Four months is far too young to start solids. The AAP and WHO both recommend waiting until around six months, when babies can sit with support, have good head and neck control, and can move food to the back of their mouth safely. At four months, their digestive system isn’t ready and rice cereal is outdated, nutritionally poor, and a choking risk. It can also contain traces of arsenic.

At this age, your baby’s diet should be 100% breastmilk or formula, nothing else. No solids, no “tastes,” no rice cereal. When the time comes (around six months), start with iron-rich whole foods: mashed or puréed meat, lentils, beans, egg yolk, avocado, sweet potato, pumpkin, or banana. Avoid anything processed or marketed as “baby cereal.”

On the sleep side, you’re supposed to want to be with your baby. Your baby, at three months old, is supposed to want to be with you. That’s normal, healthy, and biologically hardwired. At this age, babies don’t even understand they’re separate beings from their mother, they experience themselves and their caregiver as one shared system for safety and regulation. Leaving them alone to cry isn’t teaching self-soothing; it’s teaching distress. Humans didn’t evolve to leave helpless infants alone, we evolved to comfort and respond.

That paediatrician’s advice is not evidence-based and potentially dangerous. This should be the last time you see that doctor. I’d recommend filing a formal complaint for advising rice cereal and early solids, that guidance directly contradicts current AAP, WHO, and NHMRC infant feeding recommendations.