Rice Cereal in Her Formula Along with Spoon Feedings for a 4 Month Old

Please take the time to look up "open gut" as it relates to babies. This is one of the reasons that delaying solids is favored.

It is not recommended to put cereal in the bottle. It does not promote healthy eating habits, will cause baby to over-feed and it does not help baby sleep at night.

Babies sleep thru the night when they are ready and when they learn how to sleep (yes, babies have to be taught how to sleep). Babies need a consistent routine at night so they learn what is coming and what is expected of them. I gleaned a lot of valuable sleep info from Dr. Sears and The Baby Whisperer. I took parts of their info and developed a sleep/night routine for both my kids.

You don't add rice cereal to a bottle. It overfeeds a baby, can be a choking hazard, and your baby can aspirate the chunky food into her lungs while trying to suck and swallow it.

At 4mos old, its still reasonable for her to be waking in the middle of the night for a feeding. She's a baby, not an adult, and her body needs nourishment more often than an adults body. If she wakes, feed her. She won't be this small forever and trying to force her to sleep by overfeeding her is not the solution.

Its recommended to not introduce solids until 6mos anyway. Rice cereal is a binder, so if anything it will cause more problems with her sleep because her tummy will be upset, especially if she's fed it multiple times a day and then overfed it in her bottle at night. Back off on the solids for a month or two, start with something more nutritious like mashed avocado or mashed banana, and do not put food in her bottle. It won't help her sleep through hte night and its not wise to do that.

Remember that she is just a baby, not an adult, and sleeping through the night has nothing to do with how much she eats. Her body has a high metabolism and her stomach is only as big as her fist, regardless of how much you try to put in there, it will be digested quickly and hse will be hungry faster. If she wakes, feed her and put her back to bed. If you go with her flow, your life will be much easier and less stressful.

she's 4 months old why are you even feeding her cereal? Do some research and see all the negative effects of starting so young. Solids shouldn't be started until at least 6 months. Why are you concerned w/ her sleeping all night? Do you know that they consider sleeping all night going a 5-6 hour stretch not going from the time you put her down until the time you are ready to start your day. She is a baby and if she is waking at night to eat then let her eat. If she is drinking an entire bottle then you know its for hunger not for comfort. Adding solids isn't going to make her magically sleep thru the night. She will sleep thru the night when she is ready. Some children don't sleep all night until they are well over the age of 2.
Oh and you never ever ever add cereal to a bottle!!!!!!!!!! That is such a bad thing to do. If your pediatrician told you to add cereal to her bottle I'd be searching for a new pediatrician.

I just wanted to reiterate what the other posters said. It's best to wait until 6 months for solids. Besides the fact that their gut is closed by 6 months helping decrease the chances of allergies, I never quite got the point of feeding a baby who can't sit up on their own. There's no correlation between sleeping through the night and feeding cereal. There are studies showing that. I think your expectations for sleeping through the night are a little off. It's certainly awesome when they sleep through early on, but more often than not, babies will wake up throughout the first year and sometimes even longer.

You should NEVER add cereal to the bottle UNLESS the pediatrician told you to. Doing so can be very dangerous for the child! In some cases the dr will recommend doing it (such as sever reflux or lack of weight gain) and will tell you an amount, but that is the ONLY time to do it. Otherwise it adds unnecessary calories and poses the risk of choking and asperation into the lung.

Sleeping through the night is considered at least 5 straight hours of sleep. At 4 months old she may start sleeping for longer periods of time but its not expected for her to sleep a full 10-12 hours stretch without feeding.

Formula should be her primary source of food until she is 1 year old. Cereals and foods are simply for learning how to eat.

You should never add cereal to formula in a bottle. It can cause choking and other serious issues, and won't help the baby sleep through the night.

We just started spoon feeding our four-month-old rice cereal because she was trying to grab food off our plates and opening her mouth when we brought food to ours! She gobbles it down, however, I only give her a tbs once a day after nursing as she gets all her nutrition from that. The cereal is just practice for eating. She was sleeping through the night before we started cereal, and my older started veggies and fruits long before he slept through. There's no connection! I would stick to the spoon only with the cereal, but I'm sorry that it won't help you get more sleep!

Im not sure if pediatricians are actually recommending putting cereal in a bottle anyway. Th baby can actually choke like this. They usually encourage rice cereal on a spoon so that they can learn the mechanisms.

