My son was on cereal at an early age, too. I could tell he was starving, even though he was doing 6-8 8 oz. bottles a day.
And I had no problem with jars of babyfood. He ate pretty much anything, but it was more convenient to do the jars than to cook everything to the point where he could eat it.
But by the time he was a year old, he was eating lots and lots of people food. In fact, I don’t remember too much baby food after that point.
Well, in the case of my cousin and her daughter, the use of cereal is against the pediatrician’s express directions. And she’s doing it in order to be able to skip feedings - now her baby sleeps 4 to 6 hours at a stretch. For the liquid she’s giving her expressed breastmilk, not formula. This is second-hand info, courtesy of my Mom, but from my cousin herself, so the emphasis on sleeping is something she herself described. I just don’t get how someone could not know that babies need to be fed very frequently, and that they’re terribly inconvenient.
I just remembered, when my son Bryce was discharged from the NICU after 12 days the nurses gave my husband specific directions on keeping him on a feeding schedule! They strongly discouraged “snacking”!! My husband listened closely b/c feeding issues were one of the things that had him in the NICU, and he wanted to follow their directions. But when Bryce started crying I was like, I AM feeding this child. He was terrified for the first few days home, his cries were just heartbreaking, and he was behind his sister developmentally until about a month ago. But now he’s caught up & soaring ahead in his own ways. And he’s got a wonderful laugh.
Think the “Parent Directed Feeding” is disturbing? You should see other features of Babywise…
A FoaF (I know…) followed Babywise to get their child to eat in a high chair. Swatting the kid didn’t work to stop him from playing with his food or turning his head away when they tried to feed him, so they moved on to putting him in the crib without the food as punishment. They threw out Babywise after their next pedi appointment where they learned their son was not well… 
Re: parenting groups and attachment parenting…
I went (once) to a free “new parents” group run by a nurse. I was chewed out by the group for co-sleeping with my 2 month old. (The nurse gave incorrect information and attributed it falsely to the AAP. Also, I follow all the safety guidelines for co-sleeping.) Yet another parent complained that her healthy 2-month old boy “looked too fat” and she was going to start withholding feedings. She got support. :rolleyes:
You big NUT! Love is NOT all you need. And parents generally don’t know jack about the metabolism and hunger cycles of an infant. They never have–that’s why the damn things are made so that they cry when they’re hungry. They, get this, *communicate *that way.
The first bit in that quote that goes, “…children do not have all the answers about life and how best to live it…” should not be interpreted that children have NO answers. They bloody-well know when they need to eat! No normal adult has a metabolism as ferocious as an infant’s. And as for trying to get a 6-month old to sit up in a high chair–shit, it’s all a 6-year old can do to sit up in a class room because they have only just developed the back muscles needed for that trick.
God’s ok by me, but man, some of his worshippers frighten me with their absolute stupidity and the creulty they inflict out of sheer ignorance. Lions. We need to feed some lions!
I mixed a little cereal in my son’s formula when he was around six weeks. He liked it. He’s nine years old now, and is a pretty healthy kid.
I believe the book recommends Chinese Water Torture.
Disclaimer: The above sentence is a lie.
I don’t see how giving cereal helps a big baby? Maybe I’m mising something, but cereal has to have fewer calories than breastmilk/formula. Even if it’s mixed with one of those for liquid, the cereal does not have fat or protein, just complex carbs and fiber.
If a mama can feed a 10 lb. 2 month old or two 5 lb. twin newborns, I can’t see why she can’t feed a 10 lb. newborn. Are they not the same boobs?
It seems to me to just be giving their guts something to “chew” on and placating them instead of feeding them. I just wouldn’t do it on that account. I do realize it’s very common advice, though.
I think I might see about checking that book out, just to see what it says. I think I’m doing pretty good so far though.
What I can say is that the people who Babywise works for, it’s most likely because their baby fits into how it works.
Every child is different. Some will eat every 4 hours, not cry a lot, be sleeping through the night by 2 months… others will want to eat every couple of hours and fuss all the time if they aren’t cuddled.
