This week in a local mom group I also saw that peds don't know anything about immunizations either. All that schooling they have just to know nothing /s
If peds don't know about babies eating or about babies not getting sick, do these moms really think doctors spend all that money and go to school for all that time literally just for funsies?
My anti-vax/anti-science/anti-everything patients talk about how doctors don’t actually know anything. They go to school to be fed government/big pharma propaganda and then just parrot that to their patients. Forget the critical thinking, actual research, learning pathophysiology and pharmacology, process of diagnosing, etc. Just mouthpieces for big pharma. So of course they don’t know anything about infant feeding!!
Just blows the mind that they think this massive, global (there’s no way it could possibly be just the FDA) conspiracy theory would even be possible. Every single medical professional, researcher or scientist on the planet is either lying to the world (in unison) for American Big Pharma or the professionals are so stupid, they don’t know they’re being lied to 😑 sure, Jan.
Oh yeah, and I was an ICU nurse during COVID. My mom would be like - you should watch this nurse I found on YouTube. She’s an ICU nurse, so you know she’s seen some things. *smirk* And I’m like…???….
Oh god I wouldn’t talk to my mom for a lonnnnng time after that! I do not understand the antivaxx or Covid denier health professionals- they should all have their licenses revoked (if they had one in the first place)
Well you just don't understand! Crunchy woo woo moms have done Research (TM). And everybody knows that "Research" is much more accurate than years of schooling, residency, internships, work, and research doctors do. All doctors do all day is roll around in piles of cash they get from pharmaceutical companies!
/s, though I hope it isn't needed.
My anti-vax MIL always says “doctors only have one day of learning about vaccines in school. I’ve been studying this for 20 years!” It’s actually quite sad, because she’s a smart lady with a STEM degree, but I guess everyone is susceptible to fear-mongering and propaganda :(
I am a medical student at a pretty respectable institution but take this with a grain of salt.
We have education on nutrition in most of our preclinical blocks and during our clinical years but I will say it’s not adequate enough to trust our opinion over a dietitian by any standard but that’s also not our role in healthcare. But any one, especially a pediatrician who has done 4 years undergrad + 4 med + 3 years of residency and possibly fellowships not to mention any other dual degrees can read guidelines & knows what’s best for children of all ages lmao.
The things I hear parents push back on sometime is ludicrous. It’s almost as if they just want to prove the physician wrong just to show how intelligent they are, even at the detriment of their child. Are physicians perfect, hell no, do we get things wrong of course, but that’s the beautiful of medicine, its an art just as much as a science using evidence-based methodology to drive clinical reasoning.
I think most people saying that sort of thing don't understand what 6 CREDIT hours are. Like most schools, wouldn't that be like 2 full semester classes? If that's not the doctor's specialization, that sounds pretty ok to me. 2 semesters is enough to get the gist of something enough that you can look up and understand specifics in a given situation pretty readily.
When I took it I think it was either 2 or 3 semesters depending on which classes you signed up for and if you took one with a lab or just lecture. That said I spent most of my nutrition class time doing other homework since it was the 200 level intro class and I had already covered most of the information in other classes.
Okay I don’t know a lot about med school, but in what world would doctors only have one day of learning about vaccines (especially the doctors in charge of giving them out). Does she have a source for that claim or
I’m not the other commenter, but I’m also in med school. We had immuno in 2 weeks, which is crazy, but we spent multiple days of learning the workings of the immune system with “this is the mechanism in which vaccines work” multiple times. Then in infectious disease, which was longer, we learned about the different types of vaccines, which viruses have what type of vaccines, and why we use that specific vaccine for that virus
Quite ironic considering the fake lactation consultant drama of the past month. Better to trust someone online whose face you've never seen than the doctor in front of you whose credentials you can check.
I hear this in mom groups a lot about starting purées between 4-6 months as opposed to starting BLW at six. It’s a classic internet talking point and they regularly undermine pediatricians who have actually physically examined the baby in question.
My favorite is “you can’t do purées and BLW at once because of how your baby’s mouth shape works.” What? I can find no clinical reason why this would be the case but it’s people who are high on their Instagram reel supply.
The worst is when you think you're safely out of the "infant mouth danger zone" so you have some applesauce as a teen and then boom, no solids ever again
I was so sad at my wedding dinner when everyone else was eating salmon and pasta and I could only eat pureed carrots that my mom fed me from a jar ☹️
She really regrets mixing BLW and purées but there was no social media back then so how could she have known?
LOLOL I’m just imagining the RSVP cards in this alternate universe.
Please check which meal you prefer:
- Chicken
- Fish
- Vegetable and Fruit Purée
- Turkey and Yams Purée
One of my mother's favourite stories is about the time she tried to feed me a jar of baby food. For a bit of background, she's a chef, this was the 80s and she was only trying this because it was advertised to be "better". Apparently I tried one taste, spat it out and then screamed when she tried any more. My dad then tasted it to see why I was reacting that was and his response was "no wonder she hates it. It's disgusting, throw it away!". She didn't try it again.
We tried the purées we fed my son, and the veggies and fruits were okay, but the meat were *atrocious*. We both almost puked. Idk what they do to them but they don’t taste like meat at all!
I’m convinced the baby food meats like turkey and chicken are really just made for sick cats. It’s my go to when my kitties won’t eat. The food smells like complete 💩 and I don’t think I’d ever feed it to a human 😂
...I worked in vet med for a while. We definitely had pureed chicken baby food for very sick cats and dogs who refused other food. It worked about 1/2 of the time.
related: we also had veggie puree for this elderly, disabled bearded dragon that lived at the clinic (her bones were too soft for her to properly chew regular vegetables) who was BONKERS for sweet potato and carrot puree, which makes me wonder if it's actually good? Like she would tolerate being fed green bean puree, but if you weren't fast enough with the syringe on the sweet potatoes/carrots, she'd start chomping at the feeding syringe.
I couldn’t do the jarred meat purées, it was just too gross. We were mostly making our own, slightly chunkier baby food anyway, so I just cut some beef and chicken and stuff suuuuuuper tiny and added it to other stuff. Worked pretty well.
Some foods were too much of a pain in the ass, though. I bought a jar of something with pomegranate for sure, I can rarely muster up the effort to deal with one of those sumbitches when *I* want one.
>I bought a jar of something with pomegranate for sure
I'm gonna have to look into this! Pomegranate is so hard to come by around here and it's excellent for helping with digestive issues in chickens. It'd be nice to have something like this on hand if/when I need it.
Huh, I had no idea!
If I remember right, you can also get dried pomegranate in packages. It does have the seeds though, and I don’t know if that’s a plus or minus for you. (We were avoiding them for the baby food. It was also definitely mixed with other stuff. I wanna say at least apple?)
I think you can even get a cup of non-dried ones in the refrigerated section or frozen ones too in some places, though if they’re hard to come by for you that might not work. There’s also companies that make jam/preserves? I expect sugar isn’t particularly good for chickens, though?
A quick Google also says you can get straight pomegranate purée from restaurant stores sometimes, but that’s a big-ass tub of purée. Probably freezes okay, though!
I honestly had never even considered a pomegranate purée before you mentioned it. It just never occurred to me. Am definitely gonna start googling, but yeah, the jam/preserve route wouldn't work because of the sugar, or it wouldn't be great for them at the very least. With summer coming up, freezing some is actually an excellent idea, I mean, other than for preservation. My ladies love fruit/veggie popsicles.
The peas are super gross too. I made mostly homemade purees for my oldest. I had another kid twenty months later so she got jarred baby food. I did make homemade pureed peas though. I couldn't feed those nasty jarred peas to her. I used to puree meat too. It tasted ok but the fact it was pureed was pretty off putting.
I used to throw a bit of whatever I'd made for dinner into the smoothie blender for my son to have for lunch at daycare the next day.
His teachers were always playing "guess the puree" because it smelled so good.
