Weaning

[Megglou]

When did everyone start weaning their little ones and what kind of thing did you first give them? I will be making all the food myself but will use some pouches/jars when we're out and about, what are the best ones to use? Thanks

[charley39]

Advice is from around 6 months as a rough guide. We started around 5 months for various reasons. We started with one meal a day before increasing to breakfast and dinner after 3 weeks roughly. It isn’t best to pick a time of the day when it is convenient and when baby is not too tired or hungry. We always offered food in between his 6am and 10am bottle. Some say to give it after a bottle but we found beforehand worked for us as long as it wasn’t too close to feeding time. We use the Ella’s kitchen, Hipp or Aldi pouches. The jars tend to be very runny and we tend to avoid them now. Advice is to start with vegetables so that they don’t get too used to sweet but we haven’t done this as breakfast time was when we started so he has porridge or a fruit purée. I started off with the individual fruits and veggies first to look for a reaction and once I knew we were okay I started to use the mixed pouches. Now we are at 6 months we are introducing finger foods alongside so depending on how old your LO is you could give this a go? Hope this helps? Sorry for rambling! Good luck!

[Megglou]

@charley39 thank you that's really helpful! So you give food aswell as a bottle not instead of? It's very confusing as there is so many different views and health visitor says strictly no earlier than 6 months and only try porridge for the first month. LO has only just turned 4 months he's a very big heavy hungry baby but I've decided if I feel he's ready I'll try at 5 months. Really excited to try!

[charley39]

@Megglou I had the exact same conversation with my health visitor who was horrified when I said I planned to start early. They can’t be seen to tell you advice against guidelines. Said it had changed to 6 months due to childhood obesity and how the emphasis is on baby led weaning so that your not overfeeding them on jars and pouches which I don’t really believe. Yes we still have the same amount of bottles although he has been on 4 bottles a day for quite a while now so will probably stick like this. Just this past week I have started to make the bottles slightly smaller as he wasn’t finishing every one. I think reason being once you hit the pouches for 6 months there are a lot more ingredients which I think have filled him up. That’s why I always give food in between his milk times. I think you will be perfectly fine to give some fruit and veg purees. I think your LO will be fed up with porridge after a month! A lot of people will say to wait until 6 months but you know whether baby is ready or not. As soon as my DS got a taste of food that was it he loved it and he will happily sit in his high chair mouth wide open watching me get it ready!

[thecookies]

We started around 6.5 months as the younger of our twins has bad reflux and we were anxious about overloading him. In hindishgt we should have started earlier. They were both trying to grab food whenever it came near them, staring at people eat etc.
We started with finger foods - peeled cucumber and apple sticks, some steamed veg like carrots - for a week or so. Then we introduced a meal of baby rice in the morning and dropped their dream feed.
A week after that we introduced a 2nd meal of pureed steam veg or from pouches.
As we got more confident, and so did they, we upped our game about a week after that. So now the boys have a 6am milk feed, a 9am breakfast of porridge or toast&puree or pancakes, a 10/11am milk feed, a 1pm lunch of steamed veg or corn snacks with a stage 2 puree or whatever we are eating (if suitable - bolognaise etc), a 2/3pm milk feed and a 630pm milk feed.
Ideally we need to drop another milk feed but with the hot weather my wife has been worried about dehydration as the boys only drink around 10/20ml of water with each meal.
We found that aldi do nice corn snacks, which help them build up confidence with finger food, pouches are much of a muchness but ella's kitchen seem good, we also bought some reusable pouches from amazon so we can fill it with our own food.