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I've heard that putting cereal in the actual bottle is bad. If you feed cereal you should use a spoon. After doing some research on this I found that most experts say there is no truth to the statement that adding cereal before bed will help your baby sleep longer. There are a lot of mom's out there who swear it did help their baby sleep longer but just as many who said it didn't help at all. I'm sure it depends a lot on the individual baby.

I think it's a complete myth. I think baby sleep is 1) luck of the draw and 2) developmental.

Plus, there's hardly any nutrition in rice cereal and it constipates...so I never bothered with it when we started with solids.

Totally a myth. I've been adding it since 8 weeks per my ped for his reflux, and it did not change his sleep one little bit. Solids haven't done anything for it, either. I don't believe sleep has anything to do with food.

I did it and I do and, honestly, I do think it helps. The first night I did it, she slept an extra hour and continued to do so every night. I tried to stop for one night and she was all over the place.

Doctors can say what they want but I know that it worked for us.

I will say that C has always been an excellent night sleeper. She started sleeping 6-7 hours overnight at 2 weeks old.

We did this and it helped him sleep NOT because it filled him up or it is magical...but because it was heavy and it sat in his stomach instead of sloshing around and coming up. My son had terrible spit up & acid reflux. He could sleep because it hurt so much. Our ped rec rice cereal to kind of weigh the milk down and keep it down. My son felt immediate relief and was able to sleep instead of being woken up out of pain.
We stopped at maybe 12w? Maybe 16w and nothing changed with his sleep. He still slept like a saint even without RC.

Rice cereal is definitely a helper for reflux, but other than that, I wouldn't do it.

Bad for risk of obesity and diabetes in the future. I'm not a fan!

@Mrs Green Grass: that makes sense. I thought I'd read something about using gel thickener if it was with breastmilk and that's probably why. I was looking at medical alternatives to reflux meds; though I've had several relatives suggest it for longer sleep.

Definitely don't recommend it. My pedi said absolutely not!

@scg00387: yeah, it's totally useless to mix into pumped milk. I mean it's empty calories and only used for thickness to relieve reflu. So, if BM is going to break it down to the point of no thickness, then why use it, ya know?

my pedi said it had no nutritional value and constipation is a side effect, so i think i'll skip it and just start with veggie purees...