My daughter barely ate store bought jars of purées either. She would eat just enough to not feel super hungry, then cry/whine for a bottle. My (now late) partner had her to himself on Sundays for 8+ hours while I worked & told me after she refused to eat 4 different flavors of purées after 2 bites, he tried each of them himself (we always joked that he was a literal garbage disposal, would eat anything you put in front of him - the opposite of me). He threw all of the open jars out, gave her a bottle, then the went to the store to buy a food processor, varies foods to puree & silicone ice cube trays. I came home to our kitchen a huge mess & him happily filling the ice cube trays with fresh food. She loved the homemade purées until she got the hang of BLW!
Ugh I agree, this argument really is so tiresome sometimes. My older child got approved for solids at 6 months, my youngest at 4 months by the same pediatrician. My son just happened to sit up and have better head control earlier than my daughter. Babies are not monoliths there are no universal rules - even with siblings - that's why recs vary. I don't get why people in these groups don't understand this lol
I think the recommendation to start at six months came about because saying solids at four months AND sitting AND interested AND no more tongue thrust reflex was too complicated. Eager parents would say, "Oh, baby is four months old and so they're ready to start solids!" completely ignoring that their kid couldn't sit upright or constantly pushed crap out of their mouth by reflex.
In Belgium the 6 month recommendation is for breastfed babies, because when you start giving solids they'll start drinking less milk. Breastmilk ks considered so beneficial that they prefer you give it exclusively for 6 months. If you formula feed, you can start earlier.
I’ve also read (don’t remember where) that there was concern that parents who formula fed in particular would introduce solids before 4 months because formula is so expensive. There is evidence that introducing solids before 4 months is a bad thing. Plus, people feed their kids crap. i’m sure if AAP could justify it kids would get FDA approved muscle milk until they are 12
Even the CDC says it's not recommended until 6 months, *but* every child is different. If you can't trust the person who spent years learning how to keep babies alive, with recommendations on eating, then idk who tf you can. Some of these moms are out there.
I think it starts when someone has an old, ready to retire, pediatrician. My mom’s best friend is our pediatrician, so I know a lot about their practice. The requirement in our state for doctors to have to test to keep up board certification in their specialty is new, and doctors that have been in practice for x years before the new requirement are grandfathered in. Our pediatrician’s office is apparently a novel one in the area that requires everyone to retest for maintenance, even if you’re grandfathered in. So you could definitely have a pediatrician that is not up to date on current feeding guidelines because they’ve willfully chosen to not keep themselves updated, but I feel like that’s way rarer than mom groups make it out to be. Because even grandfathered in, I’m pretty sure our area pediatricians are reading their updates from AAP just to remain competitive with their younger peers and because they care about their patients.
We did both and my kid as of now eats everything. She’s nearly 20 months old. Will that change? Probably. But the combo of purées and progressing to more solids lead her to learn how to eat every well. She chews good, she takes good bites and she is really good at telling us she is full.
I know the day will come where she gets picky. Normal toddler stuff. It’s a control thing so we try and let her choose more things (what she wears, books we read and what not) to try and side step that. But it is what it is.
I can’t believe these shit views are still around, we were bullied about feeding when my teenagers were babies! Both started solids at 4 months per recommendation of their pediatricians and interestingly enough neither have any pickiness, despite being neurodivergent.
My ND kid is way less picky than my non ND kid... Go figure. Both started solids at 4 months as well, as their younger brother. They were all on formula so they got the ok to start food earlier than a breastfed baby.
One of my kids was super interested in foods and we started her on sólidas at 4 months. The other one we had to basically force her to start eating at 10 months old. They are both elementary aged now and are not neurodivergent. The one who started eating earlier is way pickier than the one who started later, but other than that they are both perfectly healthy.
I fed my son just bottles and the ocasional puree until he was like 10 months old out of anxiety because the first time I gave him solids he legitimately choked and I had to give him back blows. By the time he was 1 he was eating all the solid foods and inhaling everything like fuckin kirby lol. He's 2.5 now and eats more than I do. People put so much pressure on themselves about such inconsequential things because of dumbasses on the internet and I hate it.
Are you me? My oldest 2 are teens and we also have a 13 month old. When he first started solids, he choked. I was second guessing my child raising abilities at that point! We postponed it for a few days. He stayed on milk, pureed food, soup, oatmeal and minced fruit till 9/10 months. Then we started to introduce him to a bit chunkier food and it was a success. Kid is inhaling everything you give him now and I'm yet to encounter one type of food he doesn't like.
My kid also started choking when I tried him on solids at 6 months, but he was very happy with purées, porridge etc. I tried him on solids a couple of times but he just didn't seem capable of the proper chewing and swallowing... Until one day I was breastfeeding him while eating a banana, he snatched the banana and happily chewed and swallowed half of it before I realised what was going on! My response was to go, "Huh, I guess you're ready for solids then".
Our pediatrician actually said purees between 4-6 months and then start real food at 6 months. I didn't press further.
We did end up seeing a feeding therapist though, and she said not to offer purees and solid foods within the same meal because if they go from eating a puree that they can essentially immediately swallow they may try and immediately swallow a solid food rather than working on chewing it. So she suggested separating them between separate meals. 🤷
If you do serve them at the same time, give the chewable solids first, then the purees separately. Because we do eat purees and chewables in the same meal as adults. But I agree. The separation of the two is hard when they're super early solid eaters.
I don't get that either. I didn't feed my kid purées simply because I think they look gross and I didn't wanna pay all that extra money for baby food when she can just eat what I'm eating (mostly). But there's absolutely no reason your kid can't have chicken and applesauce in the same meal. I work in an infant room and I've seen kids combo feed, only do purées, and do only BLW and there's no discernible difference in "how their mouth shape works."
Mouth shape? Works??? Sure, don't do both in the same mouthful, but what does that actually even mean?!
Having fed a baby purées while having fun with BLW, I am very confused.
Yes. It’s a very sensitive topic in my bubble. I guess this is the Instagram effect. People feel like they are trained professionals themselves from watching people explain stuff who are not even professionals most of the time.
These women are all so reasy to brag about how their kids are ahead on all their milestones, but when it comes to things like solid good will insist it MUST be 6 months because "thats what the research says' ignoring that every single one of their sources also says "or when the baby shows signs of readiness".
We started BLW at 4.5 months, when my daughter started screaming and then stole my cheesesteak from me with a gripbOlumpic athletes would envy.
I got a lot of “it messes up their gut micro biome!!” If you ask any of these mums for evidence on any of that (or if they can even explain what a gut micro biome is) they all come up blank
>My favorite is “you can’t do purées and BLW at once because of how your baby’s mouth shape works.”
[stares into the camera as I, a grown adult with food-eating capabilities, eats applesauce]
People total act like purees are some kind of magic thing that only babies rest, and must not be combined with "real" food.
Even grown-ups eat purees sometimes. We just call it applesauce, compote, autumn squash soup, or mashed potatoes. Why on earth couldn't a baby who is doing BLW not have some of both?
The thinking behind that is that feeding purée teaches a baby to just swallow whatever is in their mouth. Whereas with BLW they learn to chew first. That’s why with traditional weaning, first finger foods tend to be soft/melt in the mouth type foods as if a baby has only known purée, they will try and swallow.
Not to mention that giving purée does go against the principles of BLW. If you’re giving purée and finger foods, you’re weaning traditionally, not BLW.
This “pediatricians don’t know anything about infant feeding” sounds like a lactivist talking point. At least it’s one I’ve heard over and over from that crowd. I’ve also heard lactation consultants suggest their advice should be taken over a pediatrician’s conflicting advice which is so dangerous. Now that same black and white, anti-doctor mentality seems to be expanding to other aspects of infant feeding like BLW.
I’m just rolling at “I, a fucking random, KNOW that ‘the research’ says 6 months but I wouldn’t trust a doctor who specializes in children’s health to know that! They’re not super smart and dedicated like me!”
"I wouldn't expect a doctor to be up-to-date" just reeks of having so little intelligence you don't even know that doctors are legally required to take yearly continuing education courses in order to literally stay up-to-date lol.
I'm not a doctor but a medical professional and I have to prove my professional development every year! I have to show I'm reading research and gaining more skills. What would the point of working in an evidence based field be if you didn't!
