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Solids and Breastfeeding

I am a mother of three and I have been breastfeeding my 6 months old son since birth.

I have a 12 year old girl and a 5 year old boy - breastfeeding did not last with them. It has been a long journey and really tough just to keep my milk supply going. My son is tongue tied so latching has been a challenge . Thank God for the Occupational Therapist!

Because of his poor weight gain/latching, the doctor recommended to bottle feed as well (with breastmilk) a couple times a day to help his weight.

So I would pump, bottle feed and also breastfeed as well throughout the day. But according to the doctor even that was not enough to get his weight good where he needed to be.

The doctor ask me to start solids when he was 5 1/2 months without replacing the breastfeeding. They ask me to give him everything from cereal, to vegetables to chicken and to leave fruits for last. I was not happy at all but they wanted me to feed my baby as much calories as possible.

I did what I was told – well “kind of”. I gave him Organic brown rice cereal first once a day, then organic oatmeal and then barley, each for 3 days. He did very good then I started him with squash, green beans and sweet peas, but did not gave him chicken yet, which the doctor did ask.

I did offer apples and 2 days after he had a food allergy, doctor ask me to stay away from any apple products for now. That was not good since I noticed that many baby food even chicken does contain apples. But my main problem then was that he was full from the food and would not want to breastfeed often.

What happened next….My milk supply started to decrease.

I come to find out after calling my breastfeeding counselor that solids should have been second food to my baby…which I didn’t know.

I was suppose to breasfeed first and then offer solids after 30 minutes I was doing the other way around. According to her only a 20% of solids is introduce at first and breastfeeding is always the main thing. Now I do breastfeed first, then I offer him solids.

Now I just started to introduce my own homemade baby food for him, I learned that I could add some natural spices and flavor to his food and even give him avocado…he loves it!.

I do all this slowly since I’m still worry about any food allergy.

I will still work on keeping my milk supply going which so far it has been more stressful than introducing solids to him. I see on my next appt how much does he weigh, hopefully he will finally double his birthweight!

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Guidelines for Introducing Solids to Your Breastfed Baby.

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