4 Month Old Wants Solids!

Try giving the baby alittle cereal with her bottle try oatmeal or barley mix it with the bottle and it will give her a little consistancy and maybe fill her up more my son was 9lbs 3oz when he was born and i started giving him cereal after the 1st month and it helped him.

Wow, I'm sort of surprised by the way everyone is advising you to start cereal, especially when your health care provider has advised against it, and with a family history of allergies. It may have been the norm to start early solids at one point, but new information has come out in the last two years or so that has caused the AAP to change their recommendations to exclusive breastmilk or formula for the first six months. I'm not trying to disparage the other commenters, I'm just saying, when you know better, you do better.

Your daughter is perfectly normal, waking to eat overnight. If you have ever read anything about infant sleep (Weissbluth, etc.) they all say that many babies will continue to wake to eat until at least six months old, and that they need those feedings. She just may not be big enough at this point to store enough milk to get her through the night. Every baby is different.

If I were in your situation, I'd probably offer smaller feedings, more frequently during the day. And I'd go with the flow as far as nighttime -- chances are she will start to outgrow this with her next big growth spurt at six months.

what is your son allergic to? don't give that to your daughter until she is older. but I say absolutely give her some food!! start with rice cereal and go slow. really take a whole week to introduce a new food to her. hopefully she'll sleep better!!!

I would definitely give her the rice cereal. I actually started my daughter on the baby oatmeal cereal but it was very loose and almost watery were she was able to digest and swallow very easily. She was only 3 months when I started and did great during the day. Night time at that age my daughter slept through did not even wake her up. Regarding the food allergies try one food about every week to two weeks and check to see if she reacts to that food. At that age I really just did the cereal until she was really sitting up by herself which was very quickly. I actually never did the cereal in bottle because I was very scared. I just did it in the bowl and just spoon fed her. I felt more comfortable that way.

We had to put rice cereal in our son's bottle when he was 3 months old. I didn't think doctors would tell us to do that. My point is really discuss the issue with your daughter's doctor. Food allegries do run in families. My four year old has them but my other three do not. Rice is something that most person are not allegric to - that's why they say start there.

If she's hungry she's hungry, Start her off on rice cereal and hold everything else off about 6 months. At least it's something.

I mean, i know you dont want to be at all responsible for food allergies, but if she is hungry now, as my daughter was at that age, then she is not going to wait 6 more months to try anything new.

Maybe you should change the formula or add a little bit of cereal to it. The one you are using might be too thin. I would ask your doctor.

By all means start her on some rice cereal. Doctors always tell you to wait till the babies are older. But they are working all the time and not home with a crying, hungry baby. So what do they know? Be aware that some changes may happen when you do. She may have harder stools and may even have a little more gas. But she should sleep better and not be as hungry between feedings. And her body will get used to the changes. The biggest change should be a much happier baby!

I discussed this with my children's doctor once and he gave me all kinds of grief over it He kept saying he was the doctor and knew what was best for babies. That is, until he had a daughter of his own and his wife made him share the duties with her. When he was home the baby was his responsibility! Now he has completely changed his tune about feeding solids to young babies.

BTW He also now believes me when I told him that children do have "selective hearing"! (They can hear only what they want to hear and ignore the rest!) He used to say there was no such thing! Welcome to the real world doc!

4 month old wants them, I would give them. My pedi was pro food at an earlier age than most. Rice Ceral is a safe bet as others have already said, it's filling and very easy to digest.

This is what worked for me with my little guy: I had a very hungry boy, I fed him during the day every 2 hours, so there would be 5 feedings in a period where you now do 4, maybe do 4 or 5 ounces each instead of 6, then give him a little rice cereal, once a day to start then twice after he's had time to adjust...see how he does with it. Then this is where I got lucky, he was able to eat so much during the day, that at night as soon as I knew he could sleep 6 hours straight,,, I would feed him right before I went to bed (even if he was already sleeping) i picked him up gave him a bottle and laid him back down. then he slept the next 6 hours, so didn't have to get up at 2 am anymore.

My Pedi also stressed in no uncertain terms to NEVER put rice cereal in a baby bottle <sure tons of people have done it successfully> but he subscribes more to thats where childhood obesity can start to kick in, because we really have no way of knowing exactly how much they are getting, once it's diluted it all changes..and the purpose is to teach them to eat, the rice in the bottle defeats that purpose.

Good Luck!! Hope this helps

For your daughter's sake, try to be patient and wait it out- they go through so many growth spurts and are sometimes extra hungry for a while. I got really concerned when at 6 months my son wanted to nurse EVERY 30 minutes for THREE WEEKS, but turns out after that he was fine, back to normal, and he started to do a lot more developmentally- so I think he was just growing a lot. Food allergies is a serious thing, reaching deep into your health for the rest of your life in some cases. It also sets the stage for lots of other ailments. The medical establishment is very influenced by the food industry who tend to do "research" that and spin the outcome in their favor. They recommend rice cereal at 6 months because they say babies have an iron dip around that time, so they "fortify" rice cereal with iron and recommend it. What they don't tell you is that a child does not have too much amylase (the enzyme that digests grains) until they are 18-24 months!! That is why so many children have eczema/skin rashes and we are having so many celiacs (gluten-free) diagnosed (not due to rice cereal, this is gluten-free, but due to feeding small children so much grain in general). If you *do* choose to do rice cereal regardless, at least do rice cereal from BROWN RICE. But at 4 months, this is risky. I did avocados and softboiled egg yolks (NO whites yet- too allergenic!) from free range chickens for first foods because they are FATS, which satiate and fill.

My baby at 4 months was also doing the same thing waking up 3 times a night and would finish a bottle and then go right back to sleep. i started feeding her oatmeal in the morning and rice in the afternoon and at night before she goes to bed. After i started doing that a week later she was sleeping 12 hours a night. I'm not joking. It worked like a charm. She now drinks 6-8 ounces of milke about 4 times a day and eates purade fruits and veggies in her rice and cereal. She loves it. Try that it should work.
I hope this helps. Have a good day!!

The is no reason why your daughter cannot start on solids. My son did at that age- start with the rice cereal- try every three days with each new food to see if there is a reaction and then try something new. She may get diarrhea just because her stomach needs to get used to it- but give it a few days and it will pass. Doctors recommend cereal in the bottle usually if the baby has reflux. But she won't get enough to make her full in a bottle and to help her sleep more through the night and not be so hungry during the day. Mix the cereal with the formula- don't make it too watery- her tongue reflex will not be developed yet- but give it a try. Good luck!

My son started on solids at 4 months, but we didn't have any food allergies. I wouldn't think starting just on rice cereal would cause any food allergies. That being said, I would start to give her less ounces during the night, so she can consume more during the day. The way I did it, was to reduce the amount of milk by half an ounce or an ounce a week. So instead of 6 ounces at night, I gave 5.5, and then 5, and so on... This way, my son was more hungry in the morning and through out the day and eventually we didn't have bottles at night. Good luck.