Solids Dilemma

At 4 months the pediatrician told us we could start AJ on solids. She said that just oatmeal cereal would be good enough for now and that we should give it to him once a day. Preferably in the evenings. I was a little hesitant about this and I guess she noticed because soon after she said that if we decided not to start him on cereal we had to give him vitamins. He was already taking Vit D and now she wanted to put him on iron, what?!

I didn't want him to be put on any thing else so I decided to give him the cereal. I was only doing 1Tbs once a day mixed with 1oz of breastmilk. The third week in my baby got constipated and I worried, obviously. I call the peds office and was left speechless. The nurse told me that according to his age he should be breastfeeding  between 4-7x per day and  that he was old enough for baby juice and that rule of thumb is one ounce per age (4 mos 4 ounces) and suggested I really start fruit and veggies solids. I keep thinking I'm not ready for this. He's not ready for this, he's only going to be 5 months in a few days. $ breastfeedings? Are they serious? I spoke with my sister-in-law to ask her how she introduced solids to her now 2 year old and at about what age. You see, I always thought solids were introduced at 6 mos. And for the life of me I cannot remember when we started Steven Jr. on solids.

I was a young mother with Steven and I usually did what my mother and mother-in-law told me to do. Beans at 3 mos? Sure, why not? Okay I'm exaggerating a bit but seriously. They knew better than me so I too their advice. Now I'm a grown woman. An adult. A mother of two and a wife. I need to make my own decisions when it concerns my kids and our lives. So why don't I know what the right thing to do is? I feel stuck.

As I spoke with SIL I realized one thing. My worry is not that AJ is still young, because he's only a month away from turning 6 months. My worry is that I don't want my milk supply to decline because my goal is to make it to the year breastfeeding. And it's been proven that milk supply declines once solids are introduced. That's where my problem is. Being only almost 5 mos is still too young for my supply to decrease. Make sense?

So what is the verdict? I plan to trick my body into believing that I'm still doing 8 feedings a day by pumping after a solid meal instead of skipping a milk feed. Call me crazy but by the looks of it I'm like in denial or something. I'm not really to give up that special bond between the two of us. I'm proud for making it this far so far but I'm just not ready to call it quits if the decision is in my power. I'm going to continue building up my back up stash and introduce a veggie then a fruit every 4 days and see how that works.