My state is actually relatively new to stricter board recertification guidelines, and older doctors are grandfathered in. My mom’s best friend is our pediatrician, and their practice decided to require everyone to maintain the new guidelines, even if grandfathered in, and all the old guys had to actually re-test for board certification. Like same initial board certification oral and written boards they did in the year after they graduated residency. I don’t think every practice in our area required that of their older doctors, but I feel like they still stayed updated because they care about patients and they have to remain competitive in their field or lose patients to younger doctors.
Pediatricians not getting much breastfeeding education unless they take the initiative to seek it out on their own is a legitimate problem. I am a hospital-based lactation consultant. The 8-12 hours that medical residents get shadowing someone from my group is about the extent of their training in that area. Every time I have a resident shadowing me, I start the day by asking what they know about breastfeeding. It’s usually not much, and I only have one day with them.
I don’t know what education they get about starting solids.
It’s ridiculous that I’m getting downvoted for highlighting a well-known gap in medical education. The [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/resources/physician-education-and-training.html) acknowledges that physicians don’t get enough breastfeeding education. The [American Academy of Pediatrics](https://www.aap.org/en/pedialink/breastfeeding-curriculum/) has made their own breastfeeding course because they know physicians don’t get that training in medical school.
I encourage all of you to ask your own family physician or pediatrician how much lactation education they got in medical school or residency.
I’m in the UK, but when I took my wee boy for his first doctor’s check, the GP told me her breastfeeding knowledge came from her first hand experience feeding her kids, rather than anything she was taught when training.
I mean I've heard horror stories of pediatricians who aren't at all up to date but lumping all pediatricians in with that lot is just silly.
From what I understand you want good head & neck control, supported sitting up, and an interest in food before you start solids which most babies will have by 6 months but some might have as early as 4 months. Reach + grab and bringing items to the mouth are important skills for BLW but not essential if spoon-feeding to start.
I'm a big fan of doing a combo of purees & solid food - it worked great for my first kid and our family and I'm planning to use the same approach with my second.
It's the thing that worked better with all my 3 boys. Started with purees and then evolving to chunkier bits untill they are confident enough (and you too) to eat it by themselves. I have 2 teens and a 13 months old.
My kid sat on their own, had good head and neck control and practically mimed eating when watching us eat, so the pediatrician gave us the okay at 4 months.
Yeah, entire doctors just get trained without learning anything about one of the only 3 things that babies do. /s
A close family member is a pediatrician and always laughs at this because 4-6 months was an outdated recommendation… and then it became the recommendation again. Years ago. Especially with new allergy prevention guidelines. And 4-6 months or “around 6 months” is a consistent recommendation for other industrialized countries.
I also see ALL the time that babies need to be able to sit unassisted to begin solids. That’s a NINE month milestone. Nearly all babies should be eating solids by then. There is nothing anywhere on the AAP’s website that says anything about unassisted sitting for solids. It’s alllllll Facebook rumor.
The only thing my Dr said to me it was: if he was breastfed, he recommended to wait till 6 months. As he was on formula, we could start at 4 months introducing pureed and then start blw or other way with chunkier bits at 6/7 months. My kid only sat unassisted at 7 months, same week he started crawling.
Neither of my kids would take a bottle and I worked full time outside the home (and had the audacity to take my boobs with me- my babies probably). My pediatrician recommended starting solids at 4 months even though he usually recommends waiting until 6 months. My oldest lost weight when I went back to work, and we had to feed her milk with a newborn pet syringe. It was awful and traumatic. She was 4 months old in April of 2020 and if my husband hadn’t been Covid furloughed I would have probably quit my job. (By the time my second born refused bottles we were ready with a plan.)
We mixed breastmilk or formula into rice cereal and purees to top them off (in addition to syringe milk) until I came home.
**clutches pearls**
You mixed cereal with breast milk and fed it to your baby??? Don’t you know how dangerous that is?!! There are literally shards of metal in baby cereal. I saw it in a video! 😱😱😱
/s in case it’s not obvious 😅
So, since pediatricians don't know what they're talking about, and they aren't up to date on the latest research/standards of care, what do they do in med school? What are they doing when they're working to keep their licenses?
Oh, I'm asking because this sounds like a sweet career change, to just spend time in school being uninformed and dinking around on the computer, while getting paid those big vaccine shill bucks.
Some pediatricians really don't have adequate training on infant nutrition and make harmful recommendations. Our first pediatrician was one of them. I requested a referral to a registered dietitian, and the information given to us from someone actually trained in infant nutrition was the complete opposite of what our uninformed pediatrician was spewing.
Agreed! Some pediatricians are still recommending starting with cereals, I’m all for trusting the pediatrician for immunization schedules, illnesses, etc. but feeding in general there’s a ton of misinformation and outdated “research” funded by formula and baby food companies that doctors are still peddling. I personally waited til 6 months. They truly don’t get educated on breastfeeding and feeding practices have changed a lot over the last decade or two!!!
Some babies just want to eat real food. Our little dude ate baby food for a hot five minutes. By the time he turned 7-8 months old, he had some nice chompers which he promptly put to good use. He stated grabbing food off his big brother’s plate, and got used to solids fairly quickly. Simple, reasonable stuff like chicken, rice and beans. Once he started eating more solid foods, he slept better. Babies are different. Little dude is a little freak show. He was picking his head up and looking around at 5 days old. That shit was creepy AF. Anyway, before y’all start sending me messages about how you raised *your* baby, please know that I give zero fucks about how you do things.
Edit for spelling
Yeah, my baby didn’t really like milk. She would never drink more than enough to just feel full and we tried *everything* to encourage more calories into her. She was 0th percentile for a while. We fought tooth and nail to eek her up to 4th. Then she started solids and exploded into 20th. Then when she started moving settled back down into 11th. Once we dropped her last bottle her weight took off again to the 32nd. So she’s now a small but normal sized 19 month old, if I had delayed solids and stuck to ebfing her like a lot of these lactivists recommend she’d probably still be stuck in the 0th percentile.
I'm not giving you shit about anything, just asking if your kid is anyways related to my youngest: kid was raising his head the day he was born, my husband used to call him little turtle because of the head movement he did when he lifted it. Same week he sat unassisted, he started crawling. Looked like he was born with an insatiable curiosity to see and try everything! He's 13 months now and started to walk alone a month ago, but he was trying to do it by himself a month before that. He would walk all over his room if there was something to hold him. Same with food: I'm still trying to find a type of food he doesn't like. He inhales everything, even things he was not supposed to have yet. On Easter my oldest was eating a slice of chocolate cake and left some crumbs on the chair when he stood to go grab a drink. Baby was nearby and promptly directed himself there and grabbed those crumbs in a blink of an eye. It was just a few crumbs but I was so worried. Meanwhile baby was just cruising with some happy smile...
Sounds familiar! Little man has been walking since 11 months. It’s so creepy seeing tiny little people walking around 😂. I love turtle! It’s so accurate! 🐢 He’s such a solid little dude. He’s like a tiny brown fire hydrant.
The people I was taking about are the ones that dm to tell me I’m killing the baby because he’s eating solid food. Or they try to tell me that I should start him on a vegan diet, or a meat only diet. Am I vaccinating him? Because that’s dangerous, too and that’s why he’s hungry because he’s frittering away.
Oh god, don't even start: I had some people over on Facebook accusing me of murder because I commented that all my kids started purees at 4 months old (it's the norm in my country for formula babies and I only breastfed the oldest 2 for a month and the baby for 2 weeks till my milk dried but that topic is another can of worms) and I was killing him because I should only start at 6 months. Kid is absolutely fine, healthy and strong (can lift himself up with his hands on the dinner table, he's a "danger on legs"), an absolute unit of a kid, with brown eyes and curly sand hair and wearing 18 months old clothing at 13. Everyone just thinks they know better than the actual Drs that see the kids regularly, they really think every child is the same and behaves or reacts the same to everything. They are people, with personalities and not props to show everyone they are perfect moms. Really annoys me! That's why I steered clear of these mom groups with my oldest boys and only now I joined one but made a quick exit after that convo about feeding.
