Chat with my hv has confused me :-/

[Bluetomato]

My hv is lovely and comes round once a month to see how me and the children are doing and to weigh Darcey. She has put on 1 1/2 lbs in 5 weeks, and she seems to think thats a lot to put on in that time? Im doing blw with Darcey and I think she eats quite well, and she is also breastfed. The thing I don't understand is that my hv said Darcey should only be feeding twice a day - morning and evening? Darcey has loads more than that! She feeds about 6 times a day then a couple of times at night, sometimes more, sometimes less. I don't think twice a day would be anywhere near enough for her. So am I doing it wrong? Am I bf her too much? Ive never done blw or bf for this long before so im not sure what to do
Also, should I be offering her water? I've given her water in a doidy cup, but she isn't that interested.
Hope someone can help

 

[T-Bex]

She's wrong. Current advice that I received from the breastfeeding councellor at my group, is that babies should still be fed on demand until 1, especially if doing BLW.

 

[summer rain]

Aaaagh this is like the 90th time I have heard a HV say that babies on solids should only be BF twice a day, this is extremely outdated advice coming from the 80s and 90s, it is now recognised that until a year old milk should make up the majority of LOs' nutritional intake but many HVs were trained before this advice was given. My son is BF and BLWed as well, he still has at least six substantial feeds a day and at least 2-4 small ones. Another thing is some babies do gain higher than average in the second half of their first year; all mine do, as long as they are not above the top centile line after 12 months of age or jumping centiles this is not a problem whatsoever (according to the guidelines for HVs). My son went through a long phase of gaining only around 3oz a week on average between 15 weeks and about 30 weeks, now he is 39 weeks (I think) and for the past two months he has gained more like 4-8oz a week-90% of which is due to 'mummy milk' he is on exactly the same centile as he was on after regaining his birthweight back at the start so I know he is fine xx

 

[Bluetomato]

Thankyou for replying Darcey started on the 25th centile, (was born at 36+6) and has gradually got onto the 75th centile! Since she hit 6 months she has gone from the 50th to 75th centile - she weighs 19lb and 1/2 oz when weighed today. Both her brothers were the same and were on the 75th centile by this age. Im going to carry on feeding her as we have been and ignore my hv. Its a shame as shes been brilliant with everything else (blw, cloth nappies, baby wearing etc), but it seems shes not very clued up about breastfeeding after 6 months.

 

[T-Bex]

Not many seem to be, to be honest. I'd have a quiet word with her, if I was you, because it really is rubbish advice to the point of being damaging to babies, and especially if she's an otherwise good HV (I'm not sure that many exist!).

 

[summer rain]

I think HVs live in some strange alternative dimension; where its always 1955, and they only cross over into our world for clinics; would explain why so many of them seem to have no clue about any of the recent feeding/weaning guidelines. I mean there are even some that still advise weaning at THREE months-the guideline changed in 1996! xx

 

[T-Bex]

It gets me so angry that they don't update their knowledge, and then make our children suffer because of it. I think I must spend about 90% of my time at the minute complaining about HV's - at my breastfeeding group, we have had to buy a notepad to report all the bad advice (really bad stuff) given to our mums.

 

[minties]

My HV was here a couple of days ago and said I don't need to breastfeed at all now, that solids are the most important thing from 9 months up. Silly woman.

 

[patch2006uk]

Seriously, what's with the HVs at the moment??

 

[summer rain]

They've all recently been to an international training seminar called 'confuse and misinform' methinks...xx

 

[minties]

Agreed! And usually the ones in New Zealand are so pro breastfeeding and anti anything else. I must have got a dud one that day.

 

[Ozzieshunni]

I've already told my HV I'm planning on BLW. She was actually very interested and asked who wrote the BLW cookbook. I think I lucked out on mine. I've only ignored a couple things she's said, but even she admitted to cosleeping in the early days to get some rest