Sorry - I have to disagree with most of the moms on one of the points: According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is OK to start solids between 4-6 months depending on the child's development. Our pediatrician, a stickler for AAP policy, had us start both kids on cereal/veggies at 4 months because they were thriving.

As for adding the cereal to the bottle, we did it a few times with one child (our first), never with our daughter because we really didn't feel good about it. It, in theory and practically is just not a good idea.

Here's their guidance to parents regarding feeding solids:
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/f...

A baby still has a small stomach at 4 months, and I don't think it's the norm for them to be sleeping through the night at that point (what do I know, I have a 3.5 year old who still doesn't sleep through the night).
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/s...

There is no correlation between feeding and sleeping through the night. That is a myth! It is dangerous to add rice cereal to a bottle. They recommend that you wait till 6 months before weaning a child, due to their underdeveloped digestive system.

the rice cereal is one thing (i'm definitely in the camp of wait a bit longer and NEVER put it in bottles, but if you are determined to......) but i'm more concerned about the expectation that a 4-month-old sleep through the night. some do, of course, but thinking it's the norm and feeding and handling your infant with the goal of getting her there is overlooking the more important goal of understanding YOUR child and what her rhythms are and how to best accommodate her. it always makes moms' lives easier if babies sleep through the night, but feeding them based on that (rather than their nutritional needs) to make that happen is counter-productive.
khairete
S.

both of my kids were diffrent with my oldest that was plenty. I would try 4 spoons you don't want to give her too much too soon. My youngest I had to give 2 oz of cereal per bottle 2 bottles every 2 hours he was an oinker. and I spoon fed him. I started him out on 2 spoons and seen he need more and in creased to 3 then 4 then 1 oz till I figured out what his body needed. my youngest is a very big boy he is real stalky but not fat so don't worry about the cereal making her fat which other moms might tell you. Foot ball coaches are going to love my youngest. He wears a 5t in the shoulders in his shirts and 2t pants.He is only 22 month old.
But my oldest kid was never fed that way cause there was no need. 2 spoons satisfied him. Its a guessing game and all kids are diffrent. good luck

there is no scientific evidence that cereal makes infants "sleep through the night." please introduce food to your baby slowing to avoid discomfort, risk of food allergies or other digestive problems. keep in mind that doctors are only human and some do not keep up with the literature as they should. getting conflicting advice? go see another doctor.

I don't like the advice here to add rice cereal to the bottle , rice cereal is a food and is for when you are ready to introduce solids so they learn how to take food from a spoon and move it around the mouth and swallow , if she is still waking in the night and you want to try and get her to go longer try giving a dream feed before you go to bed at night , I did this with mine (around 10.30/11pm) , I would pick them up and feed them in their sleep , they would take around 3 or 4oz and it was enough to help them go through until around 5.30am , if that doesn't work how about a formula for hungrier babies? I think you should wait a little longer to introduce cereal , 4 months is a little to young I think , mine were a couple of weeks short of 6 months when I started to wean onto solids.

My kids all started on real food by the time they were 6 months old. They were hungry for more than just Breast Milk or formula. My oldest was about 5 months old when he decided that he just needed more food. My suggestion is that you go with your instincts, if you sense that your child needs rice AND the formula before bed, then do that, just not in the same container. My youngest is now 7, so I don't know if they make bottles that are able to handle the thickness of rice, but I would try to avoid that. Kids have their own schedules for when they want food, no matter what the DR says.

If your ped. said to feed rice cereal, and you trust him/her, then that's fine. It's perfectly normal to do so b/t 4-6 months, depending on the baby. I'd trust the doctor, rather than other moms on this one. Lots of people tend to give opinion rather than fact, and you need to go with what the AAP rather than people who want you to raise them their way. That being said, most peds don't recommend putting cereal in the bottle. It can give them too much. I remember from my first that my ped said it's really the weight and not age that determine when they're ready to sleep through the night. I think it was 12 lbs can sleep 7-8 hours. I say CAN, not will. I think this means their bodies can store enough to keep them going for that long, but once again, you'll have to check with someone who knows! My first slept through (b/t 6-7 hours) at about 3 months, the next it was closer to 4. I'd take the other mom's recommendation to give a feeding right before you go to bed. This is what I do. I wake them up around 10 to 11 and feed them a bottle, after I'd washed face, brushed teeth, etc. This will get their little bellies full so you get the longest period of sleep while you're sleeping. It's hard to wake to feed when they're content, but trust me, it's worth it when you wake up to them hungry at 5 or 6 rather than midnight or 1! Good luck! You will eventually sleep again!