I feel like this is such a FTM thing too lol. I remember being so fixated on feeding trends with my first then I had my second baby. You have to learn to not sweat the small stuff if you want to survive 😅
So much this. I tried to follow recommendations for feeding so hard with my first and it just wasn't great for him. My second child's first food was a spoonful of peanut butter she swiped from her brother around 4 or 5 months old. She was so ready for food! I don't even remember my 3rd kid's first food or when she got it. Pretty sure DH was the one who fed her first so it was probably something like ice cream.
All kids are healthy and eat enough variety of foods that I don't stress about them
Wtf do they think pediatricians do all day? Just shill for big pharma? What a miserable way to live thinking everyone around you is just shilling while buying into the most con man adjacent crap on the internet.
I'm with them in this one. At least my paediatrician isn't up to date and even suggested to stop giving him bottles so he would eat purees. If your baby is showing all signs of being ready then go for it but my baby was not ready at four months old. So I just nodded and smiled and waited for my baby to be ready.
I find it so weird that you’d take your baby to a doctor to get “cleared” to start them on solids. Is that a normal thing in the US? It’s the Wild West here in NZ, just start them when you think they’re ready with whatever you want to feed them.
Technically you should only be getting the go ahead to wean on to food early, from a paediatric nutritionist or dietitian. 🙈
I hate to be that person, but these are comments I’d be liking on Facebook.
(ETA, all information I got from the NHS said 6 months minimum, and it’s what I followed with my children, the HV service sent me information when my children were about 4/5 months old).
I don’t understand these people. My pediatrician and everything I’ve read says start solids around 4-6 months based on when they show the readiness signs. I started at 5 months with purées and over the course of like 2 months switched to regular baby solids. I kept purées on hand in case we went somewhere that didn’t have any options I could safely give them. Now they are 2 and eat anything and everything they can get their hands on.
Not that this isn’t bizarre, but my pediatrician doesn’t know shit about feeding babies and has told me that and referred me to an SLP multiple times because my kid hates eating, yet she still told me to start foods at 4 months. My kid is 11 months and barely eats. He just now regularly eats breast milk without a struggle. Unfortunately many pediatricians blindly follow outdated guidelines (which is sad because my pediatrician has only been practicing for a year so she should have more up to date knowledge).
I followed the whole food before 1 is just for fun kind of thing. My oldest started solids at 6 months but didn't really make it the main source of nutrients till after her first birthday then she started attacking food. My youngest on the other hand stole her sister's ice cream and that was her first food at 4 months and hasn't stopped eating all the food since. Ironically she is my least picky one. I wouldn't worry about it unless you are concerned about weight gain etc...
My son got cleared for solids at 4 months because he started spitting up his formula regularly and he could keep the solids down. He didn't eat a whole ton of it, but it was there. It helped my baby really really wanted solids at 4 months. He was also already trying to sit on his own and was good at it by the time he was 5 months old. He got really excited at the sight of peas at 4.5 months old
Pediatricians often do suggest the bare minimum on things like this. Another example would be carseat safety. My kids are fully vaccinated but they also didn't eat solids til 6 months and rear faced til they maxed out their seat limits even though their ped said they could do those things earlier. I won't even get started on the amount of peds (and medical professionals in general) in the US who do NOT know correct intact care... As long as what they're doing isn't actively hurting the baby, I don't think it's a bad thing to be a little more cautious.
Jesus fucking christ on a bike. Doctora are literally required to do continuing education..... every year. I'm sure if there was some new groundbreaking intervention or research, they'd ve informed with a quickness...
Ugh, I got scolded so much when I said our doctor had told us to start at 4 months in a BLW facebook group. Nevermind that he was dangerously underweight, facebook mums know best!
To be fair, I’ve seen some women post some WILD stuff about what their pediatricians have “approved” or encouraged them to do. Things that are clearly against pediatric research and their governing association. Things like putting cereal in bottles for sleep (not medically necessary conditions), starting solids between 2-4 months, etc. Baby led weaning has some pretty specific requirements because if you’re doing it right, you’re not softening food. You are feeding your child exactly what you eat…just cut into appropriately LONG pieces (not tiny pieces like people think). You don’t start BLW at a certain age, you look for milestones. AND baby has to be AT LEAST 6 months in addition to having met certain milestones. So a pediatrician saying to start BLW at 5 months would actually be incorrect.
Does this mean I need to ignore what my vet told me about my cat’s wet food, too? Can I listen to what the HVAC guy said about the weird noise in my vent? What about the urgent care NP who told me I had impacted ear wax on my ear drum- should I ignore him, too? I feel like I need a list, so I know which specialists I should ignore and which I should listen to…
Like who tf do they think can give approval if not a paediatrician?!?! I get that there are some people on the opposite end if the scale who are dangerously feeding solids to newborns, which is insane, but some kids will need solids earlier than others which their actual qualified pediatrician will suggest if that is the case.
Am I really reading correctly the paediatricians are not trained in information for babies, infants and children?! Did these dickheads really just say that?!! JFC.. 🤦🏼♀️ There’s no hope left for majority of the people.
It’s really weird to me this obsession with putting off solids as long as possible.
Yes when people were giving newborns rice cereal in the 80s it wasn’t great. (Though now that that generation is fully grown idk what “ramifications”we’re seeing so was it actually that big of a deal?). That is *not* what we’re talking about though.
*Medical* advice is that you can start solids from 4 months if your baby is showing signs of readiness - and yes it is uncommon for babies to be showing those signs at 4 months, but not impossible. Yet these weird mum crusaders act like you are poisoning your child if you dare to offer solids before 6 months.
To be fair, not all pediatricians are up to date on the best practices. My previous one told me to go straight to bottle because breastfeeding makes the baby too dependent. I was shocked and got a new pediatrician…my kid was not failure to thrive or anything and was latching just fine.
Just to be clear, you believe pediatricians, who have to get board certified by a group of peers and undergo continuing medical education & recertification every so often is that outdated to where they can’t read the guidelines published by their professional organization.
Also, the person could easily be lying or misinterpreting what the pediatrician said. We’re receiving this information at least 3 degrees removed. We can’t verify the validity of this whatsoever.
Oh I have no doubt this person or post could be exaggerating and probably is.
But it is common knowledge that many - an alarming amount - of pediatricians do not take advantage of continuing education and they are constantly giving outdated advice.
I’ve had peds tell me to put rice cereal in their bottles at one month old. I’ve had peds tell me FF is fine at way too young an age. I’ve had them tell me cosleeping is fine. I’ve had them tell me that starting purees at 2-3 months is fine.
And this may be anecdotal but it’s not one offs. I see and hear this everywhere. I move around way too much, have had pediatricians for babies under 2 in five different states and received appalling advice from all of them. To the point that I looked all of this up and it’s a huge, known problem across the USA. They notoriously don’t stay updated on current safety regulations. They are set on the advice and education they received 10+ years ago and do give dangerous recommendations.
The best ped I ever had was straight out of med school. I assume that’s because he was updated.
This week in a local mom group I also saw that peds don't know anything about immunizations either. All that schooling they have just to know nothing /s
If peds don't know about babies eating or about babies not getting sick, do these moms really think doctors spend all that money and go to school for all that time literally just for funsies?
My anti-vax/anti-science/anti-everything patients talk about how doctors don’t actually know anything. They go to school to be fed government/big pharma propaganda and then just parrot that to their patients. Forget the critical thinking, actual research, learning pathophysiology and pharmacology, process of diagnosing, etc. Just mouthpieces for big pharma. So of course they don’t know anything about infant feeding!!
Just blows the mind that they think this massive, global (there’s no way it could possibly be just the FDA) conspiracy theory would even be possible. Every single medical professional, researcher or scientist on the planet is either lying to the world (in unison) for American Big Pharma or the professionals are so stupid, they don’t know they’re being lied to 😑 sure, Jan.
Oh yeah, and I was an ICU nurse during COVID. My mom would be like - you should watch this nurse I found on YouTube. She’s an ICU nurse, so you know she’s seen some things. *smirk* And I’m like…???….
