How to wean your baby from a mothers point of view

Sarah Vaughan wrote:
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

(a long and eminently sensible post, mostly snipped but with this point
that I wanted to respond to)
I might not always follow the recommendations, but I would
ask very pointedly what the benefit is in *not* following the
recommendations. Unless there's a good reason arguing *for*
the need to give a particular child solids early, I don't see
the point in taking the risk, no matter how small it might be,
simply because you never get to know in advance if you're at
a tipping point where a little quantitative difference might
make a large qualitative difference for a specific individual.

Totally agree with this (and, incidentally, even if there was *no*
difference between four months and six months from a health point of
view I'd still think six months was better for practical reasons -
giving finger foods to a baby who can sit up has got to be easier than
faffing around with those silly purées!) What I object to is not the
basic recommendation that six months appears to be better than four, but
the amount of emphasis placed on it, which seems out of proportion to
the actual level of evidence. The message that comes across isn't "It
looks as though there are some overall advantages in doing things this
way and it will be beneficial to the health of some babies, so better to
wait if you can," but an unqualified "You should do things this way. It
will be harmful to your baby if you don't."

I would rephrase it to say, "There seems to be evidence
that 6 months is better than 4, and given the nature of the
evidence it's possible that it may make little or no difference
for many kids but may be significant for some; therefore, it
seems wisest to wait."

When I realised I wouldn't be able to keep Jamie exclusively breastfed
for six months, I felt terrible - what awful harm was I doing to my baby
by not being able to pump enough milk at work? Fortunately, I have
access to the information on which the guidelines are based and the
know-how to interpret it correctly, so I read up on the actual evidence
and was left feeling much better (apart from feeling angry that I'd been
sent on that guilt trip on such very limited actual evidence). But lots
of women in this situation don't have that. How many women are left
feeling guilty either because they can't live up to the standard that's
been set or because they brought up a baby under the old guidelines and
then had the rules switched on them and are now being left with the
message that the way they did things was all wrong? This is why it
makes me twitchy when I see people putting what seems to be to be a
disproportionate amount of weight on the existing evidence. Just
because there's evidence of benefit doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep
our perspective over it.

Again, I think it's all about weighing the alternatives.
In your case, the alternatives had some significant downsides.
In the case of introducing solids at 4 months vs. 6 months, what's
the downside of waiting another two months? In most cases, there's
no downside at all. So, to me it's not exclusively about how much
evidence there is. It's a tradeoff between the strength of the
evidence, the severity of the risks, and the viability of the
alternatives. In this case, there is a moderate level of evidence,
relatively minor risk (overall, but perhaps greater for an individual),
but the alternative is extremely low cost/low risk.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Dec 20, 9:59 am, Marie wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:26:31 +0000, Sarah Vaughan

wrote:
I'm curious about this. If you do grab the window of opportunity and
get a child trained before they hit the oppositional phase (if that's
the right term), what happens when they do hit it? Isn't there a risk
that, when they do hit a more oppositional stage, they'll start having
episodes of wetting themselves anyway as part of a rebellious stage?
Has anyone had this experience?

I have never had that experience, none of my children ever wet on
purpose. Once they were potty-trained(it took about 2-3 days) that was
it. What does happen at that phase is everything else goes to hell and
you fear the grocery store. j/k, I don't think my kids even hit some
oppositional phase! They just became more independent as time went on,
and right around age 4 all of them seemed to develop these minds of
their own. Mine were out of day-diapers at 27, 24 and 22 months, in
that order. There were no accidents afterwards, it was all very easy
for me. There was no forcing or anything that I've heard other moms
talk about before. It seemed easier and quicker with each child to
switch them to undies. I just put it down to experience, but looking
back, my youngest has done many things much earlier than my first two
so maybe she's just quicker with things.
Marie

My Aunt that has the 3 kids. Her youngest is real smart. And I think
the youngest have the other kids that aren't much older than he or she
is to learn from... and they tend to want to learn to be like their
sister or brother. They want to do every thing the older ones do

Beliavsky wrote:
On Dec 20, 8:28 am, Banty wrote:

snip

Add to that the hoo haa that the first sip of wine while
pregnant would endanger my child

Is it "hoo haa" just because it interfered with your lifestyle?

I'm not a doctor and have not seriously studied this issue, but my
wife is a doctor and did not touch a drop of alcohol during her
pregnancies. Googling "alcohol pregnant mothers" gives the following
story, near the top:

[snip]

This was one of the things I did look into, some time ago.

IIRC, studies have a tendancy to define "low levels of alcohol"
differently to individuals. For instance in your link, the doctor said
that "no level" has been shown to be safe, but the studies haven't
compared babies born to women who have had one glass of wine during the
entire pregnancy to women who have had zero. Their low-levels tend to
be more then I drink when I am not pregnant.

For instance, here is the most recent advice given to gynacologists in
the UK:

http://www.rcog.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1477

It states " it remains the case that there is no evidence of harm from
low levels of alcohol consumption defined as no more than one or two
units of alcohol once or twice a week". That is up to four units per
week!

HTH
--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

On Dec 20, 9:15 am, Beliavsky wrote:
On Dec 20, 8:28 am, Banty wrote:

snip

Add to that the hoo haa that the first sip of wine while
pregnant would endanger my child

Is it "hoo haa" just because it interfered with your lifestyle?

Wow. Regular posters to this NG have pretty much established that
their interest in genuine parenting and in research related to it. I
think it's quite rude to imply otherwise, given that there are some
obstetricians who've recommended a glass of wine to stop premature
uterine contractions.

Lori G.