I have a friend who was doing this to keep her kiddo fuller from a young age. I talked to my pediatrician who said "no, bad, don't do it" Shouldn't have cereal (the infant cereal mush stuff) that young, and risk of aspirating in the bottle. Talked to a nutritionist who said the same thing, baby needs to be able to digest the food the way it's body needs and get more food on demand not have his system repressed unnaturally. My friend totally calls bull though. Refuses to believe it.

Anyone else have this kind of contradiction? She's not really talking to me right now. She's pretty mad at me for bringing it up. I didn't mean to make her feel bad!

Oh pish. I always did that stuff and my kids are just fine. Sometimes I think people go to extremes protecting their children to the point of basically making stuff up to worry about. Baby cereal was made for babies. It's perfectly safe.

I don't think its bad. But I would never do it. I think you need to follow your child's lead. But if they are ready to eat cereal, then maybe you should do it from a bowl not from a bottle.

I think you just have to wait for the baby to the right time where he/she can eat cereals. Its not that the baby will not grow normal if you don't feed him/her cereals at a young stage. But it all depends on the parent of the child to whatever they want to feed their baby. For me, its ok as long as the baby is happy. ;)

When I was an infant, my mother was confined to a hospital a good distance from where we were living. My father was in the Army and this being 50+ years ago, he wasn’t home much. So my sisters, brother and I were in foster care for a little while. I know they fed me that way because they didn’t want to take the time to feed me properly.

I have no memory of that and only know it because I’ve been told about it, but I guess those thoughts always kept me from doing that with my children.

I had supplemented baby cereal with formula at about 6 months when my milk started drying up. The cereal was for babies 6-9 months 8-12 mo etc.. So I personally hasn't seen any defects in my child.

My girl is 14 months now, and still eats cereal with Enfamil NEXT STEP LIPIL (for toddlers), she made the swap from formula to this a couple of months back. And she started to eat cereal earlier than most, and had no issues. Every child is different, always remember that.

Oh pish. I always did that stuff and my kids are just fine. Sometimes I think people go to extremes protecting their children to the point of basically making stuff up to worry about. Baby cereal was made for babies. It's perfectly safe.
Sorry but breast milk was made for babies, anything else is manufactured and made by people who cannot properly copy what a baby needs.

A baby's gut simply isn't ready to digest other things than breast milk before six months (and maybe even older). Their gut is leaky, it lets through substances into the blood that the body can then become sensitized to.

This is how allergies start. Now before you say "well I was fed cereal at two months and I am fine", that's great. But not all are fine. I am not fine. I was fed cereal at two months and have many allergies, asthma, eczema, other problems. And wouldn't you feel guilty if it's your kid who has problems because you wanted to force them to sleep better against what their body needs?

There is a reason babies wake up a lot, not limited to nutritional needs. There are studies that have linked heavier sleeping (such as that caused by feeding cereal to make them sleep better)to SIDS. Babies need to wake often because they don't have the ability to move themselves out of danger for instance.

I could go on forever about this. There are things that were done 50 years ago that were thought to be ok-but we learned better as science advanced. 50 years ago we didn't use car seats for kids. Was that better? Of course it wasn't. We painted our house with lead filled paint-all because it lasted better than none lead paint.

In fact that is a wonderful comparison to cereal-we used lead paint because it was convenient for us-it cut down on the work we had to do. But then we found out that it was hurting us and our kids-it was poisoning them. Cereal is given also to cut down our work-it's not for the benefit of the kid, it is for the benefit of the parent, and equally we have found out that it is not good for them.

We learn, we move on. Should we keep making the same mistakes just because people before us did?