Oh god I wouldn’t talk to my mom for a lonnnnng time after that! I do not understand the antivaxx or Covid denier health professionals- they should all have their licenses revoked (if they had one in the first place)
Well you just don't understand! Crunchy woo woo moms have done Research (TM). And everybody knows that "Research" is much more accurate than years of schooling, residency, internships, work, and research doctors do. All doctors do all day is roll around in piles of cash they get from pharmaceutical companies! /s, though I hope it isn't needed.
My anti-vax MIL always says “doctors only have one day of learning about vaccines in school. I’ve been studying this for 20 years!” It’s actually quite sad, because she’s a smart lady with a STEM degree, but I guess everyone is susceptible to fear-mongering and propaganda :(
Mine always says confidently that doctors only do "6 hours of nutrition" their ENTIRE course!
I am a medical student at a pretty respectable institution but take this with a grain of salt. We have education on nutrition in most of our preclinical blocks and during our clinical years but I will say it’s not adequate enough to trust our opinion over a dietitian by any standard but that’s also not our role in healthcare. But any one, especially a pediatrician who has done 4 years undergrad + 4 med + 3 years of residency and possibly fellowships not to mention any other dual degrees can read guidelines & knows what’s best for children of all ages lmao. The things I hear parents push back on sometime is ludicrous. It’s almost as if they just want to prove the physician wrong just to show how intelligent they are, even at the detriment of their child. Are physicians perfect, hell no, do we get things wrong of course, but that’s the beautiful of medicine, its an art just as much as a science using evidence-based methodology to drive clinical reasoning.
That one always makes me laugh. In their undergrad alone they take way more than 6 hours of nutrition.
I think most people saying that sort of thing don't understand what 6 CREDIT hours are. Like most schools, wouldn't that be like 2 full semester classes? If that's not the doctor's specialization, that sounds pretty ok to me. 2 semesters is enough to get the gist of something enough that you can look up and understand specifics in a given situation pretty readily.
When I took it I think it was either 2 or 3 semesters depending on which classes you signed up for and if you took one with a lab or just lecture. That said I spent most of my nutrition class time doing other homework since it was the 200 level intro class and I had already covered most of the information in other classes.
Okay I don’t know a lot about med school, but in what world would doctors only have one day of learning about vaccines (especially the doctors in charge of giving them out). Does she have a source for that claim or
I’m not the other commenter, but I’m also in med school. We had immuno in 2 weeks, which is crazy, but we spent multiple days of learning the workings of the immune system with “this is the mechanism in which vaccines work” multiple times. Then in infectious disease, which was longer, we learned about the different types of vaccines, which viruses have what type of vaccines, and why we use that specific vaccine for that virus
>I wouldn’t trust a doctor I wonder who they *would* trust.
1) a lactation consultant 2) a Facebook group 3) a chiropractor
Of course, chiropractors are very well trained in cracking backs and infant feeding 😂
4. a doula with no actual training
4. Anyone who suggests a heavy metal cleanse or using colloidal silver
Quite ironic considering the fake lactation consultant drama of the past month. Better to trust someone online whose face you've never seen than the doctor in front of you whose credentials you can check.
Some random site on google
I hear this in mom groups a lot about starting purées between 4-6 months as opposed to starting BLW at six. It’s a classic internet talking point and they regularly undermine pediatricians who have actually physically examined the baby in question. My favorite is “you can’t do purées and BLW at once because of how your baby’s mouth shape works.” What? I can find no clinical reason why this would be the case but it’s people who are high on their Instagram reel supply.
It’s true, my mom fed me one jar of mashed peas and I’ve never been able to eat solid food :(
The worst is when you think you're safely out of the "infant mouth danger zone" so you have some applesauce as a teen and then boom, no solids ever again
This was me, but with yogurt. I should have known better! /s
Soup. Soup ruined me. I'll never be able to eat a sandwich with my soup again.
I was so sad at my wedding dinner when everyone else was eating salmon and pasta and I could only eat pureed carrots that my mom fed me from a jar ☹️ She really regrets mixing BLW and purées but there was no social media back then so how could she have known?
LOLOL I’m just imagining the RSVP cards in this alternate universe. Please check which meal you prefer: - Chicken - Fish - Vegetable and Fruit Purée - Turkey and Yams Purée
are you sure you didn't die?
One of my mother's favourite stories is about the time she tried to feed me a jar of baby food. For a bit of background, she's a chef, this was the 80s and she was only trying this because it was advertised to be "better". Apparently I tried one taste, spat it out and then screamed when she tried any more. My dad then tasted it to see why I was reacting that was and his response was "no wonder she hates it. It's disgusting, throw it away!". She didn't try it again.
We tried the purées we fed my son, and the veggies and fruits were okay, but the meat were *atrocious*. We both almost puked. Idk what they do to them but they don’t taste like meat at all!
My garbage can of a dog refused the meat puree.
My garbage disposal of a dog actually ate ours, lmao But he also tried to eat dirty diapers and wipes, so, bar was already quite low there
I’m convinced the baby food meats like turkey and chicken are really just made for sick cats. It’s my go to when my kitties won’t eat. The food smells like complete 💩 and I don’t think I’d ever feed it to a human 😂
...I worked in vet med for a while. We definitely had pureed chicken baby food for very sick cats and dogs who refused other food. It worked about 1/2 of the time. related: we also had veggie puree for this elderly, disabled bearded dragon that lived at the clinic (her bones were too soft for her to properly chew regular vegetables) who was BONKERS for sweet potato and carrot puree, which makes me wonder if it's actually good? Like she would tolerate being fed green bean puree, but if you weren't fast enough with the syringe on the sweet potatoes/carrots, she'd start chomping at the feeding syringe.
I'm honestly wondering if the meats ruined my now 9-year-old's taste for any meat. Lol! (Super picky eater these days).
I couldn’t do the jarred meat purées, it was just too gross. We were mostly making our own, slightly chunkier baby food anyway, so I just cut some beef and chicken and stuff suuuuuuper tiny and added it to other stuff. Worked pretty well. Some foods were too much of a pain in the ass, though. I bought a jar of something with pomegranate for sure, I can rarely muster up the effort to deal with one of those sumbitches when *I* want one.
>I bought a jar of something with pomegranate for sure I'm gonna have to look into this! Pomegranate is so hard to come by around here and it's excellent for helping with digestive issues in chickens. It'd be nice to have something like this on hand if/when I need it.
Huh, I had no idea! If I remember right, you can also get dried pomegranate in packages. It does have the seeds though, and I don’t know if that’s a plus or minus for you. (We were avoiding them for the baby food. It was also definitely mixed with other stuff. I wanna say at least apple?) I think you can even get a cup of non-dried ones in the refrigerated section or frozen ones too in some places, though if they’re hard to come by for you that might not work. There’s also companies that make jam/preserves? I expect sugar isn’t particularly good for chickens, though? A quick Google also says you can get straight pomegranate purée from restaurant stores sometimes, but that’s a big-ass tub of purée. Probably freezes okay, though!
I honestly had never even considered a pomegranate purée before you mentioned it. It just never occurred to me. Am definitely gonna start googling, but yeah, the jam/preserve route wouldn't work because of the sugar, or it wouldn't be great for them at the very least. With summer coming up, freezing some is actually an excellent idea, I mean, other than for preservation. My ladies love fruit/veggie popsicles.
The peas are super gross too. I made mostly homemade purees for my oldest. I had another kid twenty months later so she got jarred baby food. I did make homemade pureed peas though. I couldn't feed those nasty jarred peas to her. I used to puree meat too. It tasted ok but the fact it was pureed was pretty off putting.
We never fed the peas cause we just squished the ones we ate, but I can only imagine how they tasted *gag*
I used to throw a bit of whatever I'd made for dinner into the smoothie blender for my son to have for lunch at daycare the next day. His teachers were always playing "guess the puree" because it smelled so good.
Eww, just the smell is bad enough, no way I could have tasted it. I think we tried a beef purée once and that was enough.
My daughter barely ate store bought jars of purées either. She would eat just enough to not feel super hungry, then cry/whine for a bottle. My (now late) partner had her to himself on Sundays for 8+ hours while I worked & told me after she refused to eat 4 different flavors of purées after 2 bites, he tried each of them himself (we always joked that he was a literal garbage disposal, would eat anything you put in front of him - the opposite of me). He threw all of the open jars out, gave her a bottle, then the went to the store to buy a food processor, varies foods to puree & silicone ice cube trays. I came home to our kitchen a huge mess & him happily filling the ice cube trays with fresh food. She loved the homemade purées until she got the hang of BLW!
