A big week for a little girl

Having read the latest scaremongery research, it seems that there is a very fine line on when babies should start on solid food.  It used to be 4 months.  Then it was 6 months, with the early start being held responsible for the rise in food intolerances.  Now, it's a kind of wishy washy 6 months is too late, 4 months is too early type of advice, as far as I can tell from various recently published articles.  Start them too early, they run the risk of being obese later in life; start them too late and they won't be getting essential vitamins and minerals.  Start them too early, they might get diabetes; start them too late and they might become fussy eaters etc.  I read one baby book last week that advised they must start at 4.5 months precisely, which we had just missed.  So it was panic stations.

Not really panic, but as previously mentioned, I am holding out great hopes of getting more sleep once Juliet is into the messy stuff.  Hearing someone actually name a precise date and time gave me focus.

And I should mention that the advice on timing seems to vary by country.  One thing "they" all agree on is the signs that a baby might be ready, at least externally, to think about food.  Juliet is fascinated by other people eating and always has her hands in her mouth.  She was starting to take bigger bottles, during her bottle feeds at least.  Another sign would be night waking, but wait.  She does that already.  So I bit the bullet and at 4 months and 3 weeks, we brought out the anti-climactical one spoonful of food that babies start out with.  She was very excited with the new plastic bib.  Something else to chew on:

But not really so excited with the baby rice (just revealed as bad for babies, as it will get them hooked on processed food apparently *sigh*):

We are up to Day 4 of Gina's weaning plan (hee hee I just typed weeny plan! - small things) and she was allowed a whole cube of pear for lunch.  She loved loved that and got quite good at opening her mouth for more and swallowing the contents of the spoon by the end of the portion.

In other news, last night was her first night in her own room (no pictures because she's currently asleep in there).  She was quite tired after a day out and having sleeps off track, but managed to sleep from 6.30pm - 3.45am and then until 7am which was really good.  If only the other baby that our baby monitor randomly picked up at 5.20am wasn't going through controlled crying.  (We turned off the monitor and left Juliet to tough it out, at that point). And if only Alice hadn't needed the toilet at 1am.  We are just not destined to get a night's sleep for a little while yet, I think.  But perhaps we're on our way...