Cereal in bottles? 8 mo old

I am hoping you can help me out- my sister in law lives europe and they give their kids cereal watered down pretty thin in bottles for some occassional meals and many kids get it right before bed. She keeps encouraging me to try it..... but feel like what I've heard here in the states is NOT to put cereal in bottles, but I don't know why. Could you give me some information regarding the reasons so I feel like i can 1) make my own case for myself and 2) explain to her why we chose to or not to do it.

Thanks all.

 

im not sure about the cereal part, but my step mom is a NP and had clinicals with our peditrition and was talking about not putting cereral in the bottles because it can make a baby lazy and not want to eat from a spoon which is a developmental milestone. I know that sometimes some babies will get cereral with milk to help with sever reflux to help it keep the milk down but from what you were saying it doesn't sound like that is the case, but rather just for convience maybe??

Don't know if im much help, tho..

 

I would think that at 8 months you could just spoon feed them the cereal. I think that the cereal in bottles is most often used to help combat reflux.

 

QUOTE(FirstTimeMom814 @ Apr 16 2009, 05:57 PM) [snapback]1276415[/snapback]
I would think that at 8 months you could just spoon feed them the cereal. I think that the cereal in bottles is most often used to help combat reflux.


Yes, definitely by 8 months they can eat it off of a spoon in most cases. We did use cereal in our bottles, but it was for reflux.

 

I did cereal in bottles for reflux and reflux only.When they hit 4 months my pedi suggested weaning them off the rice cereal and giving them oatmeal from a spoon (because rice was causing constipation). I have since weaned them off and actually they are doing much better without it. My DS spit up alot and had problems with this belly from it. Now since I stopped he hardly spits up and no more belly problems. It did NOT help them sleep at night, in fact it may of hindered their sleep because of their bellies.

I agree with pp as far as it not teaching them to eat from a spoon. They have to learn solids are eaten from a spoon not a bottle.

GL!

 

we put rice cereal in dd's bottle for reflux and actually end up spoon feeding most of it to her anyway (eating issues). We also put it in ds bottle when he was spitting up a lot from reflux and I guess we've just never stopped. Our pedi wants them to get a certain amount for the iron so we just continue to put it in bottles...they eat all of their other solid foods from a spoon though.

 

I read, I think on the AAP website but not sure, that recent studies have linked cereal in bottles to aspiration and possible choking.

 

Personally I would tell her that at 8 months they should be learning how to eat cereal from a spoon and not from a bottle unless there is a health issue. If she is thinking that will help them sleep longer you can always try and feed them some cereal around dinner time and see if it helps. I can tell you from experience that we had to add cereal to one of my boys bottles and it was so thick like a milkshake... he didnt STTN until he was almost 9.5 months old.

 

I live in Europe and it is the done thing to put cereal in bottles. I think its a different type to what I´ve read about on here. We dont give it for reflux issues, at least not in Spain. We started putting a spoon of cereal in my LOs´ bottles at 4 months and the reason behind it was to get them used to feeling fuller, to prepare them for solids. We did this once a day and I chose the night feeds. Then we increased it to twice a day at 4.5 months (morning and night) then 3 times a day. I still give them a spoon of cereal in their bottles today.

The cereal we buy isnt rice cereal. I give one which has 8 cereals and honey (there are a variety depending on age) and it can be made into a puree-type food if you want or just add it to bottles. Mine have never choked or had any kind of problem with it. Obviously I would follow what your pedi recommends as its possible the cereal you have over there is different to cereal over here.