Problems start to happen when the parents get into their head that they MUST follow this way of thinking, that this is what they MUST do with their child and they cannot (or will not) change that to suit both their lives and the child. Some things work for certain children, and not at all for others. It depends on the child, and the family. You learn to be flexible, and that things you despised in other parents before you had a child you just might find yourself doing.
Some people seem to think that they will run the child like they run the rest of their life and nothing will change. That is completely wrong though, even with a wonderful baby your life will change. This is a completely other person with their own needs, and wants. Babywise (from what I’ve read/heard) is about fitting the child to your life. As I said before, some children will like this and thrive under it. But not all.
What scares me is not that people are following this. It’s the fact that when their child isn’t happy and healthy that they might continue to follow it because 'it is the right way and we can’t do it any other way.
Oh and as to the cereal afaik you aren’t supposed to give it to them until around 4 months at the earliest (they recommend 6 months unless they show signs of being ready to eat solids) because of a couple of reasons. Babies have a reflex to push anything out of their mouth (why when you put the soother in they seem to spit it out all the time) and until that is gone it’s tough to get solids to go in and not down their front, they have trouble digesting the cereal early on because their stomach is not ready for it, so it just sits and because introducing solids to early can possibly lead to some allergies. That’s why peanut butter is not recommended (at least by my doctors and nurses) for breastfeeding mothers, or children under 2. Especially if nut allergies run in the family.
(Man run on sentences. I should be quiet now.)
I’ve always read that feeding a baby cereal too soon was hard on their kidneys.
That’s quite possible, I haven’t heard that one myself.
Scanning my What to Expect book (about the only one I really look at personally because I find it offers good advice without being preachy) it says:
Then of course there is the whole, if they can’t hold their head up themselves there is a good chance they might choke, and all that stuff.
All this talk of solids reminds me, I’m going to be starting my son on solids within the next week or so. He’s watching me intently when I eat, and sometimes reaching for it himself!
The “when to introduce solids” argument is a pretty old one. My mother had three of my siblings and I on cereals by 2 weeks and whole milk by 3 months. The lot of us turned out pretty good, AFAIC. But when she had late-in-life twins the docs reacted with horror at the notion, and so they were more “by the book” and also seem pretty ok–although both were more overweight as young kids. My first son started in on cereal at about three weeks. His pediatrician had said not to until 5-6 months for all the reasons already mentioned. But I’m his mother, and it seemed to me that he was unsatisfied by the liquid diet, sleeping restlessly and waking often, so I tried the cereal. That night, he slept through the night completely, as well as pretty much every night since then.
My second was colicky. He nursed constantly but showed zero interests in solids. At four months I tried again and while he ate it, it seemed to aggravate his colic. So he didn’t really start eating any solids regularly until nearly six months, just like the books recommend, yet he was much more difficult than my “mis-fed” baby.
I guess what I’m trying to say in my rambling, vaguely coherent way is this. When faced with an unhappy baby, an abundance of stressors both external and internal, and an achingly painful lack of sleep–mothers of young babies are likely going to try just about anything they can to just get the kid to sleep. If they find that cereal helps (the docs say it doesn’t but, as I said, IME it sometimes does) I’m not going to fault them for feeding the kid if that’s what works for them.
I don’t really fault them, though 1 month against doctors orders is a little wrong in my mind. Every child/family is different, I try not to judge people though I admit to finding certain things just wrong.
While it may not be a good idea for some babies, like the one that got aggravated colic from it, pediatricians just like every other doctor are human and fallible. They do not know everything, which is why people (for themselves) and parents (for their kids) might tend to take what a doctor says not as orders but as professional advice.
Obviously if it proves to be causing some kind of negative effect, it should be stopped, but if the effects are positive, why abandon the practice because of the doctor’s personal opinion (especially when if you put four doctors in a room you’ll get ten different opinions of what to do)?