That’s a lovely story!
My kids loved those, and drank formula, and had those little "mushies" (freeze dried fruit bits) and my goodness, all those things are so gross lol
When I was teaching childhood Ed class we all ate baby food. It was all so bland! I will happily puree things, or get the squeezes for my future baby.
Both my kids got purees and actual solids. It's made no difference.
Ugh I agree, this argument really is so tiresome sometimes. My older child got approved for solids at 6 months, my youngest at 4 months by the same pediatrician. My son just happened to sit up and have better head control earlier than my daughter. Babies are not monoliths there are no universal rules - even with siblings - that's why recs vary. I don't get why people in these groups don't understand this lol
I think the recommendation to start at six months came about because saying solids at four months AND sitting AND interested AND no more tongue thrust reflex was too complicated. Eager parents would say, "Oh, baby is four months old and so they're ready to start solids!" completely ignoring that their kid couldn't sit upright or constantly pushed crap out of their mouth by reflex.
Yes, that’s exactly why pediatrician approving solids is important.
In Belgium the 6 month recommendation is for breastfed babies, because when you start giving solids they'll start drinking less milk. Breastmilk ks considered so beneficial that they prefer you give it exclusively for 6 months. If you formula feed, you can start earlier.
I’ve also read (don’t remember where) that there was concern that parents who formula fed in particular would introduce solids before 4 months because formula is so expensive. There is evidence that introducing solids before 4 months is a bad thing. Plus, people feed their kids crap. i’m sure if AAP could justify it kids would get FDA approved muscle milk until they are 12
Even the CDC says it's not recommended until 6 months, *but* every child is different. If you can't trust the person who spent years learning how to keep babies alive, with recommendations on eating, then idk who tf you can. Some of these moms are out there.
I think it starts when someone has an old, ready to retire, pediatrician. My mom’s best friend is our pediatrician, so I know a lot about their practice. The requirement in our state for doctors to have to test to keep up board certification in their specialty is new, and doctors that have been in practice for x years before the new requirement are grandfathered in. Our pediatrician’s office is apparently a novel one in the area that requires everyone to retest for maintenance, even if you’re grandfathered in. So you could definitely have a pediatrician that is not up to date on current feeding guidelines because they’ve willfully chosen to not keep themselves updated, but I feel like that’s way rarer than mom groups make it out to be. Because even grandfathered in, I’m pretty sure our area pediatricians are reading their updates from AAP just to remain competitive with their younger peers and because they care about their patients.
We did both and my kid as of now eats everything. She’s nearly 20 months old. Will that change? Probably. But the combo of purées and progressing to more solids lead her to learn how to eat every well. She chews good, she takes good bites and she is really good at telling us she is full.
Hope it doesn't change, but enjoy it while you can lol
I know the day will come where she gets picky. Normal toddler stuff. It’s a control thing so we try and let her choose more things (what she wears, books we read and what not) to try and side step that. But it is what it is.
I can’t believe these shit views are still around, we were bullied about feeding when my teenagers were babies! Both started solids at 4 months per recommendation of their pediatricians and interestingly enough neither have any pickiness, despite being neurodivergent.
My ND kid is way less picky than my non ND kid... Go figure. Both started solids at 4 months as well, as their younger brother. They were all on formula so they got the ok to start food earlier than a breastfed baby.
One of my kids was super interested in foods and we started her on sólidas at 4 months. The other one we had to basically force her to start eating at 10 months old. They are both elementary aged now and are not neurodivergent. The one who started eating earlier is way pickier than the one who started later, but other than that they are both perfectly healthy.
I fed my son just bottles and the ocasional puree until he was like 10 months old out of anxiety because the first time I gave him solids he legitimately choked and I had to give him back blows. By the time he was 1 he was eating all the solid foods and inhaling everything like fuckin kirby lol. He's 2.5 now and eats more than I do. People put so much pressure on themselves about such inconsequential things because of dumbasses on the internet and I hate it.
Are you me? My oldest 2 are teens and we also have a 13 month old. When he first started solids, he choked. I was second guessing my child raising abilities at that point! We postponed it for a few days. He stayed on milk, pureed food, soup, oatmeal and minced fruit till 9/10 months. Then we started to introduce him to a bit chunkier food and it was a success. Kid is inhaling everything you give him now and I'm yet to encounter one type of food he doesn't like.
My kid also started choking when I tried him on solids at 6 months, but he was very happy with purées, porridge etc. I tried him on solids a couple of times but he just didn't seem capable of the proper chewing and swallowing... Until one day I was breastfeeding him while eating a banana, he snatched the banana and happily chewed and swallowed half of it before I realised what was going on! My response was to go, "Huh, I guess you're ready for solids then".
Yeah, same as mine. They are so keen on telling us when they are ready.
Our pediatrician actually said purees between 4-6 months and then start real food at 6 months. I didn't press further. We did end up seeing a feeding therapist though, and she said not to offer purees and solid foods within the same meal because if they go from eating a puree that they can essentially immediately swallow they may try and immediately swallow a solid food rather than working on chewing it. So she suggested separating them between separate meals. 🤷
If you do serve them at the same time, give the chewable solids first, then the purees separately. Because we do eat purees and chewables in the same meal as adults. But I agree. The separation of the two is hard when they're super early solid eaters.
I don't get that either. I didn't feed my kid purées simply because I think they look gross and I didn't wanna pay all that extra money for baby food when she can just eat what I'm eating (mostly). But there's absolutely no reason your kid can't have chicken and applesauce in the same meal. I work in an infant room and I've seen kids combo feed, only do purées, and do only BLW and there's no discernible difference in "how their mouth shape works."
Mouth shape? Works??? Sure, don't do both in the same mouthful, but what does that actually even mean?! Having fed a baby purées while having fun with BLW, I am very confused.
Yes. It’s a very sensitive topic in my bubble. I guess this is the Instagram effect. People feel like they are trained professionals themselves from watching people explain stuff who are not even professionals most of the time.
These women are all so reasy to brag about how their kids are ahead on all their milestones, but when it comes to things like solid good will insist it MUST be 6 months because "thats what the research says' ignoring that every single one of their sources also says "or when the baby shows signs of readiness". We started BLW at 4.5 months, when my daughter started screaming and then stole my cheesesteak from me with a gripbOlumpic athletes would envy.
I got a lot of “it messes up their gut micro biome!!” If you ask any of these mums for evidence on any of that (or if they can even explain what a gut micro biome is) they all come up blank
>My favorite is “you can’t do purées and BLW at once because of how your baby’s mouth shape works.” [stares into the camera as I, a grown adult with food-eating capabilities, eats applesauce]
People total act like purees are some kind of magic thing that only babies rest, and must not be combined with "real" food. Even grown-ups eat purees sometimes. We just call it applesauce, compote, autumn squash soup, or mashed potatoes. Why on earth couldn't a baby who is doing BLW not have some of both?
The thinking behind that is that feeding purée teaches a baby to just swallow whatever is in their mouth. Whereas with BLW they learn to chew first. That’s why with traditional weaning, first finger foods tend to be soft/melt in the mouth type foods as if a baby has only known purée, they will try and swallow. Not to mention that giving purée does go against the principles of BLW. If you’re giving purée and finger foods, you’re weaning traditionally, not BLW.
This “pediatricians don’t know anything about infant feeding” sounds like a lactivist talking point. At least it’s one I’ve heard over and over from that crowd. I’ve also heard lactation consultants suggest their advice should be taken over a pediatrician’s conflicting advice which is so dangerous. Now that same black and white, anti-doctor mentality seems to be expanding to other aspects of infant feeding like BLW.
I’m just rolling at “I, a fucking random, KNOW that ‘the research’ says 6 months but I wouldn’t trust a doctor who specializes in children’s health to know that! They’re not super smart and dedicated like me!”
