless your starting her off on magnum ice creams I don't think you need to worry about obesity lol. We only gave our girls a teaspoon of baby rice once a day for the first month more to get them used to taking food off a spoon and the baby rice is really just like slightly thickened formula. The funny thing is despite not showing any of the signs plunket says you need to start solids both H & E took to it straight away.

Edited by lisa85

Yeah thats the key, if she spits the spoon back out then she physically isnt ready to eat but she lets the spoon in then go for it.

Jake has been on solids for just over a week now and he LOVES it.

It has not affected the amount of boobie time though... One small feed a day doesnt really affect the appetite LOL

Have you been to the plunket solids talk? Not that great but they do give you a chart with Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 foods. I found this handy....

so funny we were talking about this at my cousins my aunt said that when her oldest was only a couple of weeks old she went next door and whoever it was said that my cousin was just hungry give her some farex lol. She couldn't even hold her head up.

This was over 30yrs ago though

I just want to say thanks for posting this - i was thinking all the same things about my 4.5 month old baby - i tried her last week on solids and she didnt quite get it so i tried her again today and although she only ate a teaspoon of farex by the end of it she was grabbing my fingers with the spoon in it and aiming it towards her mouth - she loved it!

My plunket nurse was very "NO solids before 6 months" yet the info she gave me said after 4 and before 6 months so i kinda rolled my eyes at her

Oh wow thanks for all these great replies ladies!

I think I will try Clodagh on a little wee bit of rice cereal...she sticks her tongue out at us all day lol but when you put a dummy or a bottle in there she grabs onto it with gusto lol. Sh'es been holding her head up really well since the early weeks, she is a bif strong girl (as some of you have seen IRL lol ) so I *think* she'll be ok...

I missed the last Plunket solids talk but the next one isn't for another month! And I'm not sure we'll last that long....we already have the chart which is awesome and has given me some good ideas.

But once again, the feedback from you guys has been the betst!

Cheers

We started Ollie at 4 months as he really seemed ready. I would have held out longer if he wasn't waking every couple of hours for feeds at night!

Thankfully Ollie took to solids like a typical BOY and now he's on three meals a day, and is sleeping MUCH better, not having any milk feeds anymore from his last feed until about 6am, which is much more respectable when it comes to sleep.

Hope you have the same kind of luck!

Plunket have just revised their guidelines back to "between 4 and 6 months", they used to be "from 6 months" (and in the dark ages when I had Maya they were "4-6 months" - talk about make up your minds!)

From a physiological perspective, regardless of all the physical signs of readiness (holding head up, no extrusion reflex etc.), the lining of the gut is permeable until around 6 months of age which means that the protein particles baby consumes can pass into the bloodstream. This is where the risk of allergies comes in, the body doesn't recognise these protein particles and the immune system kicks into action to try and fight them off. Bear in mind too that baby's digestive system, kidneys, liver etc. are all tiiiiiiny!

I started Maya on solids at 16 weeks on Plunkets advice as she was big and hungry, her weight gains had slowed right down and she was fairly advanced for her age (plus as Lisa said, the cute little bowls and spoons were calling me), but in hindsight it was a bad idea - her weight issues were allergy related and starting solids only made it worse.

We started the gremlins at 4 and a bit months, again, I was overeager and it didn't really serve any purpose other than to make more work for me!

Lil miss was exclusively breastfed from birth so I got a bit obsessed with getting her to 6 months on breastmilk alone. We got there, but by that stage she was waking several times a night for a feed and crawling so using heaps of energy so she probably could have started a little earlier.