A word to the wise--ie., caution is needed.

I have seen several mothers in my private LC practice who were concerned
about a dramatic decline in infant weight gain that appeared to coincide
with the introduciton of solids.  Turns out that in every case, the mother
was filling the baby with a jar of baby food first and then offering the
breast.  If you look at such jars, you will often find that the first foods
suggested (not cereal, which can cause constipation) are usually fruit
and/or vegetables.  However, those little jars of food do not contain much
caloric content.  A 2.5 oz jar of baby carrots = 25 calories.  Period.
Breastmilk ranges in caloric content between 18 and 27 calories.  Figure it
out for yourself.  2.5 oz of breastmilk would FAR EXCEED 25 calories!  A
baby filled up with baby carrots and then asked to breastfeed is probably
not going to nurse as he/she did before and would likely then obtain far
fewer calories than he would have had he been breastfed first and then
offered the solids as an "extra".

In the cases I saw in my practice, we simply reversed the order of the
solids and the following occurred:
a) baby's weight starting climbing again
b) baby took fewer/smaller amounts of solids
c) in two cases, babies were less colicky at night/slept better (fewer
wakeful periods)
d) stools softened and became easier to pass (and were less stinky!)
e) Mothers rethought the "need" to start solids at 4 mo and began thinking
of that as "permission to let the baby experiment" with new tastes.



"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.telcomplus.com/~kga/lactation.html
LACTNET archives http://library.ummed.edu/lsv/archives/lactnet.html

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