I guess what bothers me about the cereal issue is that I expect to be inconvenienced by motherhood; I think it’s wrong to compromise their health in order to make things easier on myself. Not that any one issue is going to be fatal, clearly babies do survive various techniques and apparently some of them thrive. But I dislike the pattern of thinking that says “this kid is in my way”.
I think this is interesting - my Mom used all sorts of Babywise-type techniques in raising me, thinking that she was doing the right thing & at the behest of her relatives. This was many, many years ago, and I believe at the time conditioning was pushed as more “scientific” and less “peasantish”; the touchy-feely approach was considered less intellectual and somehow inferior. So she was really surprised when she heard about how I was going to raise my kids - in particular she thought co-sleeping was weird. During one of her visits she suggested we just put the twins in the back bedroom and let them cry. So I explained to her about AP. And you know, she has completely changed her tune. Now that she sees how happy our kids are, she’s really an advocate of responding.
The thing about cereal in the bottles is, a baby lacks the necessary enzymes to digest it properly until anywhere between 7-9 months. It provides nothing beyond simple carbs (where in the world would white rice cereal get complex carbs?) and some iron, which is not a very bioavailable iron anyway, and which interferes with the absorption of iron from breastmilk (of which there is very little, but very bioavailable).
One would think that the OP’s cousin, as a nurse, would know that unusually deep or long sleep is associated with a higher risk of SIDS, and that it is anything but normal for human infants. And this is thought to be one of the reasons why breastfed babies experience a statistically lower rate of SIDS: breastfed babies don’t sleep as long, and they don’t sleep as deeply, and this means they’re more likely to rouse during an episode of apnea. I shudder at the idea of deliberately trying to induce extra-long, extra-deep sleep.
Now, to address the Ezzos and their …ah…philosophy.
I have a child who was born with a major heart defect, and who was fed by NG tube from birth. At 6 months of age she got a g-tube, and we began attempting to teach her to eat. We have spent the last 4 years of her life trying to teach her to eat, to touch food, not to recoil from it, to put it in her mouth…to eat like any normal child. Finally, after an intensive 2 weeks at the Kluge Encouragement Feeding Program in Charlottesville VA, I have a child who eats. Today she ate broccoli, macaroni and cheese, milk, a cookie, soup, and other normal foods.
I cannot imagine slapping a baby’s hand for attempting to feed himself. My god, that is just so wrong, on so many levels, I cannot imagine it. Babies are supposed to explore food, squish it, smear it, get it in their hair, explore it and make big messes. This is part of the normal exploration of food and part of the normal development of eating. My daughter missed those things, and we’re working very hard to get her to do it now at the age of 4 1/2! Today I was elated that she helped make balls of cookie dough with her hands!
When confronted, the Ezzos will invariably say that anyone who has a problem (whose child winds up Failure To Thrive, dehydrated, in feeding therapies, or even with a g-tube like mine - and this has happened) has clearly not been following the book properly. But there are too many of these cases to believe that - too many instances where people believed they were following the book properly, trying to “do it right” (and in the cases of the religious version, make God happy) - to believe that it is all a misunderstanding. No. What Ezzo recommends is child abuse of the kind that doesn’t leave bruises. It’s subtle and insidious, and I wish to God that his publishers would pull their heads out of their asses and pull every copy of those books off the shelf for the good of children everywhere. But they won’t. Which is why I buy them at yard sales and thrift stores and throw them into the recycle bin. At least the used ones I find won’t be going into any more houses (at reduced prices) and hurting any more children.
Simple = sugar
Complex = starch
Maybe you are confusing complex with “whole” which rice cereal certainly isn’t! That stuff seems to be starch iron in a box.
Congratulations to her! (That doesn’t sound right, but I hope you get the intent)
I think what bothers me is the idea that “X was raised this way and he/she survived, so doctors don’t know what they’re talking about.”
For example, I have heard:
“My older child slept on her stomach and she was just fine, so doctors don’t know what they’re talking about.” Well, there is PLENTY of scientific evidence that sleeping on the back helps prevent SIDS. The doctors are not making this up. The problem is that many people don’t understand the concept of risk. Those of us who are older may also have survived traveling in cars without car seats (I came home in my mom’s lap – she didn’t even have a seatbelt), but would you think we should continue it today? Also, the effects of a decision may be more subtle than life or death – for example, possible increased risk of diabetes.
