Weaning advice please...

[Rose138]

Hello!

My son is 5 months old. I felt that all the signs were there that he was ready for weaning.

So it has been 5 days now that he's been having baby porridge in the morning. He's responded really well and loves the porridge! I was worried about going from the closeness of bottle feeding to then introducing a spoon but it didn't seem to phase him at all.

I'm wondering about introducing a lunchtime/afternoon purée of Apple. Am I rushing though? Should I leave it a while longer on the porridge in the morning with milk throughout the rest of the day?

When I do move on to purée apple, pears, carrots, sweet potato ect (gradually I know)- I'm going to purée then freeze in cube trays. A few quick questions- how long can they be kept in the freezer before needing to be thrown out? Should I leave in the pot/in a bowl to defrost then heat through in a saucepan?

Thank you in advance! Xxx

[NickyEds]

If he's ok with the porridge then why not? I'd just make sure that milk still makes up his calories so don't replace a milk feed with apple puree. My advice would be to not make too much to freeze, we waited until a week before 6 months so gave him a couple of purees then just ditched them and gave him finger food and normal food just mushed up so purees would have been wasted. You'll almost certainly either eat them or grow out of them before they "go off" from frozen.
Yes you should leave them in a pot to defrost and warm them through in a pan. What I've actually always done with food frozen for ds is defrost it in the microwave then re heat it in the microwave. Just give it a really, really good stir in case of hot spots.

[Rose138]

Thank you! That's really helpful.

Just out of interest-which finger food did you first introduce?

Thank you.xxx

[Artistic]

We've skipped the whole purée phase & directly moved to regular food - just a bit softer than usual. Also skipped using spoons. I either feed her by hand or give the finger food to DD to eat up. We started at 1 week before 6 months & now at 4th week since...very little food going down but she's thoroughly enjoying mashing up food & carefully thinking about how to put it in her mouth.

I would suggest quickly putting forward various varieties of food to ensure she tastes them all before making up her mind about what she likes. It's completely against the old method of slow progression but I've not seen any problem at all.

[NickyEds]

God this is going to sound terrible but one of the first things ds ate was naan bread dipped in passanda sauce -It was a big family curry night out and he was six months so we just went for it! More usually he'd have things like toast, crumpets, carrot wedges (pretty well boiled so that they could be mushed up), roast sweet potatoes, sliced up omelettes, broccoli florets, bagels with cream cheese.....anything that wasn't easily choked on really. In terms of other food he's always had a lot of stuff I can batch cook and freeze so things like fish pies, shepherds pie, macaroni, broccoli and cauliflower cheese,spag bol. When he was smaller I'd mush them up a bit and spoon feed some and leave some on his tray for him to mush up and feed himself. He's 16 months now and eats really well.

[Rose138]

Thank you both!

I think I'm nervous about going too quickly as a health visitor said to me I need to be really careful with allergies as my son has severe excema. But I've read that there is a slight link with dairy allergy- not all foods as she made it sound! Plus I think if he's going to have an allergy to something, he will whenever so it's silly for me to delay him trying a range of foods. I'll just take my lead from him and at the moment he's loved porridge, apple and carrot! Long may it continue! xxx