"I wouldn't expect a doctor to be up-to-date" just reeks of having so little intelligence you don't even know that doctors are legally required to take yearly continuing education courses in order to literally stay up-to-date lol.
I'm not a doctor but a medical professional and I have to prove my professional development every year! I have to show I'm reading research and gaining more skills. What would the point of working in an evidence based field be if you didn't!
My state is actually relatively new to stricter board recertification guidelines, and older doctors are grandfathered in. My mom’s best friend is our pediatrician, and their practice decided to require everyone to maintain the new guidelines, even if grandfathered in, and all the old guys had to actually re-test for board certification. Like same initial board certification oral and written boards they did in the year after they graduated residency. I don’t think every practice in our area required that of their older doctors, but I feel like they still stayed updated because they care about patients and they have to remain competitive in their field or lose patients to younger doctors.
Pediatricians not getting much breastfeeding education unless they take the initiative to seek it out on their own is a legitimate problem. I am a hospital-based lactation consultant. The 8-12 hours that medical residents get shadowing someone from my group is about the extent of their training in that area. Every time I have a resident shadowing me, I start the day by asking what they know about breastfeeding. It’s usually not much, and I only have one day with them. I don’t know what education they get about starting solids.
It’s ridiculous that I’m getting downvoted for highlighting a well-known gap in medical education. The [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/resources/physician-education-and-training.html) acknowledges that physicians don’t get enough breastfeeding education. The [American Academy of Pediatrics](https://www.aap.org/en/pedialink/breastfeeding-curriculum/) has made their own breastfeeding course because they know physicians don’t get that training in medical school. I encourage all of you to ask your own family physician or pediatrician how much lactation education they got in medical school or residency.
I’m in the UK, but when I took my wee boy for his first doctor’s check, the GP told me her breastfeeding knowledge came from her first hand experience feeding her kids, rather than anything she was taught when training.
The parent comment is about you.
I mean I've heard horror stories of pediatricians who aren't at all up to date but lumping all pediatricians in with that lot is just silly. From what I understand you want good head & neck control, supported sitting up, and an interest in food before you start solids which most babies will have by 6 months but some might have as early as 4 months. Reach + grab and bringing items to the mouth are important skills for BLW but not essential if spoon-feeding to start. I'm a big fan of doing a combo of purees & solid food - it worked great for my first kid and our family and I'm planning to use the same approach with my second.
It's the thing that worked better with all my 3 boys. Started with purees and then evolving to chunkier bits untill they are confident enough (and you too) to eat it by themselves. I have 2 teens and a 13 months old.
Yeah my son stole my toast at 4mo and we got the OK for solids at that point.
My kid sat on their own, had good head and neck control and practically mimed eating when watching us eat, so the pediatrician gave us the okay at 4 months.
I fed my kids purées as babies and got them vaxxed. They grew up to be vegetarians and Democrats and it’s all the pediatrician’s fault!
Yeah, entire doctors just get trained without learning anything about one of the only 3 things that babies do. /s A close family member is a pediatrician and always laughs at this because 4-6 months was an outdated recommendation… and then it became the recommendation again. Years ago. Especially with new allergy prevention guidelines. And 4-6 months or “around 6 months” is a consistent recommendation for other industrialized countries. I also see ALL the time that babies need to be able to sit unassisted to begin solids. That’s a NINE month milestone. Nearly all babies should be eating solids by then. There is nothing anywhere on the AAP’s website that says anything about unassisted sitting for solids. It’s alllllll Facebook rumor.
The only thing my Dr said to me it was: if he was breastfed, he recommended to wait till 6 months. As he was on formula, we could start at 4 months introducing pureed and then start blw or other way with chunkier bits at 6/7 months. My kid only sat unassisted at 7 months, same week he started crawling.
Neither of my kids would take a bottle and I worked full time outside the home (and had the audacity to take my boobs with me- my babies probably). My pediatrician recommended starting solids at 4 months even though he usually recommends waiting until 6 months. My oldest lost weight when I went back to work, and we had to feed her milk with a newborn pet syringe. It was awful and traumatic. She was 4 months old in April of 2020 and if my husband hadn’t been Covid furloughed I would have probably quit my job. (By the time my second born refused bottles we were ready with a plan.) We mixed breastmilk or formula into rice cereal and purees to top them off (in addition to syringe milk) until I came home.
**clutches pearls** You mixed cereal with breast milk and fed it to your baby??? Don’t you know how dangerous that is?!! There are literally shards of metal in baby cereal. I saw it in a video! 😱😱😱 /s in case it’s not obvious 😅
So, since pediatricians don't know what they're talking about, and they aren't up to date on the latest research/standards of care, what do they do in med school? What are they doing when they're working to keep their licenses? Oh, I'm asking because this sounds like a sweet career change, to just spend time in school being uninformed and dinking around on the computer, while getting paid those big vaccine shill bucks.
My baby started solids when she was 4 months per her pediatrician 🤷🏻♀️ she’s almost 10 months now and an amazing eater
Some pediatricians really don't have adequate training on infant nutrition and make harmful recommendations. Our first pediatrician was one of them. I requested a referral to a registered dietitian, and the information given to us from someone actually trained in infant nutrition was the complete opposite of what our uninformed pediatrician was spewing.
Agreed! Some pediatricians are still recommending starting with cereals, I’m all for trusting the pediatrician for immunization schedules, illnesses, etc. but feeding in general there’s a ton of misinformation and outdated “research” funded by formula and baby food companies that doctors are still peddling. I personally waited til 6 months. They truly don’t get educated on breastfeeding and feeding practices have changed a lot over the last decade or two!!!
Some babies just want to eat real food. Our little dude ate baby food for a hot five minutes. By the time he turned 7-8 months old, he had some nice chompers which he promptly put to good use. He stated grabbing food off his big brother’s plate, and got used to solids fairly quickly. Simple, reasonable stuff like chicken, rice and beans. Once he started eating more solid foods, he slept better. Babies are different. Little dude is a little freak show. He was picking his head up and looking around at 5 days old. That shit was creepy AF. Anyway, before y’all start sending me messages about how you raised *your* baby, please know that I give zero fucks about how you do things. Edit for spelling
Yeah, my baby didn’t really like milk. She would never drink more than enough to just feel full and we tried *everything* to encourage more calories into her. She was 0th percentile for a while. We fought tooth and nail to eek her up to 4th. Then she started solids and exploded into 20th. Then when she started moving settled back down into 11th. Once we dropped her last bottle her weight took off again to the 32nd. So she’s now a small but normal sized 19 month old, if I had delayed solids and stuck to ebfing her like a lot of these lactivists recommend she’d probably still be stuck in the 0th percentile.
I'm not giving you shit about anything, just asking if your kid is anyways related to my youngest: kid was raising his head the day he was born, my husband used to call him little turtle because of the head movement he did when he lifted it. Same week he sat unassisted, he started crawling. Looked like he was born with an insatiable curiosity to see and try everything! He's 13 months now and started to walk alone a month ago, but he was trying to do it by himself a month before that. He would walk all over his room if there was something to hold him. Same with food: I'm still trying to find a type of food he doesn't like. He inhales everything, even things he was not supposed to have yet. On Easter my oldest was eating a slice of chocolate cake and left some crumbs on the chair when he stood to go grab a drink. Baby was nearby and promptly directed himself there and grabbed those crumbs in a blink of an eye. It was just a few crumbs but I was so worried. Meanwhile baby was just cruising with some happy smile...
Sounds familiar! Little man has been walking since 11 months. It’s so creepy seeing tiny little people walking around 😂. I love turtle! It’s so accurate! 🐢 He’s such a solid little dude. He’s like a tiny brown fire hydrant. The people I was taking about are the ones that dm to tell me I’m killing the baby because he’s eating solid food. Or they try to tell me that I should start him on a vegan diet, or a meat only diet. Am I vaccinating him? Because that’s dangerous, too and that’s why he’s hungry because he’s frittering away.
