Rice cereal in EBM?

[lisalu100]

DD is eight months, wakes up every 2/3 hours to nurse. She'll go a little longer if I give her a bottle of EBM (1 or 2oz) then nurse her to sleep. I've only done this a couple of times. If I wake her up when we go to bed after she has only nursed a little, she properly wakes up, and wont nurse back down, she needs pacifier and rocking. Ped suggested putting rice cereal in a bottle, or feeding her something at that time, to see if she'll go longer. Can you put rice cereal in EBM? Has anyone had experience of whether this might work? I'm not worried about the rice cereal itself - DD is eight months, and eats most things I give her without issue, she is BLWing.

TIA

[Bokonon]

It's not recommended to put any solids in a bottle because it's a choking hazard, even for older babies. And the cereal may just upset her tummy. Honestly, waking every 2-3 hours to nurse sounds pretty normal for an 8mo. My 10mo was doing that until a few days ago when I implemented the No-Cry Sleep Solution.

[nameisrio]

Babies do not sleep better because you give them cereal. SOME babies sleep better when they start eating solids because they start eating solids at an age where they developmentally ready to start sleeping better (though this did not hold true for mine, who did not SSTN for 2 yrs.). Why do dr's, who should know better, keep trying to tell us this? I think there was even a study done by Gerber that said eating solids does not contribute to better sleeping. I'm prone to believe in those results, because you KNOW they wanted them to be otherwise!

[briome]

It is not likely to help sleep......Think of wallpaper paste in your drink, would it help you sleep better?

http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/so...ids-sleep.html


"Doctors and other experts recommend that you never give baby cereal in a bottle unless recommended by baby's doctor for a specific medical condition. Here are some of their reasons:

It is a choking hazard.
The cereal takes away from the amount of milk in the bottle (adds carbohydrates and dilutes the nutrient density), and baby may not get adequate milk volume for proper growth and development.
Baby is being given a higher concentration of calories without being able to regulate her own intake. This can lead to weight problems in the future."

[hakeber]

I wouldn't, but my first slept 8-9 hours a night at 2.5 months, and never looked back. I didn't give him cereal in his bottle, but by 8 mos he had a pretty wide repetoire of foods he was into and so we gave him a protein packed (I think protein always helped my ds sleep longer, maybe he would have anyway, what do I know, but definitely not fortified carbohydrates) supper (I can't remember really well, but stewed chicken, lemon grass tofu, scrambled egg, stuff like that) right before bed, then nursed down and as long as he wasn't cutting teeth he would sleep for up to 10 hours straight. I still find that if he doesn't eat enough protein at night he wakes up super early.

We never did rice cereal. I don't like congee myself, so I felt it unfair to make him try it. He did really really like oatmeal though, and still will have it as dessert now and then with applesauce and cinnamon stirred in!

[CherryBombMama]

my mom and my older generation family members swear by cereal in the bottle, but i personally dont like it. i think its a personal issue, and by all means, try it if you want to cross that off the list, but i never liked adding the extra calories and the fact that the cereal took some place over my breast milk.

[CalaRei]

One of my boys has reflux pretty bad. He's about 90% breastfed, but needs maybe 4oz of supplement a day. I can't express this 4oz consistently, so a lot of times this supplement is formula, which aggravates his reflux more than EBM, and he tends to throw it up. We do bulk up that bottle with oatmeal cereal. It doesn't help him sleep, but it does keep the food in his belly so that his weight doesn't start to taper off.

Also note that the KellyMom site mentions that rice cereal doesn't thicken breastmilk because of an enzyme in the milk - this is sooo true! I had to try it out myself, but wow, spoon after spoon of rice and it just kept dissolving, but not thickening it. Crazy.