Comments on: First foods: the great allergy debate

By: admin

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:24:07 +0000

Hi Tiffiny,

One of the articles was this one (Food Antigen Handing by the Gut, http://tropej.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/27/1/1-a). And you can find lots of references to weaning triggering gut closure in animals. Of course, I can no longer find the article I originally found. Sigh. I’ll keep looking though…

By: Tiffiny

Tiffiny — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:44:09 +0000

Hi! I maintain a BLW community on LJ and I am really fascinated by this part of your post: “Interestingly, it seems possible that gut closure completion is triggered by the introduction of solid food. I don’t have a link for this just yet, as the article that suggested it is behind locked walls and I haven’t had time to read the full reference, but that would suggest we’re looking for other physical signs, then we introduce the solid food, and then the gut realises what’s going on and does its thing. Certainly, in other animals, gut closure is triggered by weaning.”

Do you happen to have a link yet for this info? Or at very least, do you have a citation I can look up on my own and perhaps purchase the article for myself? Thanks!

By: paula

paula — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:15:18 +0000

My beliefs in this matter are so colored by my own children’s experiences. I’ve been a member of an online breastfeeding community for a few years now, where the dominant view is that you just *don’t* start solids until after 6 months. So I was skeptical when my Maternal & Child Health nurse talked about “readiness signs” and bigger babies (my first bub was 90th percentile at that point) wanting solids earlier. So I ignored readiness signs for a few weeks, and finally cracked when at exactly 5 months of age he rolled away from a full breast, crying with hunger, looked me in the eye insistently and said “um, yum, yum!!!”

In other breastfeeding news, I want to add a link to the ABA’s new Swine Flu fact sheet.
- keep breastfeeding (yes, even if mother has the H1N1)
- increase breastfeeding frequency if necessary
- breastfeeding may help limit the severity of respiratory symptoms in infants
- anti-viral medication is compatible with breastfeeding

By: rosanne

rosanne — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:30:10 +0000

Everything I’ve read suggests that breastfeeding while introducing allergens is the way to go too. Part of that is again the IgA: the idea is that it should help the baby’s body treat the food as something to digest, not something to reject.

By: Beth W.

Beth W. — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:29:07 +0000

Thanks for this. We’re hoping to put it off a while — but let her choose. Our pediatrician said today that watching us eat and/or grabbing for food may not be the indicator that she’s ready for solids, although he added that she’s likely to do it anyway. I’m going to be cautious with the wheat/gluten scenario, but a woman who grilled a celiac expert about this suggested to introduce crumbs of bread while still in the breastfeeding phase — he seemed to think the combo of breast milk & potential allergens was key to not developing an allergy. Nobody knows for sure how allergies happen, though…

By: Kate Devitt

Kate Devitt — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:54:04 +0000

Great post. Really interesting. Thank you. I think the ‘baby-led’ idea is the best advice. Babies are tougher than people think. I imagine they’ll stop eating something they don’t like pretty quickly if it’s an exploratory food rather than one forced in or the only option.