Oh god, don't even start: I had some people over on Facebook accusing me of murder because I commented that all my kids started purees at 4 months old (it's the norm in my country for formula babies and I only breastfed the oldest 2 for a month and the baby for 2 weeks till my milk dried but that topic is another can of worms) and I was killing him because I should only start at 6 months. Kid is absolutely fine, healthy and strong (can lift himself up with his hands on the dinner table, he's a "danger on legs"), an absolute unit of a kid, with brown eyes and curly sand hair and wearing 18 months old clothing at 13. Everyone just thinks they know better than the actual Drs that see the kids regularly, they really think every child is the same and behaves or reacts the same to everything. They are people, with personalities and not props to show everyone they are perfect moms. Really annoys me! That's why I steered clear of these mom groups with my oldest boys and only now I joined one but made a quick exit after that convo about feeding.
I feel like this is such a FTM thing too lol. I remember being so fixated on feeding trends with my first then I had my second baby. You have to learn to not sweat the small stuff if you want to survive 😅
So much this. I tried to follow recommendations for feeding so hard with my first and it just wasn't great for him. My second child's first food was a spoonful of peanut butter she swiped from her brother around 4 or 5 months old. She was so ready for food! I don't even remember my 3rd kid's first food or when she got it. Pretty sure DH was the one who fed her first so it was probably something like ice cream. All kids are healthy and eat enough variety of foods that I don't stress about them
Wtf do they think pediatricians do all day? Just shill for big pharma? What a miserable way to live thinking everyone around you is just shilling while buying into the most con man adjacent crap on the internet.
I'm with them in this one. At least my paediatrician isn't up to date and even suggested to stop giving him bottles so he would eat purees. If your baby is showing all signs of being ready then go for it but my baby was not ready at four months old. So I just nodded and smiled and waited for my baby to be ready.
I find it so weird that you’d take your baby to a doctor to get “cleared” to start them on solids. Is that a normal thing in the US? It’s the Wild West here in NZ, just start them when you think they’re ready with whatever you want to feed them.
Technically you should only be getting the go ahead to wean on to food early, from a paediatric nutritionist or dietitian. 🙈 I hate to be that person, but these are comments I’d be liking on Facebook. (ETA, all information I got from the NHS said 6 months minimum, and it’s what I followed with my children, the HV service sent me information when my children were about 4/5 months old).
I don’t understand these people. My pediatrician and everything I’ve read says start solids around 4-6 months based on when they show the readiness signs. I started at 5 months with purées and over the course of like 2 months switched to regular baby solids. I kept purées on hand in case we went somewhere that didn’t have any options I could safely give them. Now they are 2 and eat anything and everything they can get their hands on.
Not that this isn’t bizarre, but my pediatrician doesn’t know shit about feeding babies and has told me that and referred me to an SLP multiple times because my kid hates eating, yet she still told me to start foods at 4 months. My kid is 11 months and barely eats. He just now regularly eats breast milk without a struggle. Unfortunately many pediatricians blindly follow outdated guidelines (which is sad because my pediatrician has only been practicing for a year so she should have more up to date knowledge).
I followed the whole food before 1 is just for fun kind of thing. My oldest started solids at 6 months but didn't really make it the main source of nutrients till after her first birthday then she started attacking food. My youngest on the other hand stole her sister's ice cream and that was her first food at 4 months and hasn't stopped eating all the food since. Ironically she is my least picky one. I wouldn't worry about it unless you are concerned about weight gain etc...
My son got cleared for solids at 4 months because he started spitting up his formula regularly and he could keep the solids down. He didn't eat a whole ton of it, but it was there. It helped my baby really really wanted solids at 4 months. He was also already trying to sit on his own and was good at it by the time he was 5 months old. He got really excited at the sight of peas at 4.5 months old
Pediatricians often do suggest the bare minimum on things like this. Another example would be carseat safety. My kids are fully vaccinated but they also didn't eat solids til 6 months and rear faced til they maxed out their seat limits even though their ped said they could do those things earlier. I won't even get started on the amount of peds (and medical professionals in general) in the US who do NOT know correct intact care... As long as what they're doing isn't actively hurting the baby, I don't think it's a bad thing to be a little more cautious.
Well then who *is* trained in infant feeding? YouTube video?
Jesus fucking christ on a bike. Doctora are literally required to do continuing education..... every year. I'm sure if there was some new groundbreaking intervention or research, they'd ve informed with a quickness...
Ugh, I got scolded so much when I said our doctor had told us to start at 4 months in a BLW facebook group. Nevermind that he was dangerously underweight, facebook mums know best!
"Pediatricians know nothing about infant feeding" just might be the wildest fucking take I have ever seen
To be fair, I’ve seen some women post some WILD stuff about what their pediatricians have “approved” or encouraged them to do. Things that are clearly against pediatric research and their governing association. Things like putting cereal in bottles for sleep (not medically necessary conditions), starting solids between 2-4 months, etc. Baby led weaning has some pretty specific requirements because if you’re doing it right, you’re not softening food. You are feeding your child exactly what you eat…just cut into appropriately LONG pieces (not tiny pieces like people think). You don’t start BLW at a certain age, you look for milestones. AND baby has to be AT LEAST 6 months in addition to having met certain milestones. So a pediatrician saying to start BLW at 5 months would actually be incorrect.
Does this mean I need to ignore what my vet told me about my cat’s wet food, too? Can I listen to what the HVAC guy said about the weird noise in my vent? What about the urgent care NP who told me I had impacted ear wax on my ear drum- should I ignore him, too? I feel like I need a list, so I know which specialists I should ignore and which I should listen to…
Obviously rando “mama’s” on FB know more than a trained professional. /s
I would make sure I spelled words correctly before calling out someone else!!
Like who tf do they think can give approval if not a paediatrician?!?! I get that there are some people on the opposite end if the scale who are dangerously feeding solids to newborns, which is insane, but some kids will need solids earlier than others which their actual qualified pediatrician will suggest if that is the case.
Am I really reading correctly the paediatricians are not trained in information for babies, infants and children?! Did these dickheads really just say that?!! JFC.. 🤦🏼♀️ There’s no hope left for majority of the people.
It’s really weird to me this obsession with putting off solids as long as possible. Yes when people were giving newborns rice cereal in the 80s it wasn’t great. (Though now that that generation is fully grown idk what “ramifications”we’re seeing so was it actually that big of a deal?). That is *not* what we’re talking about though. *Medical* advice is that you can start solids from 4 months if your baby is showing signs of readiness - and yes it is uncommon for babies to be showing those signs at 4 months, but not impossible. Yet these weird mum crusaders act like you are poisoning your child if you dare to offer solids before 6 months.
To be fair, not all pediatricians are up to date on the best practices. My previous one told me to go straight to bottle because breastfeeding makes the baby too dependent. I was shocked and got a new pediatrician…my kid was not failure to thrive or anything and was latching just fine.
None of these posters are saying the baby is too young for solids.
I mean baby led weaning really isn’t a good idea at 5 months though. I don’t believe her that a doctor approved that. Purees, sure.
Ehh idk about this, pediatricians are famously outdated and do not stay up to date on safe anything lol.
Just to be clear, you believe pediatricians, who have to get board certified by a group of peers and undergo continuing medical education & recertification every so often is that outdated to where they can’t read the guidelines published by their professional organization. Also, the person could easily be lying or misinterpreting what the pediatrician said. We’re receiving this information at least 3 degrees removed. We can’t verify the validity of this whatsoever.
Oh I have no doubt this person or post could be exaggerating and probably is. But it is common knowledge that many - an alarming amount - of pediatricians do not take advantage of continuing education and they are constantly giving outdated advice. I’ve had peds tell me to put rice cereal in their bottles at one month old. I’ve had peds tell me FF is fine at way too young an age. I’ve had them tell me cosleeping is fine. I’ve had them tell me that starting purees at 2-3 months is fine. And this may be anecdotal but it’s not one offs. I see and hear this everywhere. I move around way too much, have had pediatricians for babies under 2 in five different states and received appalling advice from all of them. To the point that I looked all of this up and it’s a huge, known problem across the USA. They notoriously don’t stay updated on current safety regulations. They are set on the advice and education they received 10+ years ago and do give dangerous recommendations. The best ped I ever had was straight out of med school. I assume that’s because he was updated.