If parents study the reasons why doctors recommend or discourage something, and come to a rational weighing of the pros and cons as well as the level of current scientific understanding, then I can understand going against doctor’s recommendations. However, to simply say that “It worked for so-and-so, so doctors are wrong” is very troubling to me.
Well, to hear my parents talk, it’s stupid to have infant seats and booster seats even today. I’ve had my father get angry at me because I wouldn’t let my kids ride in his car without a child seat, and yes, I got that same quote: “You kids rode in our car your whole lives and &tc.” This is especially likely to come up when we discuss a preference to not take exceptionally long drives (over maybe 3 hours) because the kids are so tightly buckled in (those 5-point harnesses are so very restricting - I wouldn’t want to ride in one for hours on end!)
Of course, there’s also the ‘it won’t happen to my child’ thing going on. When the risk of diabetes is only ‘possible’ and is of a percentage that’s hard to get your mind around - I mean, if it were “One in five will develop diabetes if fed cereal before the age of 6 months” then nobody in their right mind would take that risk…right? But it’s “possible increased risk”. What does that mean? And of course that goes for the sorts of things that breastfeeding helps to avoid, like obesity. What does it mean when a breastfed child has a 30% smaller risk of obesity? Especially when you don’t know what the child’s risk was in the first place? In the case of such subtle disadvantages to things like formula milk, and early introductions of solids, it’s very easy to say “But it’s convenient for me” and make the choice for that reason, or even for less of a reason, such as “Well, nobody in my family has ever breastfed” or “none of my friends do” or “I can’t be bothered” or “everybody I know puts cereal in their babies’ bottles and they say the babies sleep better”. (ObDisclaimer: Please note that I absolutely recognise that many women try to breastfeed and do not succeed, and some have medical, including psychological, reasons for not attempting it - obviously the baby must be fed something, and formula milk is certainly adequate nutrition for human babies, and preferable to the alternatives! Also that there are reasons for introducing early solids, such as severe reflux.
And yet there are, unfortunately, many doctors out there given execrably bad advice. There are certainly “old fashioned” doctors recommending cereal in the bottle, or switching to formula at the least sign of difficulty, without alternatives. And many parents will follow these doctors’ wrong advice as blindly as others will follow the anecdotes of family and friends, ignoring freely-available data to the contrary. I don’t know what this proves, other than that people have a hard time seeing the Larger Picture, when they have to live in the immediate, Smaller Picture that is their lives.
I’m surprized at the number of people equating “starting solids” with “eating cereal”. The baby gets next to nothing out of rice cerial nutritionally, its primary purpose is to sit in the baby’s stomach and be hard to digest, so the baby thinks that he’s full longer.
La Leche League suggests starting with watered-down, mashed bananas. That’s what ours ended up starting with, but that was more because he showed himself ready for solids while we were home for christmas (he was around 4 months). When, at dinner one day, he picked a piece of brocolli off of mom’s plate, shoved it in his mouth, and swallowed it before we really even noticed what was happening, my darling wife realized that he was going to start solids before she really was planning on.
So we looked around my brother’s kitchen, and figured that bananas were about the only baby-friendly food on hand. He loved them, and has been eating great ever since.
I also don’t really trust the baby food industry. They can just put too many fillers and crap into the mix without having to put it on the label. So I’d do stuff like throw an acorn squash or some yams in the oven for a while, or steam up some peas or carrots, or even a chicken breast, and throw them in the food processor (adding water), then pour the result into an ice cube tray. An hour’s work would yield enough fresh, healthy, natural food to feed him for two weeks.
Eventually (6-7 months), we started adding some oatmeal, usually with a fruit mixed in, which helped with a constipation problem.
Oh, and according to my mother, they began putting oatmeal in my bottle at the hospital! I couldn’t believe it.
-lv