Guilty About Weaning

Lucas is 5 months old and weighs about 20 pounds. I’m thinking of weaning him from the boob and introducing solids. But I feel guilty about doing it. I am not sure what to do.

He sits on my knee and fixedly stares at my food. If you gesture to give him some, he opens his little mouth like a hungry bird. But I am reluctant to start him on any solids. Alot of it has to do with my own insecurities about ‘failing as a mom’ or just ‘not doing the best thing.’  The whole ‘Breast is Best’ campaign has worked on me and now I am left feeling shame for contemplating starting him on solids so early.

He isn’t my first child. I’ve done this twice before. My first, I weaned far too early.  I didn’t know it at the time. But I know it now in retrospect. She wasn’t anywhere near sitting up on her own, wasn’t interested in food and didn’t really know what to do with the food. But at the time, I was eager to get back to work, have her sleep as much as possible on a full belly and I never really felt comfortable feeding in public.

With my second, well, she was a breeze to feed and an incredibly easy baby, despite having a collapsed lung as an infant. I tried weaning her at 10 months and knew she wasn’t ready, so she was just over 1 year-old when I introduced solids and even then I continue to feed her after that.

Now with my little man, he is a hungry and content baby. I know that he would love to taste solids. Selfishly, it would make my life a bit easier in that I wouldn’t have to stay up late to express milk or plan in advance before leaving him to run errands, visit my doctor/dentist or take the girls out about town. But everyone is saying 6 months. And I just did a Google search and found hundreds of women saying to wait for at least a year.  What’s a girl to do? Live with the guilt